Sterling King Savage Jr.
Sterling King Savage Jr. was born on 22 February 1782 in Martin County, North Carolina, by the dates on his memorial. His memorial names his father as Sterling King Savage, the elder of the name, and says his mother's name is not known. A Sterling Savage was heading a household in Martin County in the first federal census, in 1790.
He married Martha Pope, who was born in Georgia about 1791. The family came west to Tennessee. A Sterlin Savage was heading a household in Warren County, Tennessee, in the censuses of 1820 and 1840. Warren County lies on the western edge of the Cumberland Plateau, around McMinnville.
In 1844 the plateau country between Warren County and the Sequatchie Valley became Grundy County. On 27 August 1850 the census taker Michael Hoover reached the Savage farm in District 4 of Grundy County. Sterlin Savage, 70, a farmer born in North Carolina, owned land worth $500. With him were Martha, 59, born in Georgia; Jesse, 38, a farmer born in Georgia, with land of his own worth $200; Brittana, 25, and Franka, 19, both born in Tennessee; and Thomas Dugan, 15, who also worked as a farmer. The 1850 schedule does not state how anyone in a household was related to its head. The next farm belonged to Jacob Cagle, 75, also from North Carolina. Cagle is also the name of the community where Sterling's grandson Warren Butler Walker married in 1882.
Franka was Frances Savage. When her son Warren died in 1915, his death certificate gave his mother's maiden name as Frankie Savage, and in 1880 Frances told the census taker that her father was born in North Carolina and her mother in Georgia, matching Sterling and Martha.
His memorial names four children: Samuel Pope Savage (1808 to 1901), Simeon Savage (1814 to 1891), Brittania Savage (1824 to 1879) and Frances, called Frankie (1828 to 1903), who married George W. Walker. Jesse, the Georgia-born farmer of 1850, was very likely another son.
Sterling King Savage died on 4 September 1854 in Grundy County, aged 72. He is buried in the Savage Cemetery at Gage, in Sequatchie County, the family burying ground where Martha, Brittania, Simeon, Frances and Frances's son Warren Butler Walker were later laid. A marker put up there in 2002 lists him as Starling Savage, and records that one or more people enslaved by the Savages are buried in the same ground.
The Savage name stayed on the land. Savage Gulf, one of the deep gorges cut into the plateau by the headwaters of the Collins River in Grundy County, takes its name from the Savage family who once owned part of it. It is now Savage Gulf State Park, a National Natural Landmark with some 500 acres of old-growth hardwood forest. His son Samuel Pope Savage is buried in the Savage Gulf Schoolhouse Cemetery.
Children
Sources
If Sterling King Savage Jr. is in your family, start your own tree.
Cite: Heirology, "Sterling King Savage Jr. (1782-1854)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/sterling-king-savage-jr-1782-1854-c6c78a.