Hurst Families of Pulaski County, Virginia
There have been members of the Hurst
family in the area now Pulaski County,
Virginia, since at least 1785. At
that time the area was in Montgomery
County. Later, part of
the area was in Wythe
County. After Pulaski County
was formed in 1839, there were about 39 Hursts
from two different families represented in the 1840 census.
Possibly the first Hurst
in the Pulaski area was William Hurst, son of William “Brindle Bill” Hurst of
Shenandoah County. Brindle Bill had died at his large farm about four miles
south of Front Royal in 1781, splitting his property between his six children.
Son William got a grant on the south side of the New River in Montgomery County.
The area was probably in what’s now Pulaski, since his brother Capt. John Hurst
got a grant on Mack (Max) Creek and Persimmon Bottom in 1785 – definitely
Pulaski. William’s further travels are a little vague, but Capt. John moved
first to Greene County, Tennessee,
then eventually settled in Harrison
John’s second wife was Mary Barksdale Lindsey, the widow of William Lindsey;
they were the ancestors of the Lindseys of Pulaski and Carroll counties. Even
though these first two Hursts
didn’t stick around, their mother’s family’s descendants did. Their mother was
Those first Hursts
were part of the large family group known as the “Hursts of Shenandoah.” Before
they reached the Shenandoah Valley, family members had lived in Stafford County
and probably Northumberland
County before that. The
earliest record of the Hursts
in Northumberland is from 1650. The probable ancestor of all the Hursts from Stafford
County was John “of Stafford” Hurst (c1675-1747).
Leaving even less a footprint in the area was a first
cousin of the above two Hursts known to history
as John “Mill Creek” Hurst.
John was the eldest son of Thomas and Mary Hurst, all or most of whose children
were born in Stafford. Before the
Revolutionary War, they moved to Shenandoah
County, but in what is now Page County.
John was married twice and had 16 children, but he and his family mostly kept
moving down the road until they reached Claiborne
John was soon followed by his brother Absalom Hurst
(1750-1830). Absalom was born in Stafford, lived in Shenandoah/Page, then
bought land from his nephew Thomas Hurst on Little Reed Island Creek in Wythe County
in 1804. Absalom is supposedly buried at the Bethel
in the Hiwassee area of Pulaski, but there is
no cemetery there now. The Hursts were members
of the Church of England when in Stafford, but
became Baptists during the Revolution. Many in Pulaski are still Baptists.
Absalom was the ancestor of most of the Hursts who have ever lived in Pulaski.
After Absalom Hurst died in Wythe in 1830, his children
executed an heirs deed whereby his youngest son William “Big Bill” Hurst bought
out the interests of his four siblings in the Little Reed Island Creek
property. Another possible sibling, Jeremiah Hurst, may have received some
compensation in advance when he moved to Claiborne County;
by 1830 he was even further west in Morgan County, Tennessee. This may have
been the time when Absalom’s eldest son John Hurst moved to the Hiwassee area of Pulaski. From this time there are two
families I call the “Wythe County Hursts” (my line) and the “Hiwassee Hursts.”
Absalom’s son John Hurst (1769-1855) and his wife Mary
“Mollie” McCarty had nine children, but most of them moved to Claiborne County.
(Sorting out those Hursts from the even greater
number of descendants of John “Mill Creek” Hurst in Claiborne is a chore, but see my
The one son who remained behind was Thomas Hurst (c1790-1834) who married
Jemima Breeding (c1793 – after 1870). Three of Thomas and Jemima’s sons were
Wesley Hurst (1815-1857), Allen Hurst (1825-1904), and Calvin Hurst
(1829-1913). The fourth son, William Hurst (1821-1896), had moved to Carroll County
by the 1850 census, then on to Mercer
County in 1851. This
William and his three wives had 11 children; by 1930 these Mercer County, West
Virginia, Hursts outnumbered the Hursts in Pulaski by about 120 to 81. Thomas
and Jemima also had four daughters, who married into the Stone, Whittaker,
Nester and Crowell families.
From 1850 to 1860 virtually all the Hursts
in Pulaski were descendants of the brothers Wesley, Allen and Calvin and lived
in the Hiwassee area. Between the three, there
were at least 29 children. Wesley and his wife Charity Nunn had five daughters
and one son, John Wesley Hurst. Allen and his wife Nancy Cook had six daughters
and seven sons, Reason Vinceton, Chester,
Allen Princeton, Dr. James Calvin “Jace,” Samuel Need, Benjamin Caudill, and
William Wysor. See Samuel Need Hurst’s biography
for a good discussion of one of these families. Several descendants of Wesley
Hurst are buried in the Moore-O'Dell
Cemetery in Hiwassee. Allen Hurst and many
descendants are buried in a Hurst
Cemetery #3 in the Tinytown area of Hiwassee.
Calvin Hurst and descendants are buried in Hurst
Cemetery #2, also in Hiwassee. Of course, Hursts are buried in many other Pulaski cemeteries,
including the Oakwood
During the Civil War, Hursts from Pulaski naturally fought for the
Confederacy. Allen and Calvin were in the 45th Virginia Infantry.
The situation was different in Claiborne
County in a pro-Union area of East Tennessee. But several of Absalom’s descendants
there were on the Southern side. After the war was over – perhaps no longer
feeling welcome in that area – some of them moved back to Pulaski. The largest
group of these was Samuel Hurst (1820-1895) and Virginia Breeding (1823-1909),
both originally from Pulaski, and most of their children. For some reason they
did not move back to Hiwassee, but settled in Newbern on the other side of the New River. Samuel was the eldest son of “Squire” John
Hurst, another son of John Hurst of Pulaski, whose father was Absalom. The
“Newbern Hurst” sons who moved with their parents were Garrett, Estell,
Jackson, Milton and Samuel. Only the youngest son, Albert Monroe, was born in
Pulaski. In 1870, Garrett Hurst, after marrying a Civil War widow, Nicotia
Miranda Quesenberry Clark, moved his family to Cooke County, Texas,
where they prospered. From the remainder of the sons who stayed in Pulaski,
there were at least 40 children. Samuel and Virginia had two daughters, but
they died young before the move to Pulaski. The “Newbern Hursts” are known for
their regular reunions in Newbern or Dublin;
the latest one in 2005 had about 100 attendees.
Daniel M. Hurst (1840-1926), was a son of William “Trigger
yet another son of Pulaski’s John Hurst and Mary McCarty. He also had been a
Confederate soldier, so perhaps he accompanied his first cousin Samuel Hurst to
Newbern. Daniel is buried in the Hurst
Cemetery #1 in Newbern along with many of his cousins.
A completely separate Hurst
family has lived in Pulaski
County from the day of
its formation. This line began with the marriage of William Hirst and Rachel
Cummins in Loudoun
County in 1798. William
Hurst was listed in the Montgomery
County census in 1810,
the Wythe census in 1820 and 1830, but his estate was inventoried in Pulaski in
1839. The family had lived on Big Reed Island Creek in the southwest corner of
Pulaski near Allisonia since at least 1826. William and Rachel had at least
four sons, Joseph, William Jr., Jesse Thompson and Franklin, plus three
daughters. The sons were all in Pulaski in 1840; but by the 1850 census William
Jr. and Franklin were in Carroll
County, which is why the
family is generally known as the “Carroll County Hursts.” However, son Jesse
Thompson was in Pulaski except for the 1870 census, and he died in Pulaski. Son
Joseph was in Wythe in 1850, but soon moved to Warren County, Indiana.
Descendants of William Jr. and Joseph have identical Y-chromosome
DNA, which is completely different from that of the larger Hurst
family in Hiwassee, Newbern and Wythe. Many of
these Hursts are buried in Carroll; but at least
one family moved back to Pulaski with several burials in the Oakwood Cemetery.
James Monroe Hurst (1841-1930) had an interesting history.
His father was another Samuel Hurst, whose descendant’s Y-DNA is virtually
identical to that of the “Carroll County Hursts,” and may in fact have been
another son of William and Rachel. His mother was Lucinda Hurst, of the “Wythe
County Hursts.” So James’s early life was spent in Wythe on Little Reed Island
Creek, but from 1880 on he lived in Dublin
and Newbern. James served in the 51st Virginia Infantry.
The above Hursts
did not live in isolation, of course. They had multiple marriages with several
other Pulaski families including Breeding, Nunn, Duncan, O’Dell/Odell, Quesenberry, Southern,
Moore, Ashworth, Lindsey and Crowell. Probably a high percentage of the current
residents of Pulaski, especially south of the New River and in Dublin
and Newbern, have Hurst
ancestors. The connection to the Hursts in Wythe, Carroll, Claiborne and Mercer
counties has been discussed above, but others moved to Montgomery County,
Roanoke, and to many other states.
Further information on Hurst
families of Virginia.
Report for Thomas Hurst and Jemima Breeding.
Report for Samuel Hurst and Virginia Breeding.
Report for William Hurst and Rachel Cummins.
© Copyright 2006 William R. Hurst
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