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James Knox Stark


JAMES KNOX STARK

James Knox Stark was born 23 May 1839 in Grantsville, MD to Peter Stark and (probably) Elizabeth Wright or (possibly) Elizabeth Dean. His father was born in Ireland, emigrating about 1832 as a part of the (ethnically) German protestant Stark families who came to America and Australia between 1810 and 1870. It is possible that one family first established themselves, earning money for subsequent siblings to leave Ireland for what they no doubt believed would be a better life.


I am documenting the Stark family from their immigration from Germany about 1709 to Ireland. Because of the destruction of records in Ireland at a time of unrest, most civil records were destroyed. Piecing together what information I can is a herculean task. What I do know is that James’ father Peter was born in Ireland, coming from a settlement of Germans who intermarried for over 100 years, rarely marrying outside of their protestant faith to a non-German-surnamed individual.


According to the 1840 census, Peter had a wife and an older child than James who is not accounted for in the 1850 census. Whether Peter was married in Ireland before his marriage to Elizabeth Wright in America is unknown. I cannot find Peter in any ship’s records, and most of his immigration papers were destroyed by a courthouse fire.


James’ father was a farmer and laborer, eking out what living he could on the border of western Maryland and southern Pennsylvania. He moved several times, may have mined coal, and worked on building one of the first interstate highways to go across Pennsylvania. James was the surviving eldest of a large family.


While James registered as a soldier for the Union during the Civil War, I can find no records that he ended up serving on either side. Between 1860 and his marriage to Sevilla Bittinger on December 31, 1863, there are a couple of interesting facts:

In March 1860, he appears to have had a child, Cyrus Washington Stark out of wedlock with Mary Ann(e) Biddinger, a cousin of the woman he married, Sevilla Bittinger. In July of the same year, James is a farm laborer in Linn County, Missouri, where ten years later he bought a farm. But by 1863, he returned to Maryland to marry Sevilla Bittinger; four of the couple’s ten children were born in Maryland before they permanently moved to their farm outside of Laclede, Missouri.


Besides his son Cyrus (I cannot find if he ever acknowledged paternity), his next oldest son was Orval Henry Stark, the father of Grandmother Jennie May Stark (DuBois).


James was literate since childhood, but his wife signed her will with a “mark,” listed on census records as able to read, but not write. Such was not unusual in the Bittinger family; they were a “hardscrabble lot,” a clan who still spoke German after decades, had whisky stills, and had friends who shot Indians (including a woman nursing a child) just for fun. The Bittingers and a few other Germanic families frequently intermarried. Most were of the Lutheran or Reformed faith.


In contrast, James was raised by his parents as a Methodist whose values, including temperance, were passed along to his granddaughter Jennie. Jennie spent several of

her years growing up on James’ and Sevilla’s farm, and became one of a few female graduates of the University of Missouri in agriculture.

By all indications, James and Sevilla were successful farmers, their farm being worth about $280,000 in today’s dollars, and their other assets were impressive. The couple were married over 55 years and died in 1918 within 12 days of each other. Their son David bought out his siblings to keep the farm in the family.

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