Memorials › Thomas Bolivar Tunstall

Thomas Bolivar Tunstall

6 Apr 1820 – 3 Dec 1917

Birth	6 Apr 1820
Death	3 Dec 1917
Cemetery	Glenwood Cemetery Crockett , Houston County , Texas , USA
Added by	Nancy Franklin-Walling Bundrick on 10 Aug 2010
FaG	https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/50374484

Bio

~Thomas Bolivar Tunstall was born on April 6, 1820 at Petersburg, Indiana. He was the third of eleven children born to William Vicory and Dorothy Hall Vaughn Tunstall. His father followed the printers trade and moved his family from Indiana to Kentucky to Tennessee, and in 1828 they migrated to Morgan County, Alabama where they were to make their home for many years. He later moved to Old Montgomery Hill, now Tensaw, in Baldwin County, where he engaged in farming. He married Hannah Elizabeth Stedham June 16, 1842. She was a native of Baldwin County. A certification dated Dec 29, 1946, indicates he was instructing in English Seminary in Alabama at the time. He moved to Catahoula Parish, La. and on Jan. 19, 1864 his wife died and was buried in Rosefield, Louisiana. They had ten children. At age 45 in 1865, following the Civil War, he took oath of allegiance, the record describing him as 5" 8" tall, fair skin, blue eyes and sandy hair. That same year he moved to Texas, where his father had preceded him from Alabama 12 years earlier, in 1853. He first settled at Old Randolph community, where his father and other family had first settled, which was about 12 miles east of Crockett. It was also the same year that he met and married Mrs. Rachel Elizabeth Gressett Goodwin, who already had a daughter Jimmie Anna Goodwin by her previous marriage. Later he moved to his farm on the Old San Antonio Road at Big Creek Community which was located seven miles southwest of Crockett. He is remembered as having large sugar cane harvests and the big syrup mill which turned out a lot of molasses. also one friend's diary mentions "the pleasure of stopping in at the home of the Tunstall's for a friendly chat and a good Havana cigar while on our way to Mustang Prairie". Eventually he moved his family to Crockett and resided in his home which was located on what is now North Fourth Street where the St. Francis of Texas Catholic Church now stands. A Teachers Certificate issued by the State of Texas on Nov. 13, 1871, shows him to be employed as a teacher of Orthography, Reading, Penmanship, Geography, and Arithmetic. In 1913 he tabulated his 18 children, 67 grandchildren, 84 great-grandchildren, and 7 great-great-grandchildren. In addition his step-daughter then had 7 children and 2 grandchildren. He possessed a keen interest in his ancestry, and tried to impress it on his children. He spoke of his grandfather Edmund Tunstall who was a Revolutionary soldier who was recruited into the army while on his way to school one morning. He was 16 years old. He spoke of his cousin Virginia Tunstall who distinguished herself as a belle of the antebellum era preceding the war, and from 1851-1861 was known as "one of the brightest ornaments of Washington Society". A complete account of her interesting life is recorded in her memoirs, "Belle of the Fifties". After living in blindness for many years, Thomas Bolivar Tunstall died in Crockett On Dec 3, 1917, at the age of 97 years and 8 months. he was buried beside his wife in Glenwood Cemetery in Crockett, Texas. The writer of this is the grandson of Thomas Bolivar Tunstall and son of Vicory Barker Tunstall, namely Barker Tunstall, Jr.

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