Hugh Cecil Hurst

The parents of Hugh Cecil Hurst
Hugh Cecil Hurst, born on 26 March 1811 in Adair County, Kentucky, was just a baby when his parents moved from Kentucky to middle Tennessee that year. Before 1838, he married Mary Ann Felps in Lincoln County, Tennessee. She was the daughter of Brittain Felps and Susanna Waggoner, and she was called "Pop" by her family. Mary Ann was born 17 May 1821 in Gattistown, Lincoln County, Tennessee. Their first child, Susan Bernice, was born in November of 1838 in Bedford County, so we know that Bedford was the couple's home early in their marriage. Susan was followed by eleven other siblings. In 1850, Hugh and Mary Ann lived in Bedford County next to Hugh's sister Nancy and her husband Moses Neeley. In the 1850s, it seems that Hugh invested heavily in land with some business partners, among them Edmund Word and Samuel Doak. The Doaks were near our Beards for many generations. Hugh's aunt, Jane Beard, married David Doak and this Samuel may have been either David's brother Samuel or David's son, who was born in 1802. If so, then Hugh Hurst and Samuel Doak the business partner were cousins. The investments led to lawsuits and the Bedford County records are resplendent with documents pertaining to the numerous transactions of these individuals. Eventually Hugh Hurst sued Word and Doak, and the case went all the way up to the Tennessee Supreme Court. Hugh won the case, and it appears that it was a big win, for in the 1860 census, he was a man worth over $22,000.00, an enormous amount for that time, on the census of Conway County, Arkansas, where the family moved in about 1857. There are records of Hugh obtaining land in Arkansas in July 1860. No doubt the fortunes of the family were diminished by the Civil War. Hugh died 7 June 1867 in Arkansas. His son in law, John Guinn Bledsoe, kept a diary and the entry this day was "Death of Hugh Cecil Hurst, Solgohachia, died 6/7/1867. He was clad in black, laid in a sable coffin and deposited in the desolate grave. I have lost a brother and a friend, we will meet again."
In 1870, Mary Ann Felps Hurst was listed as a head of a very full household in Washington, Conway County, Arkansas, having seven children at home, the youngest eleven. Mary Ann died about 1889 in Arkansas, no burial place is known for her or for Hugh. They left many descendents.
1. Susan Bernice Hurst
1. William Britton Hurst
1. Thomas Hugh Benton Hurst
1. Mary Jane Hurst
1. Jasper Newton Hurst
1. Frances E. Hurst
1. David P. Hurst
1. James Harold Hurst
1. Robert Fulton Hurst
1. Ella Barton Hurst
1. John Hurst
1. Zudinglas Graves Hurst