My Genealogy Hound

S. W. Lindsey, one of the largest stock dealers in Dallas County, Mo., and also a prominent farmer of the county, was born in Lawrence County, Tenn., March 18, 1833, his parents being Sterling and Mary (Azbell) Lindsey, a short history of whom is given in the sketch of Ezekiel Lindsey. They were the first family to settle in that part of the county, and suffered many privations incident to pioneer life. They had to go sixty miles to Waynesville to get their seed-corn, and their clothing was all home-spun. The father was a tanner by trade, and would often kill deer and make moccasins out of their hides. He was also a cooper, and made nearly all their household utensils. He entered two forty-acre tracts where Louisburg now stands, and the deeds for these were among the first recorded. Here he made his home until his death March 4, 1846, his wife dying September 12, 1867. Sterling W. Lindsey, whose name heads this sketch, has been a resident of Dallas County since about three years of age, but owing to the scarcity and very primitive condition of the schools of that day, he never went to school but about three months, and that was to a private teacher. He worked hard to help improve the home farm in his boyhood days, but in 1853 left the paternal roof to seek his fortune in the gold mines of California. He took the overland route, and made the journey in three months and twenty days, the objective point being Sacramento. He took a drove of cattle with him, and while there turned his attention to stock dealing, which occupation met with fair success. While on his way he killed buffalo, deer and panthers, and can tell many anecdotes of thrilling interest connected with some of his hunting expeditions, as well as some of his experiences with the more civilized inhabitants of that region. In 1855 he returned to the old homestead in Missouri, and resumed farming, and has also been largely engaged in stock dealing. He has a large farm well adapted to stock-raising, and has driven large droves of cattle through to Illinois and sold them at Jacksonville and other points. His land amounts to about 500 acres, nearly all of which is under cultivation, and well supplied with water. In 1861 he enlisted in the Home Guards, and served for six months, and the following year enlisted in the Enrolled Militia, and was stationed at Buffalo the most of the time. In 1864 he joined Capt. Brown’s company, and was transferred afterward to Capt. Sullivan’s company, in which he served until the close of the war. His first wife, Mary Drum, whom he married in 1857, bore him two children, Carroll J. and Daniel J., and died in April, 1864; and in August, 1865, he wedded Martha Paine, by whom he has ten children: Ella, wife of Charles E. Burton; Minnie, Anthony, Emmet, Jeanette, Bertha, Blanche, Berniece X., Roscoe and Grant. Mrs. Lindsey is a member of the Missionary Baptist Church, and he is a member of the G. A. R. He has in his possession a paper, the New England Weekly Journal, published at Boston, on Queen Street, April 8, 1728, and also has a powder-horn dating 1763, made by William Betts, his name being engraved on the horn. He has a small round table made of sixty-three different kinds of wood, made by a man by the name of Gardner, and also a walking-stick of hickory that grew up by the side of Davy Crockett’s house in Tennessee.