The Hugheys of North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas

by Karen Bartlett

Thank you for managing the site for Ezekiel Hughey and his descendants on ARGenWeb. The biography submitted therein is from Delores Raines Sutton, my mother's aunt. My mother is the daughter of Almus Cylvan Hughey, the son of William Brice Hughey and Melisse Hannah Richardson Hughey.

Besides the corrected spellings of their names, above (Almus Cylvan, not Sylva, Melisse, not Melissa and Alford Wilson Hughey, not Alfred) I would like to correct the information for William Brice Hughey, my great great grandfather. He did NOT fight in the Union Army, but fought in Harrell's Battalion, Arkansas Cavalry, Confederate States of America (CSA). He fought with Harrell's Battalion in General Sterling Price's campaigns in Arkansas and Missouri. He is listed in the names of Confederate Veterans from Carroll County, Arkansas, at the Carroll County HIstorical Society.

His brother Alford (Dick) did fight for the Union Army, and the brothers never spoke to each other after the War, or so the family story goes. Also, William Brice's (Bill's) mother, Melisse Hannah Richardson Hughey, did not die in Carroll Co. Arkansas. After the War, "Bill" Hughey took his family, consisting of his wife and two children AND his mother, to Lowry and Lead Hill (two very close townships), in Boone County, Arkansas, because his mother Melisse was from there (the Richardsons still live in Lead Hill) and the Yankees had burned the farms and mills in NW Arkansas and SW Missouri. They had no home in Carroll Co, AR after the War, so they moved where they knew they had other relatives and friends.

Delores says "Bill" Hughey was a carpenter. I don't know about that, but I know the Richardson family had excellent carpenters among them. My mother still has an oak dining table carved by her cousin, Robert Richardson of Lead Hill, Arkansas. We live in Springfield, MO, and my mother is 93 years old. But she remembers the family history and how to spell and pronounce their names. My mother's older brother, Dennis, was born in Lead Hill, AR, and the family did not move to Missouri until about 1926. My mother was born in 1928 in Cedarcreek, MO. Delores moved to Oklahoma as a young bride and had her information second-hand. She did not have exactly correct information, therefore.

By the way, Henry Hughey married Ann Wilson and traveled with her to join her father James Wilson in Carroll Co, AR, in 1838. But what Delores does not say is that James Wilson was 3/4 Shawnee. The Richardsons are also Shawnee. I believe the Hugheys were part American Indian as well, perhaps Cherokee (Henry came from North Carolina originally, which is Cherokee Country) but I'm not sure and have no evidence of this. But the Hugheys that I am related to, as well as the Richardsons, look very Indian, although they think they're Cherokee. My cousin, Freda Cruse Hardison, (fredacruse@yahoo,com), a professional genealogist and published author, says the Wilsons were Shawnee, and that many people of the Old settlers in Arkansas, who think they're Cherokee, are actually Shawnee (which I won't go into here- it's a long story).

Freda has traced our family back to Virginia in the 1400's, when our ancestor Matachana the Shawano (Shawnee), Chief Powhatan's daughter (half sister to Pocahontas) married a Shawnee. We also have a black metis ancestor, Quaghcanegga Rainbow, whose mother was an escaped slave and married a Shawnee from the Kispoko division, of the Shawnee. Their son was Thomas Caesar Skiagunsta Greenwood, who went with a Cherokee delegation to England to negotiate with the British, probably over a land treaty, possibly the 1763 Land Proclamation which limited settler expansion to east of the Appalachian Mountains (and which contributed a motive for the Revolutionary War).