Sturdivant History

A Brief History of Mathew P. Sturdivant As We Know It

By Early Dawn Sturdivant Cline

About 1930

He and several brothers came to this country from Holland. (Daughter Bettie Cline later proved that wrong but the statement might be right on the ones further back than Matthew.) They settled in different parts of the country. One brother ,William , settled in Missouri. Mathew came to Virginia. He married Agnes Kent of Halifax County. Mathew bound out all his boys to learn a trade. He, Mathew, became a Methodist preacher, and was the first preacher to preach Methodism in Alabama. After that he came back to Virginia, settled in Nelson County at Massies Mill, and is buried there. (Grave not found, either ran the poor house or was a patient there in old ags.)

He had several children. I only know about three of them. One daughter, I don't know her name, but she lived at Thaxton, Virginia and is buried there. Another daughter, Mary, married a Mr. Diuguid. They lived in Lynchburg and founded the Diuguid Funeral Home, which I understand is the oldest funeral home in this part of Virginia. Although it has passed out of the family, it is still the Diuguid Funeral Home.

The other child, a son, was Pleasant Meade Sturdivant, and my Grandfather. He was a tailor by trade. He and his wife Nancy spent most of their life in Southwest Virginia. He served in the Civil War until he had pneumonia, and was never well after that. The family then moved to Snowville, Va. where they lived until his death in 1882. He is buried in the Christian Church Cemetery in Snowville. The oldest son was Dudley Kent Sturdivant and my father. To him fell the duty of supporting the family. He worked on Dr. Bullocks farm for seven years. There was a woolen mill in Snowville at that time and his sisters worked there and did sewing, weaving, and spinning. They had very little chance for schooling, but studied at home and all the family were very well educated considering the opportunities they had. Bianca was remarkably well informed. She learned to read well at age four. She was expert at weaving, spinning and sewing. She wrote a book but it was never published. She also wrote two poems, "The Graves of Our Southern Heroes" and the "Dark Haired Cavalier." This later poem was about her Sweet Heart, who never came back from the war. Isabella "Aunt Belle" who was crippled from rheumatic fever was also very well self educated, and one of my favorite aunts. (Early Dawn goes into eight pages of family genealogy here which I have listed under Dudley-Sturdivant genealogy. )

This writeup was furnished to the Methodist Church in Alabama to officials trying to get the history of the first preacher Matthew Parham Sturdivant. Lorenzo Dow was a free lance preacher the Methodists had thrown out that came just before Matthew and nearly ever church in Ala seems to want to claim Dow as their very own. Some of the Early Church of Christ preachers were named Lorenzo Dow + last name.