SAPPINGTON HOUSE SAPPINGTON FAMILY SAPPINGTON CEMETERY HEAD STONE HISTORICAL SNAPSHOTS JOHN SAPPINGTON I JOHN SAPPINGTON H JOHN SAPPINGTON HI THOMAS SAPPINGTON PROBATE RECORD SAPPINGTON'S WELL OF GRAVE CONCERN HOW A MISSOURI DOCTOR MADE IT SAFE TO SETTLE BESIDE THE RIVERS THE FAMILY OF MARY ANN KINKEAD JOSEPH SAPPINGTON BIBLE GINGER MY STORY QUARTERY QUOTE SAPPINGTON CEMETERY Sappington Cemetery is located in Crestwood on the north side of Watson Road, west of Grant Road, by the entrance to Watson Industrial Park. The cemetery is on one acre (or arpent) of the old Sappington plantation and is one of the oldest in the State. The first burial took place in 1811. There are 3 Revolutionary War soldiers buried there - CAPT. JOHN LONG, SGT. JOHN SAPPINGTON and JOSEPH WELLS. Five soldiers who fought in the War of 1812 are buried there. They were WILLIAM LINDSAY LONG, RICHARD WELLS, ZEPHANIAH SAPPINGTON, THOMAS SAPPINGTON and JOHN SAPPINGTON, JR., sons and sons-in-law of John Sappington, Sr. There is one Mexican War veteran, SAML. PARKE, who served in Co. A, Missouri Infantry. There is one Civil War veteran, JOHN SAPPINGTON PARKS, who served in Co. I, 10th Missouri Infantry, C.S.A. Fourteen of the inscriptions indicate birth dates prior to 1800. Of these, at least 3 were bora in the 1750's. Stones were made from a quarry on the property of William Lindsay Lx>ng at Whitehaven. Some of the inscriptions include the time of day of the death, in addition to the date. Source: Isabel Stebbins Giulvezan Clipping in Daughters of 1812 scrapbook Plat of Sappington Cemetery given in 1915 to Fannie Long Walsh by William Lindsay Long. 3/93 . had } Historical *>, Historical Snapshots Snapshots Sappington School Sappington School, 11011 s Di*Frank Sappington's Gravois Road, was built in 1927. The original historic school was con­ Log Buildirig. structed of brick and is of the This historic log building is located on Renaissance Revival design, period. It a site in the Sappington area. The log had four classrooms and a cafeteria. building was part of Dr. Frank I- Additions to the Sappington.School Sappington's land. Dr. Sappington were made in 1948,1950,1955 and received his. medical degree from 1968. Washington University. He practiced The land where the Sappington medicine here and left the area during the 1890s. The log building has been Q School was built was purchased from beautifully restored. .Other buildings, a y Percy Sappington for $150 in 1862. Historically, it is known that a group carriage house with four horse stalls and X- of Sappington settlers had estab­ the doctor's house, built along the side :d lished a school by 1811 in a log of the cabin, were demolished. ie cabin Methodist Church next to the I- 1- Sappington Cemetery. Information and photograph by Edward J. Thias, AIA e. Information and photo by Edward J. Thias AIA I I I Tomas Sappington's father, John Sappington lived with his family in a log cabin home near the Sappington Cemetery. The cabin is no longer there, but the cemetery is still located east of Crestwood Shopping Center. J JOHN SAPPINGTON of SAPPINGTON the man who "stepped forward" Wilbur Morse Shankland, Ed.D. Dedication of Revolutionary War Marker Sappington Cemetery Crestwood, Missouri June 15, 1969 John Sappington Chapter Daughters of the American Revolution J DIED - on the 10th at Gravois, the venerable patriot, John Sappington, in his 63d year. He was one of those worthies who stepped forward in the defense of his country in the most gloomy period of her trials and continued foremost in the ranks to encounter every difficulty, even danger, for its preservation; for his country he lived, with her he would have died. So wrote editor Joseph Charless in the September 16, 1815 issue of the seventh volume of the Missouri Gazette, thereby paying a final fare­ well to an old and valued subscriber to his paper. The tribute was simple and brief. Not eloquent by today's standards, **it was thoroughly sufficient for its time. Men of John Sappington's stamp and character gave little thought to applause and self-proclaimed patriotism. Where duty directed, they followed; what was required, they did - and when the alarm bells ceased to ring, they returned to the simple, uncomplicated pattern of earning a living and building a nation. Yet, the words, "gloomy period of her trials," carry significance for the purpose of this assembly. John Sappington, great grandson of Nathaniel, the first of the clan to come to America from England, was a native of Baltimore County, Mary­ land, born shortly after the seventeenth hundreds had passed the mid- century mark. The family was an old and honored one whose history and origins have been traced in J. D, Warfield's Founders of Arundel and Howard Counties, Maryland. Subscribing to the American pioneer pattern of restless mobility, the record of John Sappington takes us to the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania and Ohio County, Virginia, where the poorly defined borders of the two states had attracted hardy settlers willing to risk their lives against the menace of Indian Chief Cornstalk and his hostile Shawnees, Delawares and Mingos. But as a result of the Battle of Point Pleasant where Cornstalk was defeated in 1774, what was known as Lord Dunsmore's War ended and Virginia and Pennsylvania militia were free to move into the eastern sector of the American operations of the Revolution. Included was the 13th Virginia Regiment in which John Sappington had enlisted in time to take part (as the Missouri Gazette so rightly put it) in the "most gloomy period" of the American conflict. Washington's army was poised in 1777 on Brandywine Creek in Penn­ sylvania, in defense of Philadelphia. General Greene, the Quaker blacksmith, to whose command John Sappington's outfit had been assigned, formed an important wing of the American force of poorly armed 11,000 militia troops. ~2- Opposed was Sir William Howe's two columns of nearly 15,000 seasoned British military. A mock attack by Hessian General Knyphausen at Chadd's Ford crossing of the Brandywine diverted the American attention suffi­ ciently to allow General Cornwallis to circle around the patriot forces. He outflanked them by passing American General Sullivan's right wing, and thereby gained the rear of Washington's army. Assistance was immediately dispatched. The Marquis de Lafayette was one of those who hastened to Sullivan's aid and it was in this battle he shed his first blood for the American cause when shot in the leg by musket balls. Meanwhile, General Greene and the Sappington company had been sent as a reserve force to assist in protecting the American rear. He suc­ ceeded in holding back the British thereby enabling the major force of the American army to escape. Washington regrouped and began a second movement a few days later at Germantown. Unfortunately, it rained heavily that day and the wet condition of his shoddy muskets lost their fire power and the attack failed. Washington was forced to evacuate Philadelphia and went into winter quarters at Valley Forge where was written a sad and dismal chapter in the history of the great struggle. Things looked serious for the American cause; small wonder the editor of the Gazette, in recalling those days as related to John Sappington, stated: "for his country he lived and for her he would have died." But, as we know, this extremity never cameJ In the darkest hour of Washington's fortunes, a ray of promise glimmered and burst into the brightness of total victory at Yorktown. Meanwhile, in 1781 John Sappington, presumably on furlough visit to relatives, married Jemima Fowler of Prince George County, Maryland, and the young couple soon moved Into their cabin home in the western wilds of Ohio County, Virginia, near present Wheeling. Some of their children vere born while they lived here including Thomas (Jan. 22, 1783), whose home nearby has been so beautifully restored. The Ohio County location was once part of the area menaced by Chief Cornstalk. It was also part of the early chapters of the Daniel Boone story, one that John Sappington undoubtedly knew well for this was a place where Boone laid his plans to mark out the Wilderness Road to the scattered settlements along the Kentucky River far to the West. The Wilderness Trail, sometimes known as "Boone's Trace" adds more pages to the John Sappington history. It poured a steady stream of settlers to scatter through the Cumberland Gap into the broad lands of Kentucky and Tennessee and to build up such towns as Danville, where the Kentucky Constitution was adopted in 1792, and Richmond, seat of Madison County where the Sappingtons were destined to locate. In fact, Richmond's courthouse square contains a monument to the Wilderness Road over which so many of its first citizens travelled. -3- From the Atlantic seaboard came the water plantation people; then the watershed mountaineers, English, Scotch and Scotch-Irish, suffering much in following the cross country trails and rivers - fevers, injuries, exhausting sickness, Indian attacks, arrow and gunshot wounds and snake bites. For those going overland, Staunton, Virginia, was the gathering place; those going by raft used the broad Ohio River and its tributaries. Some of the migrants drove herds of cattle and sheep into the new land, thereby beginning the first of Kentucky's industries. Hemp was grown for personal use. Grist mills were erected for grinding wheat and corn into flour and meal. The newspaper industry began when the Kentucky Gazette appeared in August, 1787; the first Almanac arrived in 1788, the same year that schools were started and in 1787 an agreement Was made to admit Kentucky into the Union.