William Stalcup - Fiddle King

I have recently been reading 'Frontiersman - Daniel Boone and the Making of America' by Meredith Mason Brown. Mainly because I didn't know much about him, but also because many of my old Stalcup's lived in the frontiers of North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky in the late 1700's (with many Stalcup's still in the Appalachan areas) and I wanted to get a feel for what life may have been like for them. The book is a great read, and it got me thinking - I wonder if there were any connections between the Boone family and any Stalcups. A quick search on Google didn't really turn up much - but I did find one curious link that highlighted both 'Daniel Boone' and 'Stalcup.' As so often happens in my family tree web searches, something quirky and unexpected comes up when I least expect it, or when the link seems like it might not be quite what I was looking for. In this case, Google pointed me to a book in the online Google library about the Carter Family (Appalachian Bluegrass music super-family). It mentions a 66 year old William Stalcup winning the 1923 King of Missouri Old Timers Fiddling crown. As you can imagine, I was immediately intrigued, and within a few minutes I had figured out through my family tree on Ancestry.com that the best match was a certain William Stalcup (1861 - 1933) of Shelbina County, MO, son of a James Stalcup (1835 - 1864) who had died during the Civil War. He was a Union soldier who was massacred at Centralia by Bloody Bill Anderson and Jesse James. This is a whole other blog post - but this should help fill in the gaps for now: Shelby County and the Centralia Massacre.

Well, a few more quick searches turned up a biography of William Stalcup from the 1911 General History of Shelby County, as well as a newspaper article in 1922 from the Pittsburgh Gazette (of all places) that mentions William losing a fiddling contest in Paris, MO (I guess he was second fiddle - groan!).

To add to all of the fun of this little side trip through Stalcup relative family history, I recently came across some pictures of fairly close Stalcup relatives (yet another blog post for that story!), and in those pictures that I found where pictures of William's brother George Washington Stalcup, as well as Willaim and George's grandparents William and Sarah Kimble Stalcup. Again, I'll post more about them in a future post. The cool thing is that William's grandfather William 1821 VA - 1916 MO) was the first born son of my gr-gr-gr-grandfather John Stalcup and an older brother to my gr-gr-grandfather Isaac Stalcup! Yet another picture that zeroes in on our direct Stalcup ancestors. I sort of imagine that John must've looked fairly similar to the picture of William. And of course, I imagine the fiddling William Stalcup to look fairly similar to his brother George.

Part of the fun for me in digging like I have through our tree is that many things that you just don't really think about when it comes to ancestors come to life. Since a big chunk of the family tree is spent in the frontier and back woods, it would make sense that certain family members would be good at things like playing the fiddle. I can picture it now - large families sitting on the porch after a long day of farming listening and dancing (and drinking!) to folks playing bluegrass and folk music. I've always liked that kind of music - must've been passed along in the genes!