Staggs Family History

BIRTH: 1785-90, Abbeville District, South Carolina, USA
DEATH: Aft. 1840, Alabama, USA
FATHER: Archibald McFerrin Sr (1759–1842)¹
MOTHER: Unknown
SPOUSE: Unknown

Archibald McFerrin was born in the Abbeville District of South Carolina and had four sons and one daughter between 1798 and 1815. He died in Alabama.

The Life of Archibald McFerrin Jr

Father of John Baird McFerrin

Archibald McFerrin Jr. was born between 1785 and 1790 in the rolling backcountry of Abbeville District, South Carolina, a place where red clay roads wound between small farms and the echoes of the Revolutionary War still hung in the air. His father, Archibald McFerrin (1759, Mecklenburg County, NC), had fought in that war and carried the memory of it with him for the rest of his life. Young Archibald grew up in a household shaped by hardship, migration, and the stubborn determination that defined frontier families.

He was raised in a home where survival depended on work done by hand — clearing fields, tending livestock, repairing tools, and helping his father carve out a living in a region still recovering from conflict. The McFerrins were not wealthy, but they were resilient, and they were part of a growing wave of families who would soon push westward into new territory.

By the time Archibald Jr. reached adulthood, the frontier was shifting again. Land in South Carolina was becoming crowded and expensive, while the newly opened lands of Alabama promised opportunity. Sometime between 1810 and 1820, Archibald joined the great migration west, traveling with his father and siblings into Tuscaloosa County and later Walker County, Alabama. The journey was long — weeks of wagon travel, river crossings, and nights spent under the open sky — but it was the kind of move that defined a generation.

In Alabama, Archibald Jr. established a household of his own. Though the name of his wife has been lost to time, the children they raised together are well documented and form the backbone of the Alabama McFerrin line: Thomas McFerrin (born about 1798), Lydia McFerrin (born 1805), John Baird McFerrin (1806–1895), James McFerrin (born 1810), William Bryant McFerrin (born about 1815, killed in the Civil War at Kennesaw Mountain in 1865).

These children grew up in a world of log cabins, hand‑tilled fields, and tight‑knit rural communities. They learned to work early, to endure hardship, and to rely on one another — traits that would carry them through the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the rebuilding that followed.

Archibald Jr. appears in early Alabama census records as a man of modest means but steady presence. He lived near his father, the aging Revolutionary War veteran, and the two households formed the nucleus of the McFerrin community in Walker County. By 1840, Archibald Jr. was still alive, surrounded by his children and grandchildren, but after that year his name disappears from the surviving records. Like many frontier men, he likely died quietly, buried in a grave on family land.

His life was not one of fame or wealth, but it was the kind of life that built the American South — steady, hardworking, and rooted in family.

Legacy of Archibald McFerrin Jr

Archibald Jr.’s legacy lives most clearly through his children, especially John Baird McFerrin, whose long life carried the family into Arkansas and beyond. Through John Baird’s descendants, the McFerrin name spread across the South and Midwest, carried by farmers, soldiers, preachers, and pioneers.

But Archibald Jr.’s deeper legacy is quieter:

• He was part of the generation that carried the McFerrin family from the Carolinas into Alabama.
• He raised children who survived war, migration, and hardship.
• He bridged the gap between a Revolutionary War father and a new American frontier.
• And he left behind a line that continues today.

Though the records of his life are few, the impact of his choices shaped every generation that followed. His story is a reminder that even when history forgets the details, families remember the results.

Parents

FATHER: Archibald McFerrin Sr (1759–1842)¹
MOTHER: Unknown

Married

Unknown

Children

• Thomas McFerrin (1798–?)
• Lydia McFerrin (1805–?)
• John Baird McFerrin (1806–1895)
• James McFerrin (1810–?)
• William Bryant McFerrin (1815–1865)

Documents

• Birth Records
  • None
• Wedding records
  • None
• Death records
  • None
• Census Records
• Other

¹Note

Many have suggested that the father of John Baird McFerrin (1806–1895) was Archibald McFerrin (born 1759) and that Archibald McFerrin was the son of James McFerrin of Ireland. Evidence shows otherwise:

The father of John Baird McFerrin (1806–1895) cannot be the older Archibald McFerrin (born 1759, the Revolutionary War pension applicant) because the evidence shows that this older Archibald was already the head of his own household in 1790, 1800, and 1810 in Abbeville, South Carolina, with a family structure that does not match the ages or genders of John Baird’s siblings. Instead, the Alabama McFerrin sibling group — Thomas (1798), Lydia (1805), John Baird (1806), James (1810), and William Bryant (1815) — fits perfectly as the children of a younger man, born 1785–1790. This younger man appears in Alabama records alongside the older pension applicant, matching the pattern of a father and adult son living near one another. This younger man is the correct Archibald McFerrin Jr., and he is the only person who fits the age, location, and household structure required to be John Baird’s father.

Because the older pension applicant Archibald was born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, not Ireland, and because he does not match the Abbeville census entries for the Irish McFerrin family, the paternal line of John Baird does not lead back to James McFerrin of Ireland. The Irish McFerrins were a separate family living in Abbeville decades before the pension applicant arrived there. The document “Decendents of James McFerrin” mistakenly merges these unrelated families and assigns the wrong Archibald as John Baird’s father. When the records are separated correctly, the line ends with the Revolutionary War pension applicant Archibald (born 1759 NC) — whose father is unknown — and continues through Archibald Jr. (1785–1790) to John Baird (1806–1895). This is the only lineage supported by primary evidence.

Relation of Archibald McFerrin Jr to Karen Edgar: 4th great-grandfather

Page last updated June 14, 2026

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