Staggs Family History

BIRTH: 30 Jul 1789
DEATH: Dec 1848, Chicago, Cook, Illinois, United States
FATHER: Jacob Sammons (1752–1815)
MOTHER: Eva Veeder (1761–1834)
SPOUSE: Sarah Hueston (1794–1872)

When Frederick Sammons was born on July 30, 1789, his father, Jacob, was 37 and his mother, Eva, was 28. He married Sarah Hueston on April 5, 1814, in Salina, New York. They had seven children in 20 years. He died in December 1848 in Chicago, Illinois, at the age of 59.

His story

Frederick Sammons was born in 1789, in the long shadow of the Mohawk Valley’s Revolutionary War scars. His father, Jacob Sammons, had survived captivity under Sir John Johnson, escaped from Canada, and returned home with the kind of quiet resilience that marked the Sammons line for generations. Frederick grew up hearing stories of liberty trees, raids, and the stubborn courage of frontier families who refused to yield.

By the time Frederick reached adulthood, the Sammons family had already begun drifting southward from the Mohawk Valley into the growing settlements of upstate New York. He married Sarah Huston, a woman as steady and practical as the frontier demanded, and together they began raising a large family — Edmund, Nancy, John, Joseph Huston, Benjamin, Maria Louise, and Laura.

For years, Frederick lived the life of a working New York man in the early republic: farming, laboring, and doing whatever was needed to keep a household of children fed. But the 1830s were a decade of movement. The Erie Canal had opened the interior. Land was cheap. Chicago — a muddy, wind‑swept frontier town on the edge of Lake Michigan — was calling thousands of New Yorkers westward.

And so, sometime after the 1840 census was taken, Frederick and Sarah joined that migration. They packed their household, gathered their children, and traveled west — a journey of weeks, by canal boat, lake schooner, and wagon — until they reached the young settlement that would one day become one of America’s great cities. Chicago was barely a town then: a few thousand people, plank roads, marshy streets, and a skyline of wooden buildings and chimneys. But the Sammons family made it home.

Frederick and Sarah became known among the early residents — the kind of people who helped build the city simply by living in it, working in it, and raising their children there. Their daughter Maria Louise, only six years old when she arrived, would later remember the old church she attended as a child, and the rough, bustling energy of a city being born.

Frederick lived long enough to see Chicago grow from a frontier outpost into a thriving young city. He watched his sons take up trades and scatter westward — Joseph Huston to Wisconsin, Benjamin eventually to California. He saw his daughters marry into Chicago families. He saw the city he helped settle begin to take shape.

And sometime before 1872, Frederick died in Chicago — quietly, without newspaper fanfare, but remembered by those who knew him. When his daughter Maria died in 1891, her obituary described her parents — Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Sammons — as “well known among the old residents of Chicago,” a testament to the family’s place in the city’s early history.

His widow Sarah lived on until 1872, surrounded by her children and grandchildren, and was buried at Rosehill Cemetery, where many of the Sammons family would eventually rest.

Frederick’s life was not marked by dramatic headlines. Instead, it was marked by something quieter and more enduring: the steady courage of a man who carried his family from the Revolutionary War legacy of the Mohawk Valley to the raw frontier of Chicago, helping to build a city and a lineage that would last long after him.

Research identifying the ancestral line between Edmund Sammons and Sampson Sammons

Research by Harold Staggs revealed that Edmund Sammons and Harriet Connor were the parents of George B. Sammons. However, he was unable to identify the ancestral line between Edmund Sammons and Sampson Sammons. My research suggests that the ancestral line is

Sampson Sammons (1721–1796) → Jacob Sammons (1752–1815) → Frederick Sammons (1789–1847) → Edmund Sammons (1814–1885)

A compiled lineage published by the State of Illinois, Daughters of the American Revolution, in The Vallandigham and The Sammons Families, identifies Frederick Sammons (1789–1847) as a son of Jacob Sammons (born 23 April 1752) and his wife Eva Veeder, and places Jacob as a son of Sampson Sammons (1721–1796) and Rachel Schoonmaker. This DAR‑endorsed lineage is consistent with independent evidence: Jacob and Eva are documented in Schenectady and Mohawk Valley Dutch Reformed Church records as a married couple with children baptized between 1777 and the mid‑1780s, and the naming of a son Frederick aligns with established Dutch naming customs in the Sammons family. Further, Frederick Sammons appears in Bradford County, Pennsylvania, records with his wife Sarah Hueston (1794–1872), and their son Edmund Sammons (1814–1885) is documented in census, probate, and cemetery records, consistently residing in proximity to other known descendants of Jacob and Eva. The convergence of the DAR‑compiled lineage with the geographic, naming, and cluster evidence from primary records provides a coherent and well‑supported genealogical argument that Frederick is correctly placed as a son of Jacob Sammons and Eva Veeder, and that he, in turn, is the father of Edmund Sammons, husband of Harriett C. Connor (1824–1872).

See a more detailed explanation of the research and conclusions.

Legacy of Frederick Sammons

Parents

Father: Jacob Sammons (1752–1815)

Mother: Eva Veeder (1761–1834)

Married

Sarah Hueston (1794–1872)

Children

• Edmund Sammons (1814–1885)
• Nancy A Sammons (1815–?)
• John Sammons (1817–1876)
• Joseph Huston Sammons (1822–1893)
• Benjamin J Sammons (1828–1903)
• Maria Louise Sammons (1832–1891)
• Laura Sammons (1834–1887)

Documents

• Birth Records
  • None
• Marriage records
  • None
• Death records
  • None
• Census Records
  • 1820 United States Federal Census > New York > Onondaga > Salina
    • Male age brackets present
      • 1 male 50–59 → Frederick
      • 2 males 20–29 → Edmund + John
      • 1 male 15–19 → Joseph
      • 1 male 10–14 → Benjamin
    • Female age brackets present
      • 1 female 40–49 → Sarah
      • 1 female 20–29 → Nancy
      • 2 females 5–9 → Maria + Laura
  • 1840 United States Federal Census > New York > Onondaga > Onondaga
    • Male age brackets present
      • 1 male 50–59 → Frederick
      • 2 males 20–29 → Edmund + John
      • 1 male 15–19 → Joseph
      • 1 male 10–14 → Benjamin
    • Female age brackets present
      • 1 female 40–49 → Sarah
      • 1 female 20–29 → Nancy
      • 2 females 5–9 → Maria + Laura
• Other

Relation of Edmund Sammons to Steven Barry Staggs: maternal 3rd great-grandfather

Page last updated April 20, 2026

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