Staggs Family History

BIRTH: 14 Dec 1852, Alabama, USA
DEATH: 22 Nov 1891, Aquilla, Hill, Texas, USA
FATHER: Edward Pinkney Gregory (1827–1909)
MOTHER: Edna Catherine Martin (1833–1914)
SPOUSE: Mary Jane Burk (1857–1928)

When John Marion Gregory was born on December 14, 1852, in Georgia, his father, Edward, was 25 and his mother, Edna, was 19. He had four sons and three daughters with Mary Jane Burk between 1873 and 1891. He died on November 22, 1891, in Aquilla, Texas, at the age of 38, and was buried in Hill, Texas.

The Life of John Marion Gregory

A Short Life on the Texas Frontier

John Marion Gregory was born on 14 December 1852, almost certainly in Alabama, at a time when the South was still rural, agricultural, and bound together by kin networks that stretched across counties and state lines. He grew up in a Gregory family that would later join the great post‑Civil War migration westward, leaving the worn‑out soils of Alabama for the promise of Texas. By the early 1870s, when John was a young man, the Gregorys had resettled in central Texas, part of the wave of Southern families rebuilding their lives on new ground.

It was in Texas that John met Mary Jane Burk, a young woman whose own family had deep Southern roots. They married in the early 1870s and began raising a family that would eventually include seven children: William Pinkney, Mary Edna, John Riley, Wesley Cleburn, George Burk, Pearl Quintella, and Hulda L. Gregory. Their home in Milam County was typical of the era — a modest dwelling surrounded by cotton fields, livestock pens, and the constant work required to keep a frontier household running. John provided for his growing family through the demanding work of a teamster and freight hauler, driving long routes between Austin and Dallas and hauling goods for merchants and farmers.

Family tradition preserves the story of how John died, and while no newspaper account survives to confirm it, the details fit the world he lived in. According to Gregory descendants, John was driving a freight wagon when his team of horses spooked. In the chaos that followed, he was thrown from the wagon and fatally injured. It was the kind of accident that happened often on the rough, rutted roads of 19th‑century Texas, where a single misstep by a horse or a sudden noise could turn a routine trip into tragedy. What is certain is that John died young — on 22 November 1891, at only 38 years old — leaving Mary Jane a widow with seven children, the youngest still very small.

His headstone, carved with a draped curtain and clasped hands, stands as a quiet testament to the grief his family carried. The curtain symbolizes the veil between life and death; the clasped hands represent the bond between husband and wife, parted in this world but joined again in the next. It is a fitting memorial for a man whose life was brief but deeply rooted in family.

After John’s death, Mary Jane held the household together with remarkable resilience, raising their seven children through hardship and change. In time she remarried Jesse W. Chism, a union that provided stability but never diminished the memory of the husband she had lost so young. Their eldest son, William Pinkney, stepped into adulthood early, shaped by the loss of his father and the responsibilities that followed. Through him — and through each of John’s seven children — the memory of John Marion Gregory endured.

Legacy of John Marion Gregory

Though his life left only a few written records, the outline is clear: a young man raised in Alabama, a pioneer who helped carry his family into Texas, a husband and father who worked the dangerous freight roads of a growing state, and a life cut short in the service of providing for those he loved. His story, once scattered across a gravestone, a census line, and a family memory, now stands whole again.

Parents

FATHER: Edward Pinkney Gregory (1827–1909)
MOTHER: Edna Catherine Martin (1833–1914)

Marriages

Mary Jane Burk (1857–1928)

Children

• William Pinkney Gregory (1873–1943) married Mollie Viola Crotwell (1883–1951)
• Mary Edna Gregory (1877–?) married J M Blackwell
• John Riley Gregory (1879–1955) married Dumpus Elizabeth Crotwell (1879–1949)
• Wesley Cleburn Gregory (1883–1948) married Nellie C Barbee (1887-1974)
• George Burk Gregory (1886–1947) married Aby Baber (1887–1979)
• Pearl Quintella Gregory (1889–1954) married William Robert Barbee (1883–1966)
• Hulda L. Gregory (1891–1964) married Percy E Crow (1886-?)

Documents

• Birth Records
  • Find a Grave > John Marion Gregory, Birth: 14 Dec 1852, Georgia, USA
• Death records
  • Find a Grave > John Marion Gregory, Birth: 14 Dec 1852, Georgia, USA, Death: 22 Nov 1891 (aged 38), Hill County, Texas, USA
  • Burial: Old Lebanon Cemetery, Lebanon, Hill County, Texas, USA, Plot: 9 A
• Census Records
  • 1880 United States Federal Census > Texas > Robertson > Not Stated > 139 > Name:
    J.M. Gregory (27, farmer) and wife M.J. Gregory (22) and children W.P. Gregory (5), W.E. Gregory (3) and J.R. Gregory (1)
• Other
  • U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007 > Name: James M Gregory;
    Gender: Male; Spouse: Mary Burk; Child: John Riley Gregory
  • U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007 > Name: Mairon Gregory; Gender: Male; Spouse: Mary J Burk; Child: Pearl Quintella Barbee

Relation of John Marion Gregory to Karen Edgar: great-grandfather

Page last updated May 20, 2026

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