Margery Wilkerson Stewart by Lucinda Stewart Brown

MARGERY WILKERSON

1832 - 1870, Wife of Levi Stewart

(written by daughter, Lucinda A. Stewart Brown; edited by 2ggranddaughter, Marion Stewart Peterson 1997)

Margery Wilkerson Stewart was born in Jackson County, Indiana on 16 Nov 1832 where her mother had gone to visit relatives her home being in Illinois at that time. Her father, Thomas Wilkerson, was born in Virginia and his father, David Wilkerson, was an intimate friend of George Washington and was with him in the Revolutionary War. He crossed the Delaware that memorable Christmas in the same boat with General Washington.

He moved to Kentucky where he married and buried his first wife. Soon after, he met and later married my grandmother, Eliza Fallowell Hampton.

My mother was their oldest daughter and was named for a great grandmother who lived to be one hundred and two years old.

Fire in Kanab

A Kanab fire which took the lives of Margery, her sister's (Artemacy) son, Urban Van, and Margery's three sons and. Upon the death of Margery, Artemacy lovingly cared for Margery's children.

In December of that same first year, 1870, came the tragedy that was to leave its scar on the lives of this family and almost disrupt the entire settlement of Kanab, Utah. The Navajo and Northern Indians had been making raids on the settlements. The young men took turns guarding the cattle at night from a small dugout in the side of a hill. The other men took turns guarding the fort. Once Jacob Hamblin persuaded the Navajos to come to Kanab and hold a peace conference as there was always tension.

Margary Wilkerson headstone

Margary Wilkerson

Wilkerson Sisters