Information
Sheet
R Rountree family.
325 Diary and reminiscences, ca.
1819‑1956.
One folder,
photocopies.
These are extracts from the diary of
Joseph Rountree, 1819‑1831, and the autobiography of William J. Rountree,
ca. 1910. There are also notes on the
Rountree family by Frank Rountree, 1911‑1912, Ruth Fowler Sherwood, 1947,
and Joseph G. Rountree, 1956, with obituaries and birth‑death records of
family members.
Joseph Rountree (1782‑1874) and his
grandson, William J. Rountree (1847‑1934), are the primary authors and
subjects of “The Rountree Story” as presented in the family papers. The story was compiled by their descendant,
Ruth Fowler Sherwood, in 1947 and was added to by later family members. The most useful portions of the story consist
of accounts from the diary of Joseph Rountree, 1819‑1831, covering travel
from North Carolina to Tennessee
in 1819‑1820, and from Tennessee to Missouri in 1830‑1831.
The Rountree family came to America from Northern Ireland about 1700. By 1800 family members were living in Virginia, North Carolina,
and Tennessee. Joseph Rountree was a native of North Carolina. He married Nancy Nichols there in 1806. In 1819 he moved to Maury County,
Tennessee. He brought his large family
to Greene County
in southwestern Missouri in 1831, settling
along Wilson’s Creek where the town of Springfield grew up. Rountree taught school at Springfield in the 1840s and was a justice of
the peace and county court official during the 1850s. He was among the most prominent pioneers of Springfield, where he
died in 1874. Joseph Rountree’s diary
of travel from Tennessee to Missouri
has been published, in part, in Fairbanks
and Tuck, Past and Present of Greene
County, Missouri (1915). Lucille
Morris Upton cited the diary in newspaper articles on the history of Springfield. The typescript included in the “Rountree
Story” contains some garbled chronology and misinterpreted names which will be
obvious to most researchers.
William J. Rountree began his
autobiography in 1910 at the request of his son. William was a grandson of Joseph Rountree by
his fifth son, Almus Linnaeus Rountree, and wife Delilah Mitchell. Almus was living in St.
Louis in 1852 when he left for the California
gold fields, never to return to Missouri. He left his son to be cared for by his
grandfather. William spent the 1850s and 1860s in southwestern Missouri. His autobiography focuses on Greene County
in its pioneer and Civil War periods.
The memoirs provide many useful details concerning life on the frontier
and during the war. William was too
young for service in the armies until 1864, when he enlisted in the 16th Missouri Cavalry. He participated in operations against
Sterling Price’s Confederates in 1864 and the Plains Indians in 1865 before
mustering out in October. William J.
Rountree was a resident of Lingle,
Wyoming, when he died in 1934.
The family story concludes with
obituaries of William J. Rountree, followed by vital records taken from a
family bible. There are brief paragraphs
written by William’s son, Frank Rountree, in 1911‑1912, and information
on the Texas
branch of the Rountree family, which was added to the story ca. 1956.
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