Information Sheet

 

 

R         Menke, Sandra Skaggs, compiler.

1163                Russell Family history, 2004.

                                    Two folders, photocopies.

 

 

 

This is a copy of a history of the family of Cyrus Russell and Rebecca Pease, compiled by John Steele McCormick, ca. 1932-1934.  It also contains additional material and photographs up to 2004, supplied by the donor and representing her line of descent from Cyrus Russell and Re­becca Pease.

 

Beginning in the 1830s, Cyrus Russell and his family, from the “Connecticut branch” of the Russells in America, became prominent citizens of what is now Iron County, Missouri.  Descen­dant John Steele McCormick of Forest Hill in Crawford County, Missouri, compiled a history of the Missouri Russells about 1932-1934.  It was based in part on his correspondence with “Aunt” Sarah Russell of Fredericktown, Missouri, and the work is dedicated to her.  This correspondence, genealogical research, and other papers pertaining to the Russell family may be seen in the John Steele McCormick papers, WHMC-Rolla collection R877, and the Russell family papers, WHMC-Rolla collection R330.  The Rus­sell family and the writings of Theodore Pease Russell are the subject of A Con­necticut Yankee In the Frontier Ozarks, by James F. Keefe and Lynn Mor­row (University of Mis­souri Press, 1988).

 

John S. McCormick may have produced several handwritten drafts or copies of the Russell family history.  A few pages of another copy are in Folder 5 of the Russell Family papers (WHMC-Rolla collection R330).  As written in the “Explainations”[sic] of the history by Steele: “Part I gives the known ancestors of Col. Cyrus Russell; Part II gives the known ancestors of Re­becca Pease; Part III gives the descendants of this marriage….Footnotes and a complete index are added to clarify the reading….This work is just preliminary.  It is primarily gotten together in this form to arrange the known materials so that the missing links be shown.”  The narrative combines genealogical data with anecdotal material and family stories.

 

The Russell history in the Sandra Skaggs Menke collection came down through the donor’s grandparents, Theodore G. P. Russell and Bess Russell, and her mother, Marjorie Russell Skaggs.  The book survived a fire in 1979 when the home of Marjorie and Martin Skaggs burned.  It was in poor condition; parts of it were traced by Sandra Skaggs Menke.  Beginning on page 226, Menke updated the Russell connection, derived from Cyrus Russell through his youngest son, William Russell, and added to the work to include her own family to 2004.

 

 

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