Believed to be the missing son of Mark and Clara Bridges SUGG. Elijah was born 1811 in Wake Co., NC. He appears in the West Pee Dee River area in Montgomery Co., NC in 1840, later he appears in Huntington, Carroll, TN in 1850 and Bolivar, Hardeman, TN in 1860.

I am interested in proving his connection to Mark and Clara AKA Clary. Mark died in 1824 in NC. The family left for Carroll Co., in 1825. They remained there and in Gibson Co., until just before and just after the Civil War. Elijah's four brothers then migrated to Arkansas; Yell, Logan, Johnson and other counties near Ft. Smith. Elijah appears to have not made the trip. I suspect that since he doesn't appear in any census after 1860 that he could have died during the war era.

Elijah is thought by many to have died at an early age in NC. However, the Elijah I have found comes from the same general area and is born in the exact year of the missing child. He was the second born male and at age 14 may have stayed behind in NC to help with relatives or could have been apprenticed to be a carpenter, which he was in Carroll and Hardeman Counties. He married and had several children before moving to Tennessee. In 1850 he lived in the adjacent district (12 & 13) of one of his suspected brothers.

I would also like to know of any of Elijah's heirs remained in the area. I believe some were in the Ripley, TN area.

Elijah would have been my GG-granduncle. His brother William, b. 1810, was my GG-grandfather. Wm. was the first of the boys that moved to AR.

Thanks,

Jim Hooper
Memphis