Spurlins of Shelby County, Indiana

Settlement

Joshua Spurlin (1805–1876) was among the early Spurlin settlers of Washington Township, Shelby County^[1][2]. Sources disagree on where he was born. A biography of his son George Washington Spurlin on the Shelby County Indiana History & Genealogy site says the elder Joshua was born in Virginia, moved to Ohio with his family as a child, married Hester Layman there and later settled in Shelby County^[3]. Joshua's Find a Grave memorial gives his birth as 18 April 1805 in Harrison County, in what is now West Virginia^[2]. An 1898 biographical history of Cass, Miami, Howard and Tipton counties says instead that he was born in Ohio to a family that had lived in Pennsylvania, and that in 1834 he became "one of the pioneers of Shelby county, Indiana."^[1]

His wife's name appears as Hester Layman in the biography and as Esther Laymon on her own memorial. That memorial says she was born on 24 April 1809 in Hamilton County, Ohio, and married Joshua in 1826^[3][4]. Joshua died on 8 September 1876. His memorial names his parents as Jesse Spurling (1765–1813) and Sarah Peters Spurling and links the couple to nine children, among them Ithamar (1839–1915), Joshua Franklin (1841–1916) and George W. (1847–1929)^[2]. Ancestry.com's census summary says Indiana had the largest share of U.S. Spurlin families in 1840, about 36%^[5].

Spurlin Cemetery

The family burial ground is the Spurlin Cemetery in Washington Township. Find a Grave lists 25 memorials there, eight of them Spurlins. Their deaths run from Henderson Spurlin (1827–1847) to Marlin Spurlin (died 1908)^[6][7]. Joshua and Esther are among the Spurlins buried there^[7]. See also Spurlin cemeteries.

George Washington Spurlin

According to his biography, George W. Spurlin was born on 1 January 1847 in Washington Township. He married Eliza Hupp in 1866. She was born in Warren County, Ohio, in 1850. They had six children, born between 1868 and 1878^[3]. He started out leasing farmland and later bought eighty acres in section 11^[3]. He and his wife belonged to the Methodist Episcopal church at Flat Rock. He had supported the Prohibition movement since 1886^[3].

Civil War veterans

Obituaries collected by the same site describe two of Joshua's sons who served in Company D of the 33rd Indiana Infantry^[8][2]. Another obituary describes Elihu Spurlin (1828–1908) as one of the oldest men in the county when he died^[8].

Joshua Franklin Spurlin

Joshua Spurlin (1841–1916) is described in his obituary as having followed Sherman on the march from "Atlanta to the sea"^[8]. As Joshua F. Spurlin of Company D, 33rd Indiana Infantry, he was the subject of a Senate Pensions Committee report in January 1910. It says he enlisted on August 16, 1862, was discharged on June 10, 1865, and at 69 was totally disabled for labor. It recommended raising his pension from $30 to $40 a month^[9]. The report's age is consistent with the obituary's dates. The 1883 federal list of pensioners already showed a Joshua F. Spurlin at Lewis Creek in Shelby County, drawing $4 a month for nasal catarrh^[10]. A private act of February 21, 1910, granted the $40 rate^[11], and another, of August 7, 1914, raised it to $50^[12].

Ithamar Spurlin

According to Ithamar Spurlin's obituary in the Shelbyville Republican (July 20, 1915), transcribed on the county genealogy site, he was born in Washington Township on December 2, 1839, and enlisted in Company D of the 33rd Indiana Volunteer Infantry at the start of the war^[8]. He was captured and held for three months in Libby Prison^[8]. A private act of August 7, 1914, raised his pension, as a veteran of Company D, to $40 a month^[13].

The obituary says he was elected sheriff of Shelby County in the 1870 campaign and served two years^[8]. Papers printed for the House in a contested 1870 congressional election include the Shelby County board of canvassers' certificate of October 13, 1870, which lists Ithamar Spurlin as the county's elected sheriff^[14]. The obituary calls him a committed Republican. It says he was twice trustee of Washington Township and later served five years as trustee of Addison Township, and in his last years he was Shelbyville's city weighmaster^[8]. See also Spurlins in public service and, for the federal documents, Spurlins in the Congressional Record.

W. H. Spurlin and the Tipton County branch

The 1898 county history says Joshua's son W. H. (Wilford H.) Spurlin moved to Tipton County in 1872 and became a Separate Baptist preacher^[1]. Ithamar's obituary lists among his surviving brothers Wilford Spurlin of Tipton. A 1919 Shelbyville notice of the death of the Rev. Wilfred H. Spurlin at Tipton, transcribed on the same page, calls him a brother of Ithamar^[8]. He is profiled in W. H. Spurlin (Tipton County, Indiana, preacher).

Court cases

Two 19th-century Indiana appeals with a Spurlin as a party have Shelby County connections, though neither opinion gives his first name. In Stapp v. Spurlin, 32 Ind. 442 (1869), a commission agent for millers in Madison, Indiana, bought 1,691 bushels of wheat from Spurlin at $1.70 a bushel. The agent did business at the St. Louis switch on the Columbus and Shelbyville Railroad in Shelby County, and the wheat was delivered in March 1865. The Indiana Supreme Court held the millers liable for the unpaid balance^[15]. Spurlin v. State ex rel. Vancleave, 20 Ind. App. 342 (1898), was an appeal from the Shelby Circuit Court. The suit was brought under a statute that let a voter whose vote had been bought recover a $300 penalty from the buyer. The Appellate Court of Indiana reversed the judgment against Spurlin because the trial judge had refused to instruct the jury on the presumption of innocence^[16]. See Spurlin in American case law.

The 1897 "ghost" lawsuit

In December 1897 a wire story from Shelbyville, printed as "Acted the Ghost", reported that Mrs. Sarah M. Spurlin had sued Mrs. Alice P. Gerrard for $2,000 for alienating the affections of her husband, Harvey A. Spurlin. Harvey had a divorce suit pending after 21 years of marriage. The suit claimed that after the death of Mrs. Spurlin's 19-year-old daughter, Eliza, in August 1891, Mrs. Gerrard had visited the premises at night dressed as a ghost. Harvey would chase the "ghost" into the dark^[17]. The Kansas City Journal printed a longer account of the haunting from the Washington Post^[18]. In September 1908 the Los Angeles Herald reported that a Mrs. Alice Spurlin had been granted a divorce from Harvey A. Spurlin, with their property at Florence, California, to be divided. The report named her son as C. A. Gerard, which suggests that Harvey A. Spurlin had married Mrs. Gerrard after the Indiana suit^[19].

Records

Shelby County marriage indexes compiled by the WPA list Spurlin marriages from 1856 to 1920^[20]. The county genealogy site also transcribes Spurlin and Spurling obituaries, including those quoted above^[8].