Pillsbury, Stephen, 1781-1851

The Pillsbury family line represented by these papers is that of the Reverend Stephen Pillsbury (1781-1851) and his wife Lavinia (Hobart) Pillsbury (1795-1871).

STEPHEN PILLSBURY (1781-1851) was born October 30, 1781 at Amesbury, Massachusetts to Micajah and Sarah (Sargent) Pillsbury. On March 3, 1816, he married LAVINIA HOBART (1795-1871), born October 31, 1795 at Hebron, New Hampshire to Josiah and Joanna (Hazelton) Hobart. Five of the children born to Stephen and Lavinia Pillsbury emigrated to Kansas--three of them emigrating to Kansas Territory in the 1850s, and two moving to Kansas in the first two decades of its statehood. The Reverend Stephen Pillsbury died at Londonderry, New Hampshire on January 22, 1851. His wife Lavinia died October 29, 1871 at Concord, New Hampshire.

Children born to Stephen and Lavinia Pillsbury were:

MARY BARTLETT PILLSBURY, born January 5, 1817. She studied art, was a painter, and married Valentine W. Weston, who died in 1863. Following his death, she moved with her children to Manhattan, Kansas, where her daughter Valentine was married. In 1874, Mary and her younger daughter Eva moved to Lawrence, Kansas.

LAVINIA HOBART PILLSBURY (1818-1871), born November 8, 1818. She married Samuel Andrews on June 6, 1852. Their daughter Sarah was born in 1855, and their daughter Ann in 1861.

JOSIAH HOBART PILLSBURY (1821-1874), born August 15, 1821. Josiah married Frances Elnorah Peveare on August 16, 1853. They emigrated to Riley County, Kansas in 1854, settling at Zeandale, where Josiah was postmaster and justice of the peace. He later moved with his family to Manhattan, Kansas, where he was county surveyor, postmaster, and editor of The Independent, a free-state newspaper. After the death of his first wife, Josiah married Emma Steele on November 4, 1870. He died on November 12, 1874 at Manhattan.

STEPHEN PILLSBURY (1824-1892), born January 25, 1824. Stephen married Sarah Ann Bailey on March 7, 1852. He died on April 28, 1892.

EDWIN JUDSON PILLSBURY, born March 26, 1826. Edwin married Mary Ann Reed on February 7, 1847 and moved with his wife and children from Massachusetts to Manhattan, Kansas about 1859.

ANN JUDSON PILLSBURY (1828-1856), born July 1, 1828. She married William B. Marshall on February 26, 1855, and emigrated with her husband to Kansas in the spring of 1855 with the first party of the New England Emigrant Aid Company, settling near Zeandale (Riley County) Kansas. Ann died on February 28, 1856.

ADONIRAM JUDSON PILLSBURY (1830-1854), born June 11, 1830. He died September 18, 1851.

WILLIAM STOUGHTON PILLSBURY, born March 16, 1833. William married Sarah A. Crowell on May 8, 1854. Following his first wife's death, William married Martha Silver Crowell on April 15, 1856.

LEONARD HOBART PILLSBURY (1835-1933), born December 25, 1835 at Dunbarton, New Hampshire. Hobart, as known by his family, emigrated to Kansas in the spring of 1855 with his sister Ann Pillsbury Marshall and her husband William in the first party of the New England Emigrant Aid Company. After approximately three years in Kansas Territory, he returned to New Hampshire. He attended the Phillips Exeter Academy, in 1862 joined the Union Army as captain of Company A of New Hampshire's 9th Volunteer Infantry Regiment. He married Eveline F. Sanborn on August 23, 1862, departed on August 25 for defense of Washington, D.C. against General Lee, and later fought in the Civil War battles of South Mountain, Antietam, Fredericksburg, and Vicksburg. Soon after the war, he returned to Kansas, where he resided at Manhattan for approximately six years before accepting appointment as U. S. Commissioner and Assistant Clerk of the U.S. Circuit and District Court at Memphis, Tennessee. In later years, he lived in New Hampshire, where he died at Derry on December 26, 1933.

From the guide to the Pillsbury family papers, 1805-1924, (University of Kansas Kenneth Spencer Research Library Kansas Collection)