Born- 21 Nov 1828

At- Decatur, Alabama

Died- 21 Apr 1911

At- Hancock County, Ill

Buried- 

(1) Married- Dorcas Burke DeFriese

Marriage Date- 7 May 1850 Talladega, Alabama

Born- 10 May 1826 Tenn

Died- Unknown

ORIGINS

      JACOB DECATUR STROUP was born Nov. 21, 1828 in South Carolina, son of JACOB STROUP (born 1771), by his third wife SARAH JENNINGS FEWELL. (1)

     "JUNIOR"

     He called himself "Jr." but his father did not have the same middle name so he used "Jr." in its old meaning, "the Elder". (2)

                   WAS HIS FATHER JACOB DAVID STROUP?

     JACOB DECATUR STROUP's father, JACOB, was born Mar. 18, 1771, by tradition "at (Little) Valley Forge", York Co., Pa. to a family of religious Germans who used mainly Biblical names. (3) His father's full name was probably JACOB DAVID STROUP.

NAME FASHIONS OF THE DAY

      JACOB DECATUR's father named his children by his German first wife, BETSY DELLINGER, in German custom, the two eldest for their paternal grandparents, others for nearest kin, but by 1801 adopted the post-Revolutionary fad for patriotic names, naming a son BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

      By the 1820's JACOB DECATUR's father had an English wife, and the English families in the south had a fad for naming infants for their birthplaces in the years when he was traveling constantly, accompanied by his wife, trips in S.C., Georgia and Alabama, scouting for ore, coal, limestone, buying and selling land on speculation, building and supervising iron foundries.

BORN IN DECATUR, MORGAN CO., ALABAMA

      On Nov. 28, 1828 JACOB and SARAH (JENNINGS) STROUP had a son born while scouting for land along with Jacob’s twenty-five year old son JOSEPH.  They named their newborn JACOB DECATUR, middle name for his birthplace, Decatur, Alabama.  By 1831, the infant's half-brother JOSEPH lived near Decatur at STROUP's Cross Roads and would eventually become Morgan County Sheriff.

        TO ETOWAH, GA.

In 1835 when JACOB DECATUR was eight, his parents moved down the Etowah River to Stamp Creek, Cass Co., Georgia.  The boy grew up on a farm two miles outside the village of Etowah, near Cassville, where his father owned an iron works. (5)

BROTHER MOSES

    JACOB and his older brother, MOSES, were ironworkers, and MOSES was their father's business partner in the iron business.  However, by 1842 their father was so deeply in debt that MOSES bought his father out, but was forced the same year to sell half his interest in the STROUP iron works at Etowah to MARK COOPER, who had made large amounts of money as a banker and cotton manufacturer.

ETOWAH COMMUNITY

      Thereafter, COOPER poured large amounts of money in developing Etowah community, and in 1844 STROUP and COOPER built large iron works at Etowah, in 1849 a flourmill.

FATHER'S DEATH

     JACOB was eighteen when his father died on Nov. 8, 1846, and although he had been a wealthy man who owned thousands of acres of land (6), he had overextended himself, and nearly everything he owned was mortgaged.  He also had heavy debts from building many ironworks. (5) After the estate was settled, JACOB and his brothers realized they must make their way in life without large inheritances.

                         MOVE TO ALABAMA

     With COOPER financing and taking charge of most of the activities at Etowah, in 1849 MOSES STROUP sold his remaining interest in the STROUP - COOPER iron works and went prospecting into Cherokee Co., Alabama and took his brother JACOB DECATUR with him.  They were probably partners in building Round Mountain furnace.

MARRIAGE

     On May 7, 1850 JACOB DECATUR STROUP was married in Talladega, Talladega Co., Alabama, to DORCAS BURKE DE FRIESE, born May 10, 1826 in Tennessee, daughter of HIRAM ABIFF DE FRIESE and MARGARET VANCE LOWRY in a ceremony performed by Rev. JAMES HOYT, a Presbyterian minister and president of the Presbyterian Collegiate Female Institute. (7)

FATHER'S DEATH

     On Mar. 17, 1853, JACOB D. STROUP was in Alabama when he gave Power of Attorney to his brother MOSES who signed as agent for JACOB D. STROUP's $105.81 share of their father's estate in Cass County. (8) It was a paltry amount, considering how prosperous JACOB, Sr. had been

 TO ARKANSA S

     By 1856 JACOB D. STROUP was living in Hot Springs, Arkansas, when he came back to visit relatives in Cass County, Georgia.

HIS LETTERS TO ETHEL ARMES

     JACOB D. STROUP wrote from Hot Springs, Arkansas to historian ETHEL ARMES about his father's iron business.

       Without his original letters, it's hard to tell who, JACOB DECATUR, Miss ARMES or her other informant, R. S. HICKMAN, muddled the information in a statement about his grandfather:

       "DAVID STROUP was a soldier and gun maker of the Continental Army.  When he left Pennsylvania, after the Revolution, for North Carolina, he took with him, as his assistant, his fifteen-year-old boy, JACOB STROUP.  They put up iron works in Lincoln County." (9)

CORRECTING THESE ERRORS

       Correctly, JACOB DECATUR's grandfather was not DAVID but ADAM STROUP.  No DAVID existed in Revolutionary Pennsylvania or North Carolina and documents in the Lincoln Co. N.C. courthouse prove the Georgia ironmaster JACOB, b. 1771, son of ADAM. JACOB was not fifteen when brought to North Carolina but came as a small child, c 1773/5.  He was nine in 1780 when he assisted his father ADAM make Revolutionary rifles at their home forge on Hoyle's Creek, Lincoln.

       Between 1780 and 1783, ADAM served several tours as a Revolutionary soldier, not in the Continental Line, but in the Lincoln County Militia. (9)

REASON FOR HIS MISTAKES

      JACOB DECATUR was one of his father's younger children born to a young, third wife, and, if his father had time to reminisce JACOB DECATUR hadn't listened well.  However, along with some mistakes, his accounts do contain some correct and important information.

TO ILLINOIS

     In August 1858, JACOB DECATUR and DORCAS STROUP moved with his brother ANDREW J. STROUP to Illinois to set up sawmills.

CIVIL WAR RECORD

     On Nov. 11, 1864, JACOB D. STROUP enlisted in the United States Army at Quincy, Illinois, as a Private in Co. H, 118th Regiment of Illinois Volunteers, discharged Baton Rouge, La., May 29, 1865.

    MILITARY PENSION

      On Feb. 17, 1886, JACOB D. STROUP was granted a pension, Certificate #347399, for bronchitis and resulting diseases of the lungs, and enrolled at the Chicago Agency at $4.00 per month.

LATER YEARS

      JACOB D. and DORCAS STROUP spent the winter of 1870/71 in San Francisco, and then returned to Hancock Co., Illinois.

1893 GENEALOGICAL TREE

      In 1893 DORCAS STROUP was apparently the one who recorded for their children what she and her husband recalled of their ancestry.        "Father's Side:  Father's ancestors came from Germany and settled in Baltimore, Md., afterwards removed to Pa. near Lancaster. His grandfather was a soldier in the Revolution and lived near Valley Forge; at the close of the war he moved to North Carolina where he died.  His son moved to S.C. near where the battle of Cowpens was fought."

FACTS VS. MISTAKES

       JACOB STROUP I, c 1722 Germany., lived in 1746 at Major's Choice, south Baltimore (now Howard) County, and moved c 1751/2 across the Susquehanna River from Lancaster Co. to York Co., Pa.

Jacob’s son, ADAM, born 1746, Baltimore Co., was taken as a child to "Little" Valley Forge, York Co., Pa., where he lived until about 1773, then moved to Hoyle's Creek, Lincoln Co., N.C.  

WIFE'S DEATH

       DORCAS DE FRIESE STROUP was the mother of seven children.  She died Oct. 25, 1900 at age seventy-four.

1904 VISIT TO GEORGIA

      When he was seventy-six, JACOB D. STROUP made a nostalgic trip home to Georgia and gave the following account to the Cartersville, Ga. newspaper which printed it Oct. 20, 1904:

'WAS A GIANT IN ITS DAY'

          'PIONEER IRON MAN VISITS SITE OF GREAT COOPER WORKS.’

      "My expected swim in the Etowah was a disappointment, but I paddled in the shallow water among the rocks and thought of old times," observed Mr. JACOB D. STROUP a few weeks ago when he went to explore the ruins and lands around the old Cooper Furnace.  The soap and towel he carried along were all right, but the great dam and the fine eddy water above it were mere traditions.

      'Mr. STROUP ought to and he did know that locality well, for with his father and brothers he had been connected with the busy pioneer life that lent importance to the place sixty years ago. And theirs is an interesting story.

      'During the flight of years the old ruins of the Cooper works have been embalmed in song and story, and every adjective almost has gone into retirement from overwork in describing the scenery and weird belongings, but, so rarely have historical details been gone into, that stories on this line ought to have a special interest.

'JACOB D. STROUP is son of the man who built the first iron furnace in Georgia.  He is 76 years of age and lives at Warsaw, Ill.  He left Georgia in 1849, and his present visit of a month or more, the guest of his relative H. J. GALT and his family, is the first one to the

State since 1856.  He first went to Alabama.  He erected Round Mountain furnace....

      'STROUP and COOPER, in addition to putting up a furnace, went ahead and erected a flouring mill with a capacity of 150 to 250 barrels of flour a day. The mill itself was a model in its construction.  Timber of the choicest kind now being no object, the inside of the work was all walnut.  The work was by the finest workmen...In 1849 a man named WYLIE, from Charleston, came in and bought a third interest for his two nephews with a view to purchasing the whole plant...

'The fortunes of the times took him into the Union Army. Mr. STROUP was much pleased with the progress of this section...he met only two of his old industrial acquaintances of the long ago, one of them being old BILL RASH, a Negro brought to Georgia by his father....

      'In his meanders he visited his father's old home, two miles from the Cooper monument.  Here he picked some apples from a tree growing up out of the old cellar, and these he carried back to show his family in Illinois.

      'His father kept a tavern, and General SCOTT in a trip out here during the removal of the Indians was his guest. He went out to the site of the old Laughing Gal tavern kept by an Indian woman called Laughing Gal.  She amassed a great deal of money and owned numerous slaves....

'I have been to Atlanta," said Mr. JACOB STROUP "when there wasn't a house there.  The first was that of old MARTHA, the unique personage who sold cakes and for whom the first settlement or village was called 'Marthasville'.  She lived in the forks of the road and I could go now and locate the place."

      'You see, we would haul iron for the Georgia railroad to points between Marthasville, Atlanta and Augusta and for the Macon and Western to points between Atlanta and Macon.  Our caravan consisted of from two to four big wagons with six mules to them, and one of these journeys was a sort of frolic.

      '"In my Alabama experience," said Mr. STROUP, "I have seen the time I could have bought Birmingham dirt at a bit an acre...

      "Iron men knew there was iron in plenty there but transportation facilities reached no nearer than the Tennessee River."

      'Mr. STROUP is a man of fine general knowledge, is of pleasing address and his Georgia visit was the source of pleasure to old and new acquaintances.'

DEATH

    JACOB D. STROUP died April 21, 1911, aged 82, at Warsaw, Illinois.

CHILDREN

        Children of JACOB DECATUR and DORCAS STROUP:

        1. SARAH HARRIS STROUP, born Mar 15, 1851; died infant Apr. 24, 1851.

        2. JOHN KNOX STROUP, b. May 3, 1852 in Alabama; died Apr. 21, 1946, age 93. Buried Lewistown, Missouri.

        3. EUGENE LE HARDY STROUP, b. Oct. 1, 1854, Cedar Bluff, Cherokee Co., Ala.; m. Nov. 24 1887, Ursa, Adams Co., Illinois, JOSIE GALLEY BEAM; d. May 29, 1922, age 68, Del Norte, Rio Grande, Col.

        4. MINNIE MARY STROUP, b May 18, 1857, Hot Springs, Ark.; as an infant to Illinois.  Married ---HODGES; d. June 11, 1936, age 79.

        5. LUCY JOSEPHINE STROUP, b. Feb. 26, 1860 Illinois; m. -- EXON; d. Mar. 17, 1889, age 29.

        6. RICHARD RAGLAND STROUP, b. Feb. 21, 1863, Warsaw, Ill; d. Sept 14, 1931, age 68.

        7. ANDREW LAFAYETTE STROUP, b. Sept. 9, 1868, Warsaw, Ill.; m. CORA BELLE WILLIAMS Mar. 21, 1897, Denver, Denver Co., Col.; d. Jan. 25, 1941, age 72, Tempe, Maricopa Co., Az.

                                 SOURCES

        (1) 'Our Kin', Miles Laban Hoffman.

        (2) Old usage "Jr.", any older relative with the same first name, father, uncle or other.

        (3) Lore from C.D. Stroup, Sr. and Jesse Ardell Stroupe, son of the last owner of German family Bible.

        (4) 'The Story of Coal and Iron in Alabama'. Ethel Armes. Pub. Ala., p 64: "Information received Richard S. Hickman of Ensley, Ala., and Jacob D. Stroup, Jr. of Hot Springs, Ark., only surviving brother of Moses Stroup."

        (5) North Georgia Journal, Vol. 5, spring 1988.

        (6) Jacob Stroup Sr.'s Deeds in S.C. and Georgia.

        (7) Alabama Marriage records.

        (8) Jacob Sr.'s estate records.

        (9) Adam's N.C. Revolutionary Pension.

        (10) Mrs. Willie Mae King, Miss.; 1969 account "Jacob Stroup, Furnace Builder and Iron Maker."

        (11) Descendant of ANDREW J. STROUP: Berniece (Mrs. W. W.) Glosser, Cleburne, TX 76031. 

      Compiled by Ethel Stroupe Vochko, Laguna Niguel, CA 92677.  Version of Aug. 1, 1991.