• General Notes

  Edward Currell was born March 27, 1808 in Virginia, probably in Lancaster County near White Stone. By May 31, 1838 he was in Fayette, Missouri, where he married Thankful A. Sears, daughter of Joseph Sears. Their first child, John Sidney or Sidner, was born November 10, 1839 in Missouri. I believe his mother was Elizabeth Sydnor Currell and his father Edward Currell who served in the War of 1812. Edward and Thankful were active in the Methodist Episcopal Church and Edward was hired to be shoemaker and teacher of the trade of shoemaking to the Indian boys at Shawnee Methodist Mission and Manual Labor School in Johnson County, Kansas which is today with metropolitan Kansas City. The mission still exists as a beautiful museum on the Santa Fe Trail.
  
  His salary was $360 per year when he was hired in the spring of 1841. They stayed there from 1841 to 1845. Their second son, Charles J., was born April 3, 1841 in Kansas. Edward Currell's hiring is mentioned in The Annals of Shawnee Methodist Mission published by the Kansas State Historical Society. At Shawnee Mission which I visited in 1991 there is a copy of a school census framed on a wall. The school census taken in 1844 listed a Chippewa boy named Edward Currell. The guide told me that the Indian children were required to take Christian names and that they frequently chose or were given names of their teachers.
  
  An obituary of Elizabeth Ann Currell Trekell, born August 5, 1844, states that she was born at Osage Mission, Kansas, yet I believe this was a mistake since I could not find proof of the presence of the Currells at the Osage Catholic Mission, Kansas for which the Osage Mission was named.
  
  In 1845 Edward purchased a lot in the town of Fayette, Missouri for the sum of $400. Thomas Currell was born in 1846, but lived only three days and Joseph Jordan Currell was born in 1848 and died at 7 months.
  
  The obituary mentioned above stated that the Currells moved to Cass Co., Missouri in 1851 and this is confirmed by deeds and the 1860 federal census. In October, 1851, Edward purchased 40 acres of land near Union Township for $50 and sold 35 acres of this parcel in 1856 for $175. Mary F. Currell was born in Missouri on September 9, 1851. The History of Cass County mentioned Edward as the first shoemaker in Union Township and also that he donated land as follows:
  
  "The Old Union Church which is still standing (1882) was erected in 1855 on the present town site of West Union and was donated with several acres of ground by Edward Currell."
  
  The remander of Edward and Thankful's children were born in Cass County. Edward was born December 4, 1852 at Belton; emma and Eva born and died February 20, 1855; William Perry, December 14, 1856; and Henry Bascomb, June 4, 1859.
  
  Edward Currell died at Aubry, Johnson County, Kansas on December 1, 1863 at age 55. Aubry is 10 miles west of Union Township and his daughter, Elizabeth and her husband, Frank Trekell lived in that area. There were also many border skirmishes taking palce at that time between pro and anti slavery forces, so perhaps one of those figured in his death. I have been told he was buried near in West Union cemetery, but have not confirmed that.
  
  

Details of Edward's family with Thankful Atilla Sears