The Stubbs Story Chapter III

Nathan Stubbs was born to John and Esther Maddock Stubbs on October 3, 1759 in Chatham County, NC. He was the oldest of 14 children. Nathan married first Eleanor Jones in 1785. Eleanor died shortly thereafter and Nathan married her cousin, Elizabeth Jones in 1788. This couple had 10 children, of which, Henry Stubbs was the 9th child. Nathan and Elizabeth moved between NC and GA in the early years of the Wrightsborough colony. He most likely worked with his father, John at his grandfather’s mill in Wrightsborough. Elizabeth’s father, Henry Jones, was a saddler, making leather saddles. Shortly after his father John Stubbs died in 1803, Nathan and 12 of his siblings moved away from Wrightsborough to Ohio and Indiana. True to his milling profession, Nathan settled on Elk Creek south of West Elkton, OH and built a flour mill and a saw mill. In the 1820 census for Ohio, Nathan reported, “I ground about 4000 bushels of wheat each year. Costs are about $150 to $200 each year. I have one man full time and one boy helping.” West Elkton Quaker minutes noted that on June 11, 1823, Pliny Crume took three barrels of flour from Nathan Stubbs mill valued at $6 on demand of $19 for non-performance of military requisition by his young son Nathan, Jr. (They were still pacifists at that time but by the time of the Civil War many of the family’s young men enlisted and fought, including Henry’s sons William, Enos and Milton Stubbs.) A cousin, Alpheus Maddock, who lived his whole life at West Elkton remembered about the underground railroad that the Stubbses participated in and said that his father told him that Nathan’s mill furnished barrels of flour for Andrew Jackson’s army in the War of 1812. It was hauled by team to Cincinnatti and then by flatboat to New Orleans. A schism developed in the Quaker community in the 1830’s when the followers of Elias Hicks had a philosophical disagreement with a more evangelical movement within the community who called themselves Orthodox. Nathan joined the Hicksite group and his sons Henry and William followed him. The two groups bickered for several years and finally reconciled in 1855. The Hicksites were involved in anti-slavery activities and gradually this view was incorporated into the Orthodox as well. Nathan died in 1835.