Who Was Lydia Hylton?

By John A. Stegall < johnstegall@hotmail.com  
Transcribed with permission by Samone Ratcliff on Jan 16, 2000 from an article Mr. 
Stegall prepared for The Elliott County News in June of 1993.

	“Who was Lydia Hylton?’
	That question was undoubtedly asked many, many times during the last 100 years 
or more.
	Who was this woman whose remains occupy a lone grave on the farm where Opal 
Porter Fults now lives on Brown Ridge?  The simple, handcarved gravestone reads: 
“Lydia Hylton, Died Feb 8, 1845, Age 30 yrs., 9 mos., 2 da.”  (Records indicate that she 
was 37 years old.)
	At the time of her death, and for a time thereafter, people knew, and remembered, 
who she was, but as the decades passed by, most of her relatives and friends either died 
or moved elsewhere.  By 1900 it is likely that no one in this area knew who she was.  
Perhaps “Lydia Hylton” was, by then, nothing more that just a named inscribed on a 
gravemarker.
	Many stories have been handed down from generation to generation concerning 
her death and burial.  It was probably a fact that of the daughters of Tobias Cox were 
with Lydia at the time of her death.  And, supposedly, she attempted to tell them where 
she had hidden some gold coins in an orchard nearby.  Local legend inferred that her 
husband, Gordon Hylton, was a heavy drinker and that she had to keep their gold coins 
hidden from him.  Maybe this was true, but who knows?  Still another story that local 
people often repeated for many years maintained that Mrs. Hylton had been buried with a 
gold ring on each finger.  I think we can rest assured that there is no fact to this story.  
Gold was very precious at that time in our history, and I find it difficult to believe that a 
considerable quantity of it would be buried on the fingers of a corpse.  At any rate, these 
stories did stir imaginations from time to time, and different people searched the ground 
once covered by the Hylton house.  Apparently, they searched in vain – the Hylton gold, 
which would have been, at best, only a small quantity, was not found.  Also, it was a 
neighborhood rumor that unknown persons had attempted to dug up Lydia Hylton’s 
remains and retrieve the gold rings, which probably never existed in the first place.
	But once established, such rumors are prone to linger on and on.  Some of the 
“old-timers” swore that disinterment efforts were made as evidenced by the sinkhole in 
the grave.  This, of course, was not absolute evidence that such activity had occurred.  
We have all noticed the deep cavities that develop in very old graves where the bodies 
were buried in containers made of wood.  As the wood rotted and collapsed, the dirt used 
to fill the grave gradually sank to the bottom, leaving a huge depression in the surface.  I 
am user that this was true of Mrs. Hylton’s grave.
	Other local people had another explanation for the cavity in the grave.  It was 
their contention that it had resulted from bears (and there were many of them in this area 
at that time) digging after the corpse.  Again, this may also be true, but most likely isn’t.  
My grandfather, the late John DeHart, who passed away in 1971 a almost 83 years of age, 
told me that he had always heard that the grave had been covered with hugestones to keep 
bears from digging into it.  This sounds logical, and was probably done.
	After Lydia’s death, there is no evidence that Gordon Hylton remained in Elliott 
County.  Indeed, evidence seemed to indicate that he returned to his former home in 
Virginia.  But there is the possibility that he might have moved farther west into 
Missouri, a possibility that I will explain later.
	As season followed season, and year followed year, the memory of Lydia Hylton 
did not disappear, but it certainly did grow dim.  And this it remained until recently.
	In 1986, Bruce Cox, a researcher living in Michigan, contacted me and requested 
my help in tracing his ancestral linkage to the Fraley, DeHart, Stegall and Cox families of 
Elliott County.
	During the ensuing months, Bruce and I exchanged may “bits and pieces” of 
genealogical information, but the information that really caught my attention arrived 
early in 1987.  Bruce was passing along information he had found on the Mastin Steagell 
family of Montgomery Co, VA, a family that later settled in what is now Elliott Co.  As I 
scanned down the list of Mastin’s  children, I found this interesting bit of information: 
“Lydia Stegall, born 1808, died 1845, married 1828 in Surrey Co, NC, Gordon C. 
Hylton”.  Immediately, my mind wend back to the many times I had read the name 
“Lydia Hylton” on her monument when I was visiting with Porter cousins, who lived 
nearby.  Could this Lydia Steagall be the Lydia Hylton who was later buried in our Elliott 
Co?  I began a thorough search of my family records, and almost immediately the parts of 
the puzzle began falling in place.  Lydia Steagall of VA and Lydia Hylton buried in a 
grave on Brown Ridge were one and the same.  For me, her identity was no longer a 
mystery.  But family researchers (genealogists) are not always content to accept identity 
that is based on one or two facts.  They like to gather all the information available and 
extract from that information facts that strengthen, enforce, and clarify the lineage they 
are working on.
	I had never heard or read anything that indicated Gordon and Lydia Hylton had 
children, but the information provided by Mr. Cox indicated that there were six children.  
On son, Mastin Bottom Hylton was of special interest.  In fact, I think his name was a 
vital bit of evidence in proving Lydia Hylton’s ancestry.  Her father was Mastin Steagall; 
her grandfather was Bottom Steagall, therefore the name of her son, Mastin Bottom, was 
easily explained.  (Bottom Steagall’s mother was Agnes Bottom, which explains his 
unusual name.)  It was also further proof that I had correctly identified Lydia Hylton. 
	Evidence indicated that the Cox and Hylton families were near neighbors, but I 
had a strong suspicion that there was also a close kinship between the two families.  
Sometime during my research, I had discovered proof that Tobias Cox had married 
Fannie Steagall, probably a daughter of Mastin and Fannin Dickson Steagall.  Fannie had 
sisters named Lavinia and Susannah.  She and Tobias named three of their daughters 
Lydia, Lavinia, and Susannah.  They named a son Gordon, undoubtedly after Gordon 
Hylton.  It also cleared up the connection the Hylton family had with the family of Tobias 
Cox.  
	Earlier, I had stated that Gordon Hylton reportedly left this area and returned to 
VA.  I also mentioned the possibility that he moved to Missouri.  Let me explain: Various 
attempts had been made to identify the sons of Mastin Steagall, Sr., but records 
pertaining to them just didn’t seem to exist in the area.  Only one son, Mastin, Jr., could 
be identified, and after living in this area for a number of years, he sold his property and 
resettled elsewhere, maybe in Kansas.  The records Mr. Cox sent indicated that some of 
Mastin Steagall’s sons settled in Missouri, and that explains why I could not located them 
in local records.  Now, it has also been established that some of Gordon and Lydia 
Hylton’s children moved to Missouri, most likely with some of their close relatives.  
Emsley N. Hylton died in Kansas City in 1883; his brother, John B., died there in 1870; 
their sister, Mary Frances also died in Missouri.  Did Gordon Hylton follow his children 
to Missouri after the death of his wife?  He may have.  A death certificate would prove 
the location of his last residence, but finding such certificate is highly unlikely, maybe 
even impossible.  Mortality schedules prior to the early 1900s were skimpy at best, and if 
the informant happened to be someone other than a close relative of the deceased person, 
the information given was often incorrect.  
	The Hyltons may well have been among the pioneering families of our county, 
but they certainly could not have been here more than a few years.  I am not aware of 
other Hyltons (sometimes spelled Hilton) that may have settled in Elliott Co, even for a 
brief period of time.
	I have contacted a Hylton descendent in VA, and she has promised to pass along 
information on the Gordon Hylton family.  Her information will likely shed some light on 
this mysterious Elliott Co family.  But now when the question, “Who was Lydia Hylton?” 
is asked, I think we know the answer.

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