Bio: Gemma Stephens, Desoto, Sabine, and Natchitoches Parish Louisiana
Submitted by:  Robert E. Parrott, Knoxville, TN. 




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Gemma Stephens, born in 1847, was the daughter of John Harvey Stephens and
Sarah Ann Bloodworth Stephens. Her grandfather, William D. Stephens, was a
Methodist circuit-rider and educator, friend of Zachary Taylor, and first
superintendent of schools in Sabine Parish. Her father was a superintendent
of schools in Natchitoches Parish.
According to family recollections, Gemma (an accomplished musician who
had one of the first pianos in Sabine Parish) was enrolled in Mansfield
College at the time of the outbreak of the Civil War, at age 14. She
remained a student there until the college was closed during the War, and
returned home to Sabine Parish.
She married Simpson Kennedy (Dick) Armstrong of Sabine Parish, son of
Robert McGough Armstrong and Jane Kennedy Armstrong; they had one son, William
Ellis. Dick Armstrong died in 1870, result of a fall from a horse when he
became entangled in a hanging grape vine in the dark. She then married Dick's
first cousin, Crittenden McGee Armstrong. They had one son and four
daughters. 
During the 1870s, while living in Pleasant Hill, and later in
Mansfield/Stonewall/Grand Cane, Gemma was an accompanist in the college's
music department, and taught piano there. She was remembered as a stylish and
well-educated woman.
She died in 1922, and is buried in Pleasant Hill, Louisiana