Sterling Price was an officer in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War.
He was born into a family of slave-owning planters in Virginia, and moved (with his family) to Missouri as a young man. He entered politics in the 1830s, fought in the Mexican-American War in the 1940s, and served a four-year term as governor of Missouri in the mid-1850s.
During the Civil War, he was initially the commander of the Missouri State Guard. He joined the Confederates as a Major-General in early 1862.
In terms of namesakes, I found a smattering born in the 1850s, and hundreds more born during the first half of the 1860s.
Here are some of the Missouri boys who were named after their state’s governor:
- Sterling Price Pinson, b. 1853 in Missouri
- Sterling Price Bayless, b. 1856 in Missouri
- He had a brother named after Jefferson Davis.
- Sterling Price Cross, b. 1857 in Missouri
And here are more than a dozen of the boys (also mostly from Missouri) who were named in honor of Price during the Civil War era:
- Robert Lee Sterling Price Stephenson, b. 1859 in Missouri
- Sterling Price Robbins, b. 1860 in Missouri
- Sterling Price Scott, b. 1861 in Missouri
- Sterling Price Bowen, b. 1861 in Missouri
- Sterling Price Hulen, b. 1861 in Missouri
- His nephew, also named Sterling Price Hulen (b. 1886), married a woman named Lillie Frances Silver. Among their children was a boy named Sterling Silver Hulen (b. 1920).
- Sterling Price Mothershead, b. 1862 in Missouri
- Sterling Price Cawlfield, b. 1862 in Missouri
- Sterling Price Hornbuckle, b. 1862 in Missouri
- Sterling Price Weast, b. 1862 in Arkansas
- Sterling Price Wiggans, b. 1863 in Missouri
- Sterling Price Wickliffe, b 1863 in Missouri
- Sterling Price Guthrie, b. 1863 in West Virginia
- He had a brother named after Robert E. Lee.
- Stirling Price Walker, b. 1863 in Arkansas
- Sterling Price Holloway, b. 1864 in North Carolina
- His son, also named Sterling Price Holloway (b. 1905), was a voice actor for the Walt Disney Company. (He was the original voice of Winnie the Pooh.)
- Lee Sterling Price McCool, b. 1865 in Texas
So…how could a baby be named “Robert Lee Sterling Price Stephenson” after a pair of famous Civil War generals if he was born more than two years before the conflict started?
He wasn’t named right away — like many of the children born during that time period.
In fact, Sterling Price Robbins — the namesake just below Stephenson on the list — was born in late 1860, but not baptized until mid-1862. And his name proved to be controversial among locals in St. Louis:
In June 1862, [Rev. Samuel McPheeters] baptized a baby with the name the parents selected — Sterling Price Robbins, in honor of the Confederate leader at Wilson’s Creek. After some church members complained, federal officials banished McPheeters.
Similarly, Ohio baby girl Emancipation Proclamation Coggeshall wasn’t named until she was 2 years old.
Sources:
- Sterling Price – Wikipedia
- Sterling Price – Encyclopedia of Arkansas
- FamilySearch.org
- Levins, Harry. “Missouri ‘a dangerous place to live’ during Civil War.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch 26 Jul. 2014.
Image: Sterling Price
