SARAH REBECCA STIRMAN TROTT DAVIDSON (1843-1912):

Rebecca Stirman was a lifetime resident of Fayetteville, Arkansas.  She was the youngest of the A.A. Stirman children.  She and her brothers William and Erasmus (Ras) were orphaned at young ages and raised by their aunt, Mary Stirman Pollard.  Rebecca attended Sophia Sawyer's school in the decade preceding the Civil War.  Her older brother Erasmus attended Arkansas College and worked as a clerk in a dry goods store.  In 1861, he enlisted as a private in the Pike Guards, a local CSA militia unit, and marched North with other Southern troops to engage in the Wilson's Creek campaign of Southwest Missouri.  Rebecca remained in Fayetteville for most of the war years, leaving once in early 1862 after the town was burned by Confederate forces.  She was banished from Fayetteville in 1864 by the Union occupation forces for aiding the enemy.  Her brother Erasmus stayed with the army until 1865, eventually becoming captain of Company E, 1st Battalion Arkansas Cavalry and colonel of his own regiment of sharpshooters.  Following the war, Rebecca and Ras returned to Fayetteville.  Rebecca married on 17 September 1867 in Washington County, James E. Trott (1833 - ) a local merchant who was born in 1833 in Massachusetts.  The couple had one daughter, Roberta, before Trott's death sometime around 1870.  Her husband James had served with the 34th Arkansas Infantry, CSA, during the war and held the rank of Major.  After his death, Rebecca married Major Benjamin R. Davidson (1847-1938), a prominent local attorney in Washington County on 17 June 1876.  Her brother Ras became an attorney and was elected mayor of Fayetteville in 1868.  He married Mirium Gist of New Castle, Kentucky, in 1870 and in 1879 the couple moved to Denver, Colorado, where Ras died in 1914.  Both Rebecca and Benjamin are buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Fayetteville, Arkansas.  Rebecca's first husband James E. Trott is also buried in the same cemetery.  The University of Arkansas Special Collections Library has preserved many family letters and information on the above-mentioned families.