Mrs. Priscilla A. Dunnegan was born in Tennessee, December 28, 1816. Died July 4, 1895, aged 78 years, 6 months 6 days. She came to Missouri with her parents, the Akards, about 1831, just after the Indians had ceded the southwest part of the state to the whites. Her parents made the first settlement on Bear Creek, about two miles south of Fair Play, on the farm where Mr. John Derossett now lives. This was one of the first settlements made in what is now Polk county, and the date is a short time before Greene county was organized, and several years before the organization of Polk county. There probably is no person now living in Polk county who came here before she did, unless it is Mrs. Martha Smith, who now lives near Brighton, being widely known as "Aunt Patsy," and is reputed to be the oldest person, and the first weaver of cloth in the county. Sister Priscilla, the subject of this brief sketch, was married to Matthew Dunnegan, October 13, 1837, and soon afterwards removed to Lawrence and from there to Jasper county, Missouri. After helping to pioneer these counties, they came back to Polk in 1860, settling on the place where she died, and where her husband died, August 27, 1871. Eleven children were born of this union, only two of whom survive her. They are T. H. B. Dunnegan, of Bolivar, and Mrs. C. A. Hopkins, of Dunnegan Springs. Mrs. Dunnegan had been a devoted member of the Baptist church for nearly half a century. Her funeral was preached by Eld. T. J. Akins in the Baptist church at Dunnegan Springs, of which she was one of the founders. She was laid to rest beside her husband and two sons, in the Akard family graveyard near Fair Play, July 6, 1895. |
