Biographical Details
Date of Birth: July 20, 1819
Birth Location: Madison, IN, USA
Graduation Year(s): 1838
Degree(s) Earned: Bachelors
Date of Death: August 3, 1899
Death Location: Galveston, TX, USA
Howard Stapp
Life Experience
Howard Stapp was born in Madison, Indiana. He was a pupil of Beaumont Parks, who was later a professor of language at IU. Stapp graduated from IU with his bachelor’s degree at age nineteen. He worked as an attorney-at-law in Indiana. He was admitted to the bar in Indiana in 1840 and in Boonville, Missouri, in 1841. In 1848, he returned to Madison, Indiana, and practiced law there. He also took an active role in the presidential canvass of 1848 and 1852 for Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott. He became a member of the Christian church.
In 1858, Stapp crossed the plains to San Francisco, California, via Salt Lake City, San Bernardino, and Los Angeles. He followed mining for eight years. He came to Galveston, Texas, during the Civil War. In 1866, he returned to Texas via Nicaragua and New York as an employee of the Internal Revenue Department. He settled in Galveston and started a second family there after the war. In the 1880s, he was a cotton planter. He died in 1899.
Marriage and Family
In 1843, Stapp married Mary Ellen Peyton in Missouri. They had two sons, including namesake, Howard J. P. Stapp. His wife died in 1855. After the war, in Galveston, Stapp started a second family. He married Mary Francis Atkinson. At the ages of forty-nine, fifty-two, and fifty-five, he fathered three more children. He even named one of them, Howard. The younger Howard made his living as a commercial fisherman.
Interesting Anecdote
Stapp’s granddaughter, Mary Louise Stapp Sharp, born five years after his death, made her living as a shrimp boat captain in Calhoun County, Texas. This was years before most women had much of a career choice beyond homemaker, teacher, or nurse. By 1951, when she caught the eye of a writer for Texas Parade Magazine, she owned three shrimp boats and a commercial shrimp house in Port Lavaca. Eventually her Sharp Seafood Company, by then relocated to Port O’Connor, had a fleet of fifteen boats. “She has a reputation of being as tough as nails and as soft-hearted as an old maid over her hope-chest,” the unnamed author wrote. “The average hard-boiled shrimper [can still be] dressed down by Louise Sharp. They say when Mrs. Sharp dresses ‘em down, they stay dressed down.” Yet, she was said to also tithe ten percent of her earnings to the local Baptist church and “dotes over her grandchildren like any old-fashioned grandmother.” She started as a deckhand at age thirteen on her father’s (William Howard) boat.
References
- Wylie
- Findagrave.com
- Galveston Daily News 08/07/1899
- Jacksboro Herald-Gazette 04/17/2019