Office of
A. A. Hurst
Probate Judge
Cleburne County
Edwardsville, Alabama
September 20, 1900

B. F. Hurst Esq.
Corydon, Idiana

My dear sir:

Replying to your favor of the 13th will say that my father and mother have both forgotten the given names of father?s grandfather. He never came south-was dead before grandfather moved to Georgia.

Father knows of the existence of only six children of this grandfather: George, Thomas, John and William his father. My information is that Thomas is the ancestor of the Tennessee Hursts and George is the ancestor of the Kentucky branch.

John went to south Georgia and from there to east Alabama and built the first store at the present town of Fredonia-was a Methodist minister and was a member of the committee that drafted the Book of Discipline for the Congregational Methodist at the south.

The convention was held in the state of Mississippi sometime in the fifties or probably earlier.

His progeny is pretty numerous, but I have never met one of them.

Our name bears the distinction of having a legal definition in the law dictionaries and is correctly spelled in three ways viz: Hirst, Hurst and Hearst and signifies a cultivated grove or vineyard.

I have met with persons who were familiar with the name in England and Ireland.

I shall await your promised letter with much anxiety and hope to learn of much of my family history ? and yours, at least, you may not be able to connect me with your family tree, but I feel sure we sprang from the same sire. It is a rule with all my people to claim kinship with any man who calls himself Hurst or Hearst, though Major Hurst of Mississippi used to first find out whether the fellow had pluck enough to fight before he would own up to the relationship.

Hoping to hear from you soon, I remain.
Yours sincerely
A. A. Hurst