William A. and America Mouser Pruitt

America Mouser was born about 1846 in Hart County, KY, the daughter of Sarah “Sally” Conyers and the Civil War veteran, George Mouser. She was descended from a line of German immigrants to America in the 1750’s that likely included a great grandfather, Jacob Frederick Mouser, who served in Berks County, PA during the Revolutionary War.

America married William A. Pruitt, born about 1825, in 1853 in Barren County, KY. Pruitt was the son of George and Permelia Houk Pruitt, the former descended from a line of Quaker indentured servants who arrived in colonial America from England in the 1630’s and settled in Virginia.

America and William Pruitt had a son, William, who died in infancy in Kentucky, just prior to traveling to Miller County, MO and settling on a farm adjacent to William’s cousin, Richard J. Atwell. Two additional children were born, James Madison and Malisa Fanny, just prior to the Civil War, when William and Richard enlisted in the Union’s Company H, 32ND Missouri Infantry Regiment.

William served for 33 months under General Sherman’s command. He was shot in the right shoulder and incurred lifelong health challenges due to contracting first measles then smallpox, for which he was quarantined on Smallpox Island in the Mississippi River outside Memphis. After the war he returned to his farm in Miller County. The family traveled by covered wagon to Taney County in the 1870’s. Additional children included William Thomas Sherman, Lewis A., Isaac N.., Margaret L. and Mary Ellen.

Following a period of despondency and depression, America took the lives of her two youngest daughters in late November 1888 and then her own life at the family's farm on Gravelly Hollow near the community of Bluff, MO. The account is thoroughly documented in the newspapers of the day as well as a coroner's inquest held the day of the event.

In the Spring 1889, William married Nancy Luttrell Jackson, a woman considerably younger who had a stepson, Job, from a previous marriage. Three children came from the union: William, who died in WWI and is buried in France; Birl who settled in the Newton County area and Lillie Mae (Arnold-McGuire-Ponder) who is buried in Oklahoma.

William divorced his second wife in 1907 and remarried Elizabeth Willard Moon that same year. The marriage ended in divorce in 1915 while the Civil War veteran was a resident of the Missouri Veteran’s Home in St. James, MO. He returned to Taney County in 1916 and was cared for by his daughter, Malisa Melton, until his death at the age of 93 in 1918. He is buried beside his son, James, in the Meadows Cemetery and it is likely his first wife, America, is buried nearby in an unmarked grave.


See Missouri Death Certificate #22225-aa. Photo Courtesy Birl Pruitt, Carthage, MO.