Further indication that Sir Philip, not
Starrett, was Sidney’s namesake comes in a May 3, 1820, letter written by Thomas W.
Ruckman, early surveyor of Sidney and later clerk to the county commissioners, county
auditor, and adjutant to the local militia. To his brother, he wrote: "I shall now
state that our County Seat is now finally Established on Mr. Sterats farm. The Court
Sanctioned the decision of the Commissioners at december court last winter and appointed David Henry, Capt., Director
(Director of the town of Sidney) to lay off the town & sell the lotts. The
town was laid off by the 13th of March and named Sydney by the Court after a great
Political writer."If we assume that Mr. Starrett was not that "great
Political writer," this early and first person account of the Sidney name origin
seems irrefutable, except for the short-lived double-y spelling (see Early newspaper
published in ‘Sydney,’
Sidney Daily News, April 5, 1997).
Ruckman gave another interesting perspective on real estate prices on the first sale of
lots: "The highest lot went to 239 dollars & several 200 and upwards. The
lowest about forty--the terms was 1 fourth in 90 days, l fourth in 9 months, 1 fourth in
15 months & the remaining fourth in two years."
The late William A. Ross, Jr., of Sidney had few clues to aid his frustrating search
for Charles Starrett’s history. What little he had was found in Charles’ estate
settlement. In the list of debts owed to the estate, one item gave this information...
"A letter from John Todd, Executor of the Estate of Charles Starrett’s father
acknowledging that there was one hundred pounds (entered in the settlement listing as
$333.33) willed to said Charles by his father, letter dated May 26th 1818..."
The wills of Charles’ parents, Robert and Elizabeth Starrett, though written in
Augusta County, Virginia, were eventually found in Butler County, Kentucky. Both wills
confirmed that their second child was indeed Charles Starrett of Sidney, Ohio, fame, but
no middle name nor initial appeared. Robert’s will read, in part: "I give and
bequeath to my son Charles Sterrit one hundred pounds more than he has received."
A Starrett descendant, the late Duncan H. McIntosh of Richmond, Virginia, researched
the family in 1963 and concluded that there was "No record of Charles. He could
have lived in Kentucky and died there." Charles Starrett was born in Ireland in
1774 and lived in Virginia before coming to Ohio, but historians can find few details. He
was married twice, his first wife having died. Of the seven children fathered by Mr.
Starrett, only one, Charles Jr., who died in 1853, maintained the family line. In 1871,
his wife and son, Charles Horace Starrett set out for Kansas and Missouri, leaving Sidney
bereft of the city founder’s descendants, although a number of Starretts of another
branch of the family live in Shelby County.
Charles Horace Starrett, married in 1884, named one of his five children Charles Sidney
Starrett, probably in honor of his family’s historical connection with Shelby
County’s seat. The name of this fourth generation son may have contributed to the
middle name myth. Perhaps one factor compromising research into the family has been the
numerous spellings of the name: Sterrit, Sterritt, Sterrett, Starret, Starrett, but the
latter has been accepted in Sidney, a fact confirmed by Charles’ rather imposing
Washington Monument style gravemarker in Sidney’s Graceland Cemetery.