The descendants of William Anderson Stasey hold a family reunion each year at the B-Bar-S Ranch near Chalk Mountain, Texas. In 2018, the William Anderson Stasey family met with the Thomas Hart Benton Stasey family for the first time since the Civil War era. It isn't certain when the last family contact occurred, but it probably wasn't much after September 1, 1875 when William and Thomas's mother, Priscilla Stasey, passed away near Hannibal, Missouri. Some time after that, William Anderson relocated to Kopperl, Texas. Thomas Hart Benton Stasey's only surviving child had relocated prior to that to north Shelby, County, Missouri, near Cherry Box. It was a long way to go for a funeral, in those days.
It is reasonably certain the last descendants of Thomas Hart Benton Stasey to bear the Stasey surname went to their graves believing they were the last of Thomas John Stasey's descendants to be named Stasey. As children, the authors of the Stasey book heard that verdict more than once. Thomas Hart Benton Stasey had one surviving child, he had one child, and Ruby Wanda Stasey Trachta was an only child. It has been a revelation to discover the Texas Staseys.
We now find, with a simple check of the record, that Pat Stasey, one of William's descendants, must have been in and out of Carlsbad, New Mexico when we lived there in the fifties. The story of homerun hitter Joe Baughman is well known, but we'd never realized that during the year he hit 72 homeruns, 1954, Pat Stasey was his manager on the Roswell Rockets. Pat would have been in and out of Carlsbad many times, playing the Carlsbad Potashers, a minor league team. Pat was probably in Carlsbad at some point during the late fifties when our grandfather, Thomas Anderson Stasey, was living with us, believing he was the last of the Staseys. If only he'd known.
In June, 2018, one-hundred-forty-three years later, a descendant of Thomas Hart Benton Stasey attended the Chalk Mountain reunion. The local newspaper, The Glen Rose Reporter, published the following news article about the event.
