Born about 1828 in Virginia, Sarah Osborn Hutson Bridges died at the age of 53 from paralysis [per descendant Rhoda Wheaton Andrews, who is credited with the 1959 story below]. Sarah was married twice and had eleven children.
Sarah and her first husband, Granville Hutson, lived in Virginia. She and Granville had nine children together. The family left there to start life anew in California. This would've been about 1858 or 1859. The trip was a severe and long one. Granville Hutson died after entering Utah Territory and was buried there. Sarah was so terrified by thoughts of Indian and Mormon tales she had heard that she refused to continue on and they turned back. By the time they neared Texas, Sarah submitted to the desire of her boys to settle there. Sarah Hutson remarried in Texas about 1860 to Samuel Bridges, an Irishman, and they had two sons before he died about 1866. Her last child, Coy Bridges, was about one year old when Samuel died and eleven years old when she died on February 17, 1877. Five years later, Dave Hutson and his half-brothers, Mike and Coy Bridges, would relocate to Washington Territory.
The family history by great granddaughter Rhoda Andrews in 1959 indicated that in Virginia she hid her son, Dave, from union soldiers during the civil war; however, the family was in Texas during that time.
Her daughter-in-law (Belle Hutson) told of the time that Grandma Hutson decided she needed more iron in her blood, so she soaked rusty nails in vinegar, strained the concoction, made it into a hot tea and drank a cupful each morning.
Her gravestone reads "Mrs. S. A. Bridges" in Tudor Cemetery near Ranger, Texas. It has the following inscription: "Weep not. She is not dead but sleepeth".