The Stoors: Gollum's Forgotten Hobbit Family | Tolkien Explained

The Stoors are the third and most forgotten kindred of hobbits, the folk who produced Sméagol. Broader and heavier than their kin, they grew faint beards, built houses of brick and stone, rowed boats, swam rivers, and lived unafraid of Men. When evil darkened Mirkwood, the Stoors alone reversed the westward migration and walked back east to resettle the Gladden Fields—the exact wetland where Isildur had lost the One Ring two thousand years before. There, in a matriarchal clan ruled by a stern grandmother, young Sméagol murdered his cousin Déagol over the Ring on a fishing trip. Tolkien left two incompatible accounts of how the Gladden Stoors ended: quietly deserted, or slaughtered by the Nazgûl. Yet Stoor blood survives in the Shire through the Brandybucks, Bucklanders, and Marish farmers like Farmer Maggot—the vanished kindred whose curious culture made the saving of Middle-earth possible.