DGS September Quiz Results – Readers Share Their Stories

For the September e-News quiz, we invited readers to “share something about your Texas heritage with us”. This request elicited a good number of write-in responses, and they were all so interesting we decided to reprint them. Some responses have been edited to maintain anonymity.

The readers’ responses:

• My husband has German ancestors who settled in Austin county. We are researching there to break through brick walls!
• It depends on which side of the family. I am 2nd, 3rd, and 4th generation Texan. All my ancestors born in Texas are North Texans.
• My maternal line is Texan. I have one ancestor who came to what was then Mexico, and one who came to the Republic of Texas.
• My mom and I were born in the same hospital, the old St. Paul’s hospital in Dallas – mom in the 30s and me in the 60s.
• My ancestors arrived in the 1840s, before and after Texas became a state. My Baird ancestors came to Texas in 1842 on a flat boat from Muscle Shoals, AL, and stopped in Red River County! They founded Bairdstown in Lamar County.
• My earliest Texas ancestor was Daniel Blair McMahon (1802-1860). He was in Stephen F. Austin’s third group of colonists, receiving a first-class headright in 1835.
• Both sides of my family settled in Tarrant County in the 1850s. My ancestor Junius Whitfield Smith was an attorney and the Confederate States Receiver during the Civil War.
• My husband’s great-grandparents came to Texas after the Civil War, because they no longer felt Kentucky was a “good Christian place.” Later, his great-grandfather said he had been misled about Texas.
• My ancestor came from Alabama after the Civil War. They settled near Round Rock, and the family has been in Texas ever since. I have a WCGS [Williamson County Genealogical Society] Pioneer Family Certificate.
• My Wiley and Kidd lines came to Texas about 1848, and I am an 8th generation Smith County resident.
• My family entered what is now Texas in 1841. My 3rd great grandmother soon after became a 20 year-old widow with two children, when her husband, DR. William Edward Throckmorton, died in Throckmorton Settlement near modern day Melissa.
• My ancestor Anna Hunnicutt Cox Duval Moore (1801-1879) came from Illinois to Dallas, near where the present-day courthouses are, in 1844.
• My great-grandparents and grandfather lived in Texas, but moved to California so my mother never lived in Texas at all. But my husband got a job in Dallas, so we lived in Plano. Then our daughter attended Texas A&M, met a Texas boy, and now lives in Seguin with four children.
• My maternal great-grandparents, Ezekiel Thomas and Artimissie Clark Thomas, and their first four children came from Franklin County, GA to Gregg County, TX by covered wagon in 1871. Ezekiel was a veteran of the Confederate States Army and later received a pension from the state of Texas. The couple had eleven children. To this day, it is difficult for me to understand how hard it must have been to pack up what they could carry and move so far away, knowing they would never again see their family and friends. Our pioneer ancestors were brave and tough people.
• My great-grandchildren are 9th generation Texans, and active members of the Cedar Mountains CRT Chapter.
• My great -grandfather was a Texas Ranger in 1870.
• My people almost all came to Texas during Reconstruction. They came from AR, TN, MO, LA, MS, AL, and GA. I am a Texas girl with deep Southern roots!
• My mother’s family came to Anderson County about 1837. My 3rd great-grandfather, Peyton Parker, was the first sheriff of Anderson County. My father’s family came to Dallas in the 1870s.
• My oldest Republic of Texas ancestor came to Texas in 1839, moving from Cherokee County to Ellis County in 1858. He is buried in the Auburn cemetery, and I visit him often.
• I am descended from Dr. Robert Davidson, killed by Comanche in Milam County in 1836. His widow, Rebecca Landis, married Lewis Miles Hobbs Washington (formerly a member of Colonel Fannin’s staff), who was later executed in Nicaragua. My father was a sixth generation Texan and I lived there as a child.
• My third great-grandfather was a Confederate soldier and received a homestead land grant in Hood County. He is buried the Texas State cemetery.