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Commonwealth of Virginia Census data on Hensons, 1782-85

1782 Pittsylvania County - Ben Henson, 1 white soul, 1 black
     William Henson, 6 white souls

1783 Amherst County - James Henson, 3 white souls, 1 dwelling, 1 other building

1785 Pittsylvania County - William Henson, 5 white souls

1785 Stafford County - Elijah Henson, 9 white souls, 1 dwelling, 3 other
Records of Ante-Bellum Southern Plantations
From the Revolution Through the Civil War
Series M: Selections from the Virginia Historical Society
Part 2: Virginia's Northern Neck; also Maryland

 Section 77, Washington, William Augustine (1757-1810), Bond and Deeds, 1790-1803
This section consists of six items, a bond and deeds, 1790-1803, of William Augustine Washington. Items include a bond (imperfect), 1803, of William Robinson and William Augustine Washington to Elias Boudinot Caldwell (witnessed by Charles Blackburn and Bushrod Washington and bears receipt of Caldwell); and deeds, 1790-1796, to William Augustine Washington for cows and horses from Cornelius Brown (witnessed by James Nivison and James Park),from John Henson (witnessed by George Carter and James Nivison), Robert Kenney (witnessed by William Stone), John Rogers (witnessed by Peter Elliot), and Benjamin Steel (witnessed by John Bailey Brown and Thomas Hoton).
 

The parents of these two felt the tensions of those days as General Leslie landed with 2,200 British soldiers at Portsmouth and Newport News in October 1780 to provide a diversion in favor of Lord Cornwallis’ command, the British Army of the South, which was moving from its bastion at the port of  Charleston, S.C. through the Carolinas to smite the rebel militia and Continentals.  The British military, under General Clinton, had recently invested the port city of Charleston and had fortified it.  The goal of the Cornwallis campaign  was to encourage and incite the support of the loyalist Tories.  Cornwallis grew to believe the solution lay in Virginia and swung there in 1781 from the Carolinas and moved through Virginia, hampered by his long supply train and a small harassing forces of the Continentals directed by the Marquis de Lafayette.  Those who weathered this campaign saw Cornwallis stop along the Virginia coast and set up camp at Yorktown on the coast of the Chesapeake to await further orders from General Clinton.  Unaware that a powerful French force had embarked from the West Indies, the British navy was content elsewhere and a surprised Cornwallis saw his outnumbered army attacked and defeated, the first major victory of the Continentals and their French allies.

Most Hensons of record during that period were Scots or English from Northamptonshire  and so, we presume, were this young couple.  There were many Scots who left grinding poverty in Scotland for the Americas in increasing numbers after the Seven Years War in Europe and its extension in the Colonies (the French and Indian War) gave promise to the westward and southerly expansion of the British Colonies.  This expansion was felt in the SouthWest corner of Virginia and the NorthWest corner of North Carolina along the valleys of the Cape Fear and Yadkin Rivers where several hundred Scots arrived each year during the 1770’s.  To catch the spirit of these times, we note that, to quiet the claims of the veterans of George Washington’s 1754 Virginia regiment, one of the large chartered land companies sponsoring development of these expansions (The Vandalia) assigned these men a total of 200,000 acres from their much larger patent, of which Washington ended up with 40,000 acres.  Washington was not happy since his shares in the Ohio Company and the Mississippi Company were larger than this assignment.

In 1790, North Carolina ratified the constitution and joined the new republic of the United States of America and these two were married around 1800, probably  in North Carolina where their first child, Joseph, was born 16 July 1801. There were about a dozen Henson families listed in North Carolina in the first census of the United States in 1790. It is possible that this John Henson was one of the two males under age 16, along with two males over 16, and five females listed for  Joseph Henson in Randolph County, N.C. in that census. He is not the John Henson listed in Rutherford County in the N. C. census of 1800, that person emigrated to Illinois. At any rate this young couple were on the move by 1805 for their next child to be born in Georgia.

John and Nellie faced a virtually untracked frontier to the west where the French, Spaniards, and a multitude of Indian tribes held domain and claimed territory, traded, explored, and hunted. Shortly after the birth of Joseph, they emigrated southerly into Georgia by 1805.  Beginning in 1776, land was offered via  Headright & Bounty Land Grants along the coast and the Savannah River in the Eastern portion of Georgia.  Between 1805 & 1832, as more land was needed to the West, the Creek Nation ceded lands to the United States and lots of 202 acres were drawn.  John Henson drew one such lot in Oglethorpe County in the Land Lottery of 1807, indicating that he had been in Georgia for three years by that time. .  By the early 1830s all of the Indians had been displaced.    Additional counties were created with the Six Cherokee Land Lotteries.  Each new county was divided into Militia Districts and census records are enumerated in this format.  , John Henson shows in the Census for Baldwin County, Mississippi Territory by 1810, and shows on the tax rolls for adjoining Clarke County in 1813.  John died in Marengo County in 1844 and Ellenor died sometime between 1850-1860. Baldwin County was created by the Mississippi Territorial legislature on Dec. 21, 1809, from territory taken from Washington County. Its size was altered several times before 1868, when it received its present dimensions.  The birth records of their children indicate that one child was born in North Carolina in 1801, two children were born in Georgia in 1805 and five more were born in Alabama between 1815 and 1824.  The move west from Georgia followed the displacement of the Creek (Muskogee) and other tribal nations from Alabama Territory to Indian Territory (Oklahoma) after the War of 1812.

 The lure of the frontier and the promise of free land pulled both the Henson and Thomas families to Georgia and thence to the West.  Beginning in the southern British Colonies at the close of the Revolution, forty-five years later these families were on the frontier in the Republic of Texas.  They were a hardy lot and travelled and settled with extended family whose names would show on voter records, censae, and other documents such as witness to weddings.

The following data on Georgia land lotteries in 1805 and 1807 were probably read with interest by these families.with the hope that the 692 acres represented would be expanded. But such was not to be the case.   There was also the disappointment of unfulfilled promises that were leading to the Great Yazoo Land Fraud. . The news from the West would encourage and draw those who wanted better opportunities for their families.
 

Each participant in the lottery was allowed to qualify for a draw or draws in only one of the following categories:

1) Every free white male, 21 years or older, a US citizen, and an inhabitant of the State of Georgia for 12 months immediately  prior to the Act of 11 May 1803 (or paid tax for the support of Georgia) was entitled to ONE (1) draw.

2) Every free white male, meeting same as above, but with a wife and / or child or children (at least one of children under age of 21 years) was entitled to TWO (2)draws.

3) Every widow with a child or children under 21 years of age and who was an inhabitant of the State of Georgia for 12 months prior to the Act of 11 May 1803, was entitled to TWO (2)draws.

4) Every family of orphans, under 21 years of age and having both parents dead or father dead and mother remarried, was entitled to ONE(1)draw.

1) Each participant in the 1807 land lottery had to be:   a. Citizen of the US and
 b. Inhabitant of Georgia for THREE years prior to  Act of 26 June 1806.
Each participant in the 1807 land lottery could qualify  in only ONE of the following categories:

1) Every free white male, 21 years old or older, was entitled to ONE draw.
2) Every free white male, 21 years old or older, with a wife and/or children under
21 years was entitled to TWO draws.
3) Every widow was entitled to ONE draw
4) EVERY FREE WHITE FEMALE, UNMARRIED AND 21 YEARS OLD OR OLDER, WAS ENTITLED TO ONE DRAW
5) Every family of orphans under 21 years of age whose father was dead , was entitled
to  ONE draw.
6) Every family of two or more orphans, whose  mother and father were both dead, got TWO draws.  They would be registered in the county and district where the eldest orphan lived.
7) Every family with only ONE orphan under 21 years of age, whose mother and father were both dead was entitled to ONE draw.

John Henson’s will filed for probate September 16, 1844 cited these heirs: Nelly Henson, John Henson, Matthew Henson, James Henson, Mary (Sherod Hammond), and Elizabeth (Hiram Foster). Joseph had been in Texas since late 1833 and did not figure in the will.

The eight children of John and Nellie Henson were
1. Joseph maintained that he was born 1801 North Carolina and census data support that date. He married 1828 in Marengo County, Alabama to Mary (Polly) Thomas born 1807 in Warren County, Georgia. Polly was illiterate as were a considerable number of those around her. He died in Jacksboro, Texas 1887.  Polly died there also, ten years later.
2. William born 1805 in Georgia married Hannah Gilmore in 1829;
3. Mary (Polly) born 1805 in Georgia married Sherwood Hammonds in 1825;
4. John, Jr. born 1815 in Alabama, married Malinda Williamson in 1834.
5. Clement born 1818 in Alabama, married Oliss (Oliph) (Olive) Thomas (probable relative or sister to Joseph’s wife) on 10 Jun 1840 in Alabama.  A son, William H.Henson enlisted in Co. H, 36 Texas Cavalry (Confederate) Camp Rocky, June 1863 at the age of 18.  They moved to Bigfoot, Hayes County, Texas.  This may be the Bill Henson listed in write-ups of several trail drives.
6. Matthew born 1822, in Alabama, married Mary McFarland in 1842.
7. Lucinda born 1822, in Alabama, married William Williamson in 1834.
8. James born 1824 in Alabama married Ellinoor Robertson born 1828 Choctaw County near Butler, Alabama, 25 July 1845. Marriage records in courthouse in Chatom, Alabama Bk.B, page 120.  They were wed by Jesse A.Wright. They had 4 children. (first wife),  After her death he married Harriette Studivant who bore him two children (second wife).  They farmed in Choctaw County, Alabama.  James went into the Confederate army in 1862 and, was sick with measles and pneumonia the first year and froze to death on a battlefield.  He is buried near Yazoo, Mississippi.

The earliest we have for the family of Joseph’s wife, Mary (Polly) Thomas, begins with John Thomas, Sr., born probably in South Carolina around 1740.  His son, John Thomas Jr., Polly’s father, was born in Georgia around 1776.  Other Thomas families are referenced by researchers as coming into Georgia from South Carolina during those years and this very likely includes the parents of our man John Thomas, and of his wife, Phoebe Springer, who was also born in Georgia about the same time, according to later census data.  They took a marriage license in Warren County, Georgia June 26, 1801.   John was probably the brother or nephew of James Thomas who received a grant of 322.5 acres on Ogeechee in Hancock County, Georgia October 5, 1785 and also bought a tract of land on both sides of Long Creek for 150 pounds sterling April 23, 1795.  John Thomas  Sr., estate probated July 18, 1799, was probably John’s father.

Phoebe Springer’s line probably derives through Job Springer, born circa 1745, died 1832, locations unknown.  He had a son John Springer who married in 1809 to Miner Whatley.  John and Miner had a son Elisha born 9 December 1819 in Marengo County, Alabama. (In Warren County, Georgia in 1796, John Thomas bought land from a Richard Whatley.  This land was sold by John and Phoebe Thomas in 1799.
 

Quoting from the book “Early Settlers of Montgomery Co., Texas”:
“Job Springer Sr. was married 3 times.  A son by his first wife was Job Jr. who married Lydia May.  Their son John May Springer married (in Marengo county, Alabama) Elizabeth Landrum.  John and Elizabeth came to Austin’s colony the same time as John and Phoebe Thomas.  One family history says John and Elizabeth Springer had a daughter Lydia who married William Thomas, the son of John and Phoebe.  (other records indicate Lydia’s last name was Neuman or Nyman.  Maybe she was widow Neuman when she married William.).  (John Thomas and his son David had land dealings with a William Landrum in Texas.  William’s wife was Nancy Gilmore.  John and Phoebe’s son Simeon married a Gilmore.  Gilmores were security on marriages of John and Phoebe’s daughters Lucinda and Mary who married in Marengo county, Alabama.)  From these close relationships, we suspect that Job Springer Sr. was the father of Phoebe Springer.

In 1794 John Thomas Jr. sold 3 negroes to William Thomas of Hancock County (witnessed by Josiah, Sarah, and R. Thomas, all probable siblings of John).  John bought 125 acres on Middle Creek in 1796 for 50 pounds sterling of which he and Phoebe sold 120 acres for 150 silver dollars February 2, 1799.  Both he and Phoebe made their mark in lieu of signature on this transaction.  John is listed as executor on several probate documents during the next few years in that county.  He and Phoebe are probably the same couple listed on a deed in Jackson County, Georgia in 1809.  This was a frantic time, (1795-1814), when many land titles in Georgia were disputed in the great ‘Yazoo Fraud’ which was finally resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court with financial settlement by the U.S. Congress in the amount of $4,200,000 in 1814.
 

The 13 children of John and Phoebe Thomas were:

1. Sentha (daughter) born 24 March 1802
2. Nancy, born 22 October 1803, died 28 August 1821
3. Betsy, born 10 November 1805
4. Mary (Polly), born 10 December 1807, died 30 June 1897, Married Joseph Henson 1828.
5. Lucinda, born 1 August 1810, died in Alabama circa 1831-32, married William Morris in 1830.  They had a daughter and William came to Texas with the child when his in-laws did.
6. James Avery, born 1812-14, died 1865, married Amanda Wheeler in 1842 in Texas.
7. John Nelson, born 18 January 1815, died after 1846-47.
8. David, born 27 December 1816, died after 10 January 1837.
9. Sylvania, born 19 March 1819, married D.P. Lang in 1849
10. Annie, born 13 September 1821
11. Samuel Andrew Jackson, born 8 June 1823, died circa 1871.
12. William M., born 15 January 1825, died after 1870, married Lydia in 1849.
13. Simeon, born 27 December 1827, died 1 February 1897, married Sarah Gilmore in 1853

The latter eight children came to Texas with their parents and are noted with them in the registry of the Austin Colony.

John and Phoebe began their westward trek from Georgia as the Creek Nation lost their lands in a bitter war against U. S. military forces under General Andrew Jackson in 1814 and the Alabama Territory was organized from the Mississippi Territory in 1817.  Alabama Territory became a state in December of 1819.   Marengo County was formed from lands of the Choctaw Nation in 1818.

As the State of Coahuila of Mexico was opened to immigrant settlement, early colonists received grants of 4,428 acres. Page 26 of  "Stephen F. Austin's Register of Families," notes John and Mary Thomas and eight of their children were in the Austin Colony circa 1832, nine years after the colony was established.

.
Viz.  :

"John Thomas, 50 years of age.  Moved from Alabama.  Phoebe his  wife, 50 years of age.  6 Male, 2 Female children" .

The below records note their subsequent location in the Republic and the State of Texas.

1837 - Washington Co, Republic of Texas (tax list)  [included present Montgomery and  Grimes counties]
1837 - Washington Co., Republic of Texas  [filed in present Montgomery Co.]
1839 to 1848 - Montgomery Co., Republic and State of Texas deeds
1850 - Montgomery Co., State of Texas (census, household 175]

John ‘s wife, Phoebe, died in Montgomery County  before 1850 and John died sometime after that date, before the next census.

A David Thomas born in South Carolina about 1778 also came to Texas around 1860 and his grand-daughter married one of the sons of John and Phoebe Thomas, in Texas.  They may have been distantly related.  John and Phoebe also had a son named David Thomas. There was another David Thomas who was a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence and died in the Texas Revolution.

Researchers have earned their merit badges in tracing the whereabouts of these family members over the period of 1832-36 as they were on the move to avoid the armies of the President of Mexico, Santa Anna, who was determined to rid Texas of all who were against him, and especially the Texicans.  The following excerpt captures the scene of those times:

Excerpt from ‘the Eagle and the Raven’, James Michener, State House Press, Austin 1990:
Page 141-

            ”As a reward for the rape of Zacatecas, President Santa Anna had been promoted to the rank of general-in-chief and given the exalted title of Benemerito en Grado Heroico, and there was a rumor that if he succeeded in subduing the Tejanos he was to be named Benemerito Universal y Perpetuo .

  Accordingly, he spent the late fall of 1835 preparing his army for a major assault against those infuriating dissidents who had begun calling themselves Texicans.  Almost none of the Anglos had been born in Tejas and many had been there less than a year.  He agreed with an aide who assured him; ‘They are little better than the rabble that you helped defeat at Medina in 1813.  Cut-throats sprung from American jails, adventurers who drift down the Mississippi River, corrupt traders from Louisiana, and, I will admit, a few honest farmers from Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama.”

Of interest to the Thomas side of Joseph’s marriage are the following excerpts from the book  ‘Indian Depredations’ , Wilbarger - (State House Press):

 -Page 387 - in 1839 - moving from Bois d’Arc to Bonham, Texas  (North of Dallas)- a Mr. Thomas and his son-in-law Daugherty were attacked by Indians.

 -Pages 288 and 610 - in 1838 - near Bonham, Texas and Fort English - Andrew Thomas was attacked by Indians and had a narrow heroic escape.

 -Page 624 - in 1862 - 5 miles west of the town of Burnet - 5 teenagers,including Marshal Thomas, were attacked by Indians.  There were four McGill boys and their cousin Marshal.

The 1810 census of the Mississipi Territory shows John Henson in Baldwin County on the coast in Southwest Alabama.  He had come far from his family home in Virginia, just in time to witness the southerly elements of the War of 1812 and the ensuing war with the Creek Nation..  Baldwin County was subsequently divided to establish Washington County.  The family settled in Marengo Co. where John died in 1844.  John's children born in 1823, 1825, and 1827 were born in Alabama.

 Polly Thomas Henson scrawled a note in the margin of her son Asa’s cattle tally book much later in Texas, that she was ‘borned’ on a farm near Warren, Georgia in 1807 and later lived near Milry, Alabama then on to Montgomery, Texas when Texas was still part of the Republic of Mexico. She and Joseph Henson were married in Marengo County, Alabama in 1828.  Their first child was born there in 1829.

The lure of large grants of land in Texas was irresistible. Joseph and Mary Henson followed the trail of her parents and siblings to the Republic of Texas, by the famous ferry across the Sabine River in December 1833, with two small children.

Joseph fought with the Volunteer Army of the Republic of Texas, from March 12 to June 12, 1836 on duty with Co.D which was formed on March 12th under command of lst Lt. J. S. Collard and Captain William Ware, in the  2nd Regiment under Colonel William Sherman for which Joseph was paid $24 by the Republic of Texas on April 29, 1837.  He received a bounty grant of 320 acres in 1840 as a result of this service.  This company, known as the San Jacinto Volunteers, was in action at the crucial Battle of San Jacinto, April 21, 1836 that won independence for the Republic of Texas. Joseph Henson is listed among the 35 men of this unit, and noted  as being on furlough 18 April return 1 May.  He may have been ill, injured, or wounded.

 He exercised 135 acres of this grant in Nacogdoches County.  These acres were surveyed but not patented.  He then exercised 185 acres in nearby Angelina County which also were not patented.
The Census of the Republic of Texas in 1840 lists Joseph in Montgomery County with 320 acres of land and 55 head of cattle.  There were problems between these new settlers and those who held Spanish land grants.  One family settled in and found themselves in a dispute ten years later with a Spanish land grant claim.  In 1842 there were more Indians in Montgomery County than white men. ).  Mexican soldiers had just arrived in the Mission San Antonio and Houston was anxious to move the capitol from Austin to Washington on the Brazos.  Montgomery County was divided in 1846 into three counties (Montgomery, Grimes, and Walker).

Horton’s History of Jack County gives this excerpt for one family on the move:  “We moved from Montgomery to Smith county, near Tyler in 1848.  Seven years later agents came to us advising that we were on a Spanish Land Grant and would have to move.  The case was in Federal Court.  The father decided to move out before his goods were confiscated so we took 150 head of cattle, shelled 10 bushels of corn and put it in the wagon, put in 200# of bacon, tied a big basket of chickens on the back end of the wagon, loaded our little handful of household goods and drifted west to a point east of Finis, 80 miles to the post office in Birdsville, Tarrant county.  In 1856 we signed a petition to give a county where Jack County is.  The petition was granted July 4, 1857.”

There are presently some 35 boxes of court records for Montgomery County available for the years when the Hensons were resident in that jurisdiction.  The following few cases were hurriedly copied from documents in 3 of these boxes.  If the pattern holds throughout these records, Joseph Henson was a colorful figure in a populace where each one probably generated their own share of such cases.

Quoting from  "Texana", Volume IV, Number 3, Fall 1966, pp 262-265 which cites these voters from the extended Henson and Thomas families in Montgomery County for the election of delegates to form a constitution for Texas in 1845:

"List of Votes polled at Montgomery (Montgomery Precinct) on the 4th of June, 1845 for four delegates to a convention to form a State Constitution for the admission of Texas into the United States Union and one County surveyor for Montgomery County."

[from a list of 158 voters]

20.  W.T. Morris  [Lucinda Thomas' husband ??]
68.  A.W. Springer
69.  John Landrum
70.  Wm. Landrum
79.  A.E. Springer
116.  G.W. Brooks
124.  Wm. Gilmore
141.  Joseph Hinson
144.  Jno. M. Springer

Sam Houston...received 107 votes
John M. Lewis...received 63 votes
James Scott...received 63 votes
A. McNeill...received 106 votes
M.C. Rogers...received 50 votes
D.C. Dickson...received 29 votes
G.W. Banton...received 19 votes
Jas. L. Bennett...received 15 votes
C.B. Stewart...received 120 votes

for County Surveyor:
D.M. Bullock...received 95 votes
John McKary...received 39 votes

Of historical interest, a letter from Sam Houston to Doctor C.B. Stewart (who received more votes than Sam in the above election):

To: Doct. C.B. Stewart, Montgomery TX, 10 Nov 1841
My dear Sir,
    At Houston I had the pleasure to receive your kind favor--for the contents, I am grateful, and am happy to say so.  You will see that I am to be at Houston on the 25th instant.  On the 30th my appointment is to be at your town of Montgomery.  Mrs. H. intends to bring with me.  We will be happy to accept the courteous hospitality which you have so kindly tendered to us.

    I will be compelled to visit Galveston in a few days.  My stay will be short at Houston.  I must pass some days on business previous to the 25th.  I hope to meet many of the citizens of Montgomery on the 30th.  I may be thru on the 28th or 9th.

    Ladies may attend if they have any wish to do so.  I like to speak to ladies and their presence makes men behave better to each other and themselves also.  Be pleased to commend our regards to Mrs. Stewart.  Salute all friends.  About any arrangements to be made I leave all things to yourself and our friends.

                                            I am very truly yours,
                                                    Sam Houston “
 

There are court documents for Montgomery County concerning a robbery charge against Joseph Henson in 1839 for which the constable Nathan Drake was cited for negligence in letting Joseph escape 1 July 1839.  It is not clear as to ensuing action however there is a document instructing the sheriff to sell such of Joseph Henson's goods as necessary to satisfy a judgment of $87.25 in court costs for some case.  The sheriff responded with a note on the document that no sale was taken on this execution for want of bidders  5 October 1841.

There are court documents for Montgomery County referring to a libel charge by Joseph Henson and Lem G. Clepper against John Leigh in the spring term of the court in 1843 and 1847.  The libelous statement was "There has been nothing amiss since you gave over killing my cattle and burying them".  "You are a cattle thief.  You are killing them now & you have been a thief ever since you was born."  Joseph won the case.
 

There are court documents for Montgomery, fall term 1839 for the following assault charge with intent to kill brought against Joseph Henson by James Thomas, Joseph's brother in law.

Mr. Thomas’ petition of March 20, 1839: “I was riding the road by Joseph Henson’s and stopped with the children, talking to them. Joseph Henson was ploughing near the house.  When I was about to start off, Joseph Henson came running to the house and called out to me to stop.  But believing that he was mad with me previous and from threats that I had heard of his making on me of taking my life,  I thought proper to go on and Henson ran into his house and came out in the yard again with his gun in his hand and presented his gun at me.  And I do verily believe that his gun missed fire or he would have shot at me, and by that means made my escape”

Mr. Thomas’s petition of May 27, 1839: “I was riding on horseback in Montgomery County near Caney Creek, where I saw Joseph Henson in the vicinity. He was armed with gun, pistol, and bucher knive. When I came up to where Henson was, he commanded me to get down and said if I did not he would shoot me.  I got down and, being forced by Henson to divest myself of a pocket knive the only weapon he had, Henson commenced the assault with blows. I was beaten to the ground and did not see Henson use a knive.”
                                                                                      James Thomas (his mark)

A year later the parties agreed to dismiss the suit, with Joseph to pay costs of the suit to Mr. Thomas.

There are court documents for Montgomery, November 1846 reflecting a
judgment against James H. Price to pay the amount of $139.40 to John
Landrum for the use of Joseph Henson in the amount of $68.70.  This seems to have
something to do with the payment of Republic of Texas tax by Mr. Price.

Joseph and his young family were found in the 1850 Census  in Leon County Texas with nominal holdings of stock animals and a few slaves. But this was not to be the end of Joseph’s contribution to the history of Texas. Texas, with large area and scant population, had joined the United States in 1845.  That action and the expansionist spirit prevailing in the United States precipitated war between the United States and Mexico through 1846.  To the Texas Ranger companies were added military forts along the Texas frontier over the next twenty years as it expanded into what had been part of Mexico up to that time.  Eventually this border reached the Rio Grande and El Paso.  The Western plains of Texas was populated with thousands of hostile Comanche, Apache, and Kiowa, as well as outlaws and Mexican Comancheros who worked with these Indians. There were true frontiersmen beyond the military zone but settlers moved in only after there was military protection and where they could find water.  Texas was growing along the river valleys.  The future of the dry High Plains was not bright until those problems were solved.  The coming of the windmill encouraged the movement of families.

Joseph and his family had arrived in Texas December 1833, by virtue of such date receiving a First Class Headright of 1 league and 1 labor (4,600 acres).  There was evidently friction between him and his in-laws.  There were also problems with owners of earlier Spanish Land Grants which limited areas for settlement in Southeastern Texas.  In order to exercise this Headright, he moved on in the frontier to an area where public land was still available and did exercise and patent such a holding in the Jacksboro area.

After growing up in the Indian wars of the Georgia-Alabama region and fighting for the independence of Texas from Mexico, Joseph was an Indian fighter to the rank of Captain for much of twenty years after the Republic of Texas was born.  He fought the Comanche and Kiowa tribes, Comancheros, and outlaws as the frontier in Texas expanded westerly from the original colonial settlements.  He continued this career of Indian fighter around 1852 at Fort Graham, Texas, (on the east side of the Brazos River, 14 miles west of Hillsboro), where the immigrant road led West to California.  Early in this period Dallas was a trading post with one log cabin and a ferry boat across the Trinity River.   From there he moved on to Fort West at Decatur (now Wise County) Texas.  And finally he was at Fort Richardson (on Lost Creek, half a mile south of Jacksboro, Texas).  He was badly wounded in a battle with Indians near Newcastle in Young County, Texas.  By 1853 the military post of Fort Worth was no longer on the frontier and was abandoned. . By 1857, the frontier was 100 miles west of the villages of Dallas and Waxahachie, but the sounds of swinging axes and rattling wagons were few.  By 1875 the Comanche were on reservation in Indian Territory (Oklahoma).
 

His wife bore him nine children of whom one daughter and two sons were born in Alabama and the rest on the move along the frontier in Texas.

These nine children were:
1. Daughter Elizabeth A. (Lizzie) born 6 July 1829 Marengo County, Alabama, married James S. Lauderdale.  Died 22 March 1875 in Jack County, Texas. Her husband was killed by Indians near Jacksboro 1867.
2.   Daughter Phoebe born about 1832 died about 1861, married a Lauderdale(1) then Rev. David Joseph Smith(2). She had two children by Smith: Alfred G. Smith and a daughter who married Mose Rhoades.  Phoebe appears to have been named after her grandmother.
3.   Daughter Mary Margaret born about 1833, married Joshua G. Lawrence.  Her husband was killed by Indians 1871.
4.   Son William S. born 1835 .
5.    Son John born ?.
6.    Daughter Julia Ann born about 1840 married a Thomas?..
7.    Son Asa L. born 21 March 1845 Montgomery County, Republic of Texas.  Married 1865 Jacksboro, Texas to Julia Ann Dean Jay who was born in 1836, Red River County, about the time of the Texas Revolution.
8.   Son Joseph T. born 6 December 1846 in Montgomery County, Texas
9.   Son Andrew J. born circa 1848 in Texas and married Elizabeth Hensley in Jack County       Texas.
 

Joseph and Mary Henson and their young children were now a part of the hard times in Texas where the story is told of these heartfelt remarks of a grandmother in a letter to her family in Tennessee “Texas is all right for men and dogs, but hell on women and horses”.  Beginning in the 1840’s the cow business was swelling to an industry of importance.  Texas had land and livestock but little money.  The trails to market with cattle and horses saw the money packed in the bottom of ox-carts moving back into Texas. The War drove most of the settlers out of Jack county and Indian raiders moved almost 35,000 head of cattle from the high plains to Union Army buyers in Kansas.

From 1787 on, the Jacksboro area lay on the Spanish route from San Antonio to Santa Fe. In 1832 there were five to six hundred trappers on the headwaters of the five rivers in this region. In 1841 the Jack County area formed a part of a twenty-six county land grant known as the Peter’s Colony which was enabled by “An Act Granting Land to Emigrants” signed by acting president of Texas, David Burnett on February 5, 1841.  Texas needed immigrants and it needed money.  This settlement was exceedingly difficult due to Indian attacks and not until some thirteen years later was the grant surveyed for record.  It covered the western one third of what became Jack County. The eastern two thirds of Jack County were opened to settlement under the General Homestead Act of 1853.  The new settlers were not too careful in respecting the surveyed lands that belonged to the Peter’s group now known as the Texas Emigration and Land Company who had bought it for twelve dollars a square mile (640 acres).  The shaky little Republic of Texas offered little help to the enterprise.  Jack County was formed from Cooke County, by the Texas Legislature August 14, 1856.  These relative values are of interest:  The blue collar wage in New York in 1850 was $1.50 to $2 per day.  College tuition at the Eastern Schools was $200 per year.  A doctor’s visit cost $5 when one could be found.  A Transatlantic fare (one way) cost $60."

The first Indian raid on Jacksboro occurred in the Spring of 1858 with the devastation and slaughter of two families by a band of Kiowa and Comanches from the Fort Sill reservation.  Twenty men pursued the Indians and recovered two small children.  No one, white or Indian, understood the rapid settlement of the plains.  Pressures continued to build from 1825 to 1860 in North Texas as thousands of displaced Indians arrived from the eastern United States and settled on Comanche and Kiowa hunting ground, forced out by the white people east of the Mississippi.

 Jacksboro township was settled in 1857 and Joseph and Mary raised their family and dwelt there for forty years until Mary died in 1897.  We draw from the rich stories of the ‘History of Jack County’ to relate the life there for this family.  Jack County has a special place in Texas history.  The frontier should have swept through the county in ten years as it had all across the American Continent.  But the march stopped here and Jack County steeped in the frontier period for twenty-five years.

After Texas joined the United States in 1845, Texans expected the federal government to protect them.  But it was a futile hope.  In the treaty with Mexico in 1848, the United States gained about 20,000 Indians on the Great Plains and in New Mexico but had an army unprepared to deal with them.  These plains and desert Indians were different from the settled, agricultural eastern Indians who were handled in their villages.  The nomad Comanche, Apache, Cheyenne, and Kiowa could “fold their tents and silently steal away.”

The federal government first built a line of forts stretching from the Red River to the Rio Grande.  Fort Belknap in what is now Young County was one of these scattered forts.  Though soldiers rode daily patrols  between the forts, raids grew steadily worse reaching as far south as the Austin area.  When settlement reached Jack County in 1854, Indian attacks had become violent.  The deadly raids lasted through 1874.  A nationally important part in the final American Indian wars took place in Jack County.

Huddled in their cabins on bloody full moonlit nights, settlers could not see the whole picture of the Indian wars, and the later telling of their stories reflects their fear and confusion.

From the History of Jack County-

“ The first Indian trouble for the Henson homestead (1856)-Sister and Alfred were in the cow pen, milking, early in the morning.  Sister, then a good big girl, fifteen or sixteen years old, Alfred eight-Sister milking.  Alfred holding the calf off-they heard horses.   Alfred thought they  were soldiers.  Sister looked up and said, “They are Indians!  Run!”  She ran to the house and reported;  Alfred stayed where he was.  Grandpa (Joseph) came to Alfred.  A little later A.J. Henson and a Negro man whom Grandpa had raised also came to them.  Grandpa told them to go back and load the guns.  This they did and returned at once and began shooting at the Indians. One Indian came closer than the others, Grandpa snapped his gun at the Indian-had failed to load --- worked the lever of his gun, fired, the Indian fell from his horse, dead.  His horse stopped in a jump or two, the Indians rushed up around the dead Indian, sheltering themselves by lying on the opposite side of their horses from us, picked up the dead Indian, placed him on his horse and rode away.  The fight was over.

The next Indian trouble was when twenty-five or thirty Indians came within 200 yards of our house, between daylight and sun-up.  Uncle Jack (A.J. Henson) and Negro Wash began shooting at them.  Grandpa came out of the house, fired one shot and an Indian fell dead.  That ended the fight, the Indians, as before lying on the opposite sides of their horses from us, circled the dead Indian, loading him on his horse, and vanished.  Uncle Jack was wounded twice, once with an arrow and once with a bullet in Indian fights, neither serious.”

The War Between the States delayed development along the frontier, and Indians on Oklahoma reservations marveled to see the white men fight each other, but quickly realized that the isolated settlements were easy prey.  Many of the frontiersmen who joined the Confederate army moved their families back to safety.  As troops moved back to eastern battlefields, settlers fled from Young, Archer, and Clay counties.  But a band of determined settlers clung to Jack county.  These settlers-merchants, cattlemen, cowboys, a few farmers, and families of Confederate soldiers-saw their supply lines and contact with eastern and southern Texas broken.  Though the market for cattle during this Civil War was good, Indians harassed cowmen who tried to run cattle on lush grass of the country. The roster for June 25, 1864 of Captain Orrick’s Company B of Texas State Troops notes J. T. Henson as 1st Sergeant, William S. Henson as 1st Corporal, A. L. Henson as a Private, S.A. J. Thomas as 2nd Corporal, and J. S. Lauderdale as a Private.  Their muster cards are on file in the Texas State Archives in Austin.  These troops were organized in addition to Texas Ranger units for several years during and after the War of Southern Independence. This was a somewhat loosely organized home guard militia group organized in 1861 and later as provided by the Texas legislation of December 1863 to protect the Jack County settlers from the Indians.

After the War, reconstruction brought new people to Jack County.  These were Union Army soldiers, some of whom were former slaves.  Fort Richardson, for a time , was the largest army post in the United States in numbers of men.  This fort brought half a million dollars a year into Jacksboro over a five year period.  Armed bands of outlaws, protected by the confusion of Reconstruction, banished law and order.  These outlaws openly boasted they could buy enough men to swear to anything.  Legal authorities indicted and arrested large numbers of men for murder, theft of horses and cattle, and assault with intent to kill.  Yet not one single conviction for murder was obtained until the court tried Satanta and Big Tree in 1871 for the Warren Wagon Massacre.  27 saloons flourished on the north side of the fort.  Law and order was for another time.  On pay days it was difficult to walk through the area without stepping on a drunken soldier.  Justice rode at your side in a leather holster.

Geography too held back the frontier.  Jack County is on the western edge of the Cross Timbers, the edge of what Easterners called the ‘Great American Desert’.   The United States Department of the Interior declared the 98th meridian that runs through Newport, Cundiff, and Joplin to be the dividing line between the timbered eastern farm lands and the plains grass region.  Here at the edge of the plains, the frontier halted to await the invention of barbed wire and windmills that made it possible for settlers to live on the dry plains.

Jack County got its flavor from the many people and races working in harmony and often in conflict.  The white race provided numbers of hard-working settlers willing to gamble against terrific odds and also the unprincipled outlaw driven west from more developed areas of Texas.  The war refugee and the draft dodgers came.  Northern opportunists came to exploit or just to begin a new life in a new country.  Cattlemen were willing to hold their claims with guns.  Blacks came as slaves, servants, and employees of the whites.  Fort Richardson had soldiers of both races, their wives, families, and camp followers.  Some came to grab the federal money flowing to Fort Richardson, an American tradition.

And the native Indians made their presence felt in the most forceful way.  Jack County lay on the border of the Kiowa and the Comanche favored hunting ground which these two tribes fiercely defended.  Fort Richardson’s power was thrown against them, and they hated the fort and its soldiers.  They fought back with the desperation of men who knew they could lose everything.

We will digress here to study this Dean family whose roots trace from Virginia in the mid 1700s on through Georgia and Tennessee, through Arkansas in the 1820’s, then into Texas in the early 1830’s at the old river town of Clarksville on the Red River. Arkansas was separated from Louisiana as part of the  Missouri Territory in 1812, then became the Arkansas Territory in 1819, and was admitted as a state in 1836.

The earliest records we have are of Jesse Dean born circa 1780 in Virginia.   He married Nancy --?-born circa 1780 in Maryland.  She died in 1820.  He married again to Betsy Hull March 22, 1821 in Caddo township, Arkansas.  Nancy bore him these eight children:

1. . Son Asa born about 1798 probably Tennessee, married Susan--?-- circa 1820.  Died in Texas circa 1844. Two sons born circa 1820 and 1823. Two daughters born 1825 and circa 1835.  The latter child was probably Julia Ann Dean b. June 25, 1836 who later married Asa Henson.
2. . Son Edward born 1800
3. . Daughter Sidney born 1805 (in Illinois ?)
4. . Son Levi born 1807 in Tennessee
5.    Daughter Matilda born 1809
6. . Daughter Lucinda born 1811
7.    Son Willis Dean born 1814.
8.    Daughter Eliza born 1816 (in Georgia ?)

The older Jesse Dean arrived in 1811 in the land south of the Caddo River, bounded on the west by the Indian Territory, in the Arkadelphia area. This became Clark County, known early as  Arkansas County of Missouri Territory. He reportedly received land grants for service in the Indian Wars. This was very sparsely settled land.  In the late 1820’s a large contingent of citizens gathered in what was loosely called Miller County in Arkansas, near the Red River.  When the group became large enough and when political conditions were satisfactory, this contingent planned to move southward into Texas as one of Stephen F. Austin’s colonies.  1830 saw this move.

His sons Asa, Jesse, and Edward Dean came to Texas between 1830 and March 4, 1836.  Asa’s land grant file in the Texas General Land Office Archives reads that he arrived in Texas October 28, 1835.   Another son, Levi Dean, came a bit later, probably between 1835 and 1837.  However, they all hit it right and received large land grants.  The first census of the Republic of Texas, taken in 1840, shows them prospering in Red River County:

 -Asa Dean was taxed on 2,000 acres and 4 work horses.
 -Jesse Dean was taxed on 6 slaves, 25 head of cattle, 3 horses, and $4,605 worth of property.
 -Levi Dean was taxed on 1,280 acres, 3 slaves, and a wood clock.
 -Edward M. Dean taxed on 3,728 acres, 7 slaves, and 10 head of cattle.
 -Willis Dean taxed on $100 at interest and 4,605 acres
 

The family had been in Jacksboro (Jack City) for about eight  years when Joseph’s son Asa (Ace) met and married, in 1865, Julian Ann Dean Jay who came from Paris, Red River County, Texas with several of her relatives, and her one year old son George Seman Jay in late1860 or 1861..  There are Confederate muster cards for “the Red River Dixie Boys” of Red River County for Joseph M., Jessee C., and George W. Jay.  Jessee was twenty-eight years old in 1861.  Jessee and Julia Ann Dean married in Lamar County just west of Red River County in 1855.  Family tradition reads that Jessee was away in the War and presumed dead at the time Julia and her son came west to Jack County about 1861.  Others feel that they were divorced  shortly after the birth of Julia’s son George.   Julia waited the prescribed seven years for her first husband to be declared legally dead before marrying Asa.
 

 Julia’s father, Asa  Dean had died about 1844 and her mother,  Susan, married Jessee Jay’s father, George Seman Jay, indicating a close family relationship.  One of the children of George and Susan was Susan Jay who went on to become the wife of Ira Cooper who settled on a ranch in Jack County.  She was Julia’s half-sister.

At their marriage, Ace Henson was a nineteen year old frontiersman and Julia was about  thirty years old and a mother , born in 1836 on the Red River near Clarksville, the oldest American settlement in Texas.
.
The Clarksville, Texas newspaper ‘The Northern Standard ‘ of February 1843 has the following excerpts of interest to these times:
“The money market in New Orleans quotes coined dollars and half dollars at par; smaller coinage slightly discounted; and gold coinage (sovereigns, Spanish doubloons, and Patriot doubloons) at roughly $ 16.60; and various discounted values for banknotes issued by 31 U.S. Banks.”
“An elderly lady in her eighties dies of shock from the delusion of ‘Millerism’ as she views the flames of the conflagration at Cambridge, Massachusetts and the reflections in the clouds.  She shrieks ‘it is the end of the world!’”

“10,000 acres of farm land for sale. Cash or negroes.”

An Austin newspaper of August  1842 has these excerpts of interest to these times:
“ Houston is moving the seat of government!  This leaves us open to Indian depredations.  Nearly half the population of Bastrop and Travis are preparing to depart for the U.S. and other parts of Texas.  There is no money in circulation.” (This attempted move from Austin to Washington on the Brazos was caused by the abruptly renewed presence of Mexican soldiers in the Mission city of San Antonio.  The proposed relocation was thwarted by the 650 residents of Austin.)
:
The lure of the frontier continued and the area around the SW corner of Arkansas was a hotbed of emotion relative to secession from the Union.  Arkansas was to have the dubious privilege of two governments (both Union and Confederate) at the same time. There was a group where the Deans lived who called themselves the ‘Red River Dixie Boys’. Julia married Jessee Jay in Lamar County in 1855 where they had one child , George S. Jay, born in 1859. Family tradition reads that Jessee Jay was missing and presumed dead in 1860.  Other sources believe there was a divorce.  Whatever the reason, in late1860 Julia Ann kept the name Jay and put herself and  son George Jay in a wagon with her brother James and his new wife, and aunt Eliza to come to Jack County, Texas, far from the pressures of civilization as they knew it.

Against the strong wishes of its president Sam Houston and many of the people on the frontier, Texas was still of an independent spirit and opted to secede from the Union.  Julia Dean Henson told the story of soldiers rummaging through her household, taking everything they could including the last needles and thread. The Texas Brigade distinguished itself in Virginia during the War Between the States.  These efforts depleted the manpower available to defend and develop the Texas frontier.  Even those with no strong feelings for the Confederacy moved to organize with the ‘Confederate Texas Frontier Rangers’. G. A. Dean, George Dean, J. A. Dean, and Levi Dean were listed on Frontier Ranger muster rolls for this region. Asa L., J.F., Joseph, W. M., and William S. Henson were also on these muster rolls to defend their families.

The frontier homesteads were in severe jeopardy and in some areas the frontier moved back as much as a hundred miles during 1861-1866.  The ‘History of Jack County’ could be a background for many a ‘Western Tale’.

 There are court documents for Jack County, 1869-70, dealing with a murder charge against Joseph Henson Jr. in the death by shooting of a soldier James Barrett from Fort Richardson.
The Jacksboro newspaper ‘The Flea’ of April 15, 1869 reads “Mr. Henson, who killed a soldier at this place in November 1867 has been released from the Post guard house and turned over to the civil authorities, and is under heavy bail for his appearance at court”.  This was Asa’s brother Joseph Jr.  The story tells of a man who rode up to the Henson log cabin looking for work and, per frontier custom, was offered a meal.  While he was eating, a soldier rode up to a shed where  Joseph Sr. was working and asked if he had seen this man riding by.  When informed that the man was in the cabin, the soldier dismounted and entered the cabin. On doing so he shot without warning and killed the man as he was eating and a bullet passing through the body struck Asa’s mother in the leg.  She cried out “He’s shot me!”  Whereupon Joseph Jr. came running, and, seeing the blood on his mother, shouted, in words inappropriate for Sunday School “You shot my mother!” and tugged his pistol from its holster. The soldier turned on him with his carbine which apparently misfired and ran out the door. Joseph Jr. shot several times as the soldier wheeled around trying to bring his carbine to bear and the soldier fell dead.  In Joseph Sr.’s testimony at the trial, he noted that he was too stove up from old wounds to have participated and Joseph Jr. was on his own with this armed man who had shot his mother. Joseph was acquitted, according to the above dates, approximately a year and a half after the incident.”

The below was the Indictment of Joseph Henson Jr.:

“In the name and by the authority of the State of Texas, the Grand Jurors for the County of Jack in the State of Texas, duly elected, tried, impaneled, sworn, and charged to inquire into an true presentment make of all offenses committed within the County of Jack, cognizable by the District Court of the said County of Jack in the State of Texas, upon their oath do say and present unto the said District Court of the County of Jack in the State of Texas, that Joseph Henson, late of the County of Jack and State of Texas with force and arms and having the fear of God before his eyes but being moved and instigated by the Devil, on towit the twenty-first day of November in the year of our Lord Eighteen Hundred and Sixty-seven in the County of Jack in the State of Texas in and upon one James Barrett in the presence of God and our said State then and there being wilfully, unlawfully, feloniously and of his malice aforethought did make an assault and that the said Joseph Henson a certain six shooting pistol of the value of Ten Dollars then and there loaded with gun-powder and six leaden bullets, which said pistol he the said Joseph Henson in his right hand then and there held at, to, against, and upon the said James Barrett then and there unlawfully, feloniously, and of his malice aforethought did shoot off and discharge and that the same Joseph Henson with the leaden bullets aforesaid, then and there by force of the gunpowder shot and sent forth as aforesaid, the said James Barrett in and upon the back of the breast and the side of him the same James Barrett three mortal wounds, each to the depth of six inches, of which mortal wounds aforesaid the said James Barrett did die on towit the Twenty-first day of November in the year of our Lord One Thousand Eight Hundred and Sixty-seven, in the County of Jack and State of Texas-

And so the Grand Jurors aforesaid upon their oath aforesaid do say that the said Joseph Henson the said James Barrett in manner and form aforesaid, wilfully, unlawfully, feloniously, and of his malice aforethought did kill and murder, contrary to the form of the statute in such case made and provided and against the peace and dignity of the State.

                                                                        H. G. Thompson
                                                                   Foreman of the Grand Jury

S. W. Lanham
Dist. Atty. 13th Jud. Dist. Texas”

As the community developed a Methodist Church and a school were established on the Carroll Creek property of Joseph Henson.  He and his wife were among the charter members of this church.

James Lauderdale, the husband of Joseph Henson’s daughter, Elizabeth, was killed by Indians in Jack Co. in 1867. > I saw your query on the Internet regard-
> ing parents of subject.  Have you found
> them? I believe I have ,because I have
> a connection to that family.  On the
> l870  Fed. Census of Jack Co. TX . is
> an Effa , 2 yrs old with her Mother
> Elizabeth and her older siblings.  The
> Mother was  the widow of J.S.
> Lauderdale.  I have a book that I
> believe is still available named  "94
> Years in Jack County l854-l948"
> J.S. and James Lauderdale are
> listed in the book 4 or 5 times, on
> lists.  My Great Great Grandfather's
> 1st wife Phoebe was widow of
> Simpson J. Lauderdale and her maiden
> name was Henson.  The Elizabeth (A)
> Lauderdale is her sister  and they were
> daughters of Joseph (Joe) and Mary
> Henson  who are on that census also.
> I must have some place found some
> cemetary records because I have noted
> that Elizabeth A. died 22 Mar.l875.
> When you find Joe & Mary Henson you
> will see 2 children living with them .
> They are Phoebe"s children , her
> Lauderdale daughter and her son by
> my Gr.Gr.Grandfather , David J.Smith.
> (his name was A.G.) I think Phoebe
> died while David was away in the
> Civil War..  James Lauderdale on 23
> Feb l861 voted against secession from
> the Union and so did J.S. Lauderdale.
> J.S. was listed as a Texas Ranger for
> Precinct No. 1, Jack Co. in Capt. T.F.
> Roberts Co.=20
> I don't know any background on the
> Lauderdales , but I know another
> person  researching  them and can
> look that up for you.  I have notes that
> both families were in Montgomery Co
> TX in l840  and in Limestone Co. in
> l850 & l860  and a note that says there
> is a Probate record in Bell Co. TX for
> E. J. Lauderdale in Aprill867. I'd better
> hush. Let me hear from you.
> Betty

Asa Henson and two of his brothers also had an encounter with Indians.  All three escaped, although one brother was wounded in the leg. The Henson homestead beat off several Indian attacks.

William Henson's wife was at home one day with her two children and she heard a noise outside.  Either she went or she sent John to see what it was and it was Indians.  They ran inside and bolted the entrances to the house.  One of the Indians was carrying a scalp of a blond woman.  The mother recognized it as the hair of her best friend, and she was so shocked that she dropped dead.  The children  were not hurt and the Indians went on their way.

The 1870 census for Jack County records the Henson family as follows:
.
 These were regular days in a town on the main stage line for the Butterfield Stage Line to Santa Fe and California.  Charlie Goodnight and Oliver Loving both ran cattle near there when they made their move to get to good grass and market by a roundabout route to avoid the Indians and outlaws, thus opening the Goodnight - Loving Trail across the Pecos, through New Mexico and Eastern Colorado.

After his marriage, Asa Henson operated a livery stable and developed cattle interests around Jacksboro.  He also ran a store for groceries, dry goods, general merchandise and liquor to go.  (In 1867 receipt for $ 20.67 from the United States Internal Revenue for a Special Tax upon the business of retail liquor dealer.)  He purchased this store from Aynes and ran it under the name of the A. L. Henson Co. until he sold it in 1873.  He was the Jack County Tax Collector for several years.  During the difficult days of Reconstruction after the war, hardly anyone would accept a public office under Yankee soldiers.  He rendered ex officio services as sheriff of Jack County , one of seven over a span of four years.

Asa Henson was a prospective juror in the trial of Santana, Satank and Big Tree, three of the Kiowa charged with the barbaric Warren Wagon Train Raid in 1871 where the wagon drivers had been tied to the wagon wheels and burned to death. This trial was held at Fort Richardson in Jacksboro.

Asa and Julia had these five children:
1. James Isaac Henson, born April 14, 1867 in Jacksboro, died circa 1960 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Married Rose Anna McQuillan of Belfast, Ireland circa 1890 on her brother’s ranch along the Beaver River in ‘No Man’s Land’ of Oklahoma Territory.  They had eleven children who reached adulthood.  James died in Oklahoma City circa 1960 and Rosie died in Wichita, Kansas circa 1950.
2. Robert Fred Henson, born April 14, 1869 in Jacksboro, died July 27, 1870
3. Ira Jackson Henson, born January 30, 1872 in Jacksboro, died May 31, 1873.
4. Eula Ann Henson, born March 27, 1874 in Jacksboro, married William Mitchell Goodnight, 1893 in the Methodist Church of the new town of Panhandle, Texas- she was nineteen years old, the daughter of a cowman, her husband was a twenty six year old cowboy with the Matador ranch on its holdings at White Deer, near the present town of  Pampa. He was born in 1867 near Frankfort, Kentucky and came with his parents and several siblings to the Fort Worth area in the early 1870s.  They had seven children of whom five reached adulthood.   He died in 1931 at Fort Supply, Oklahoma, she died October 1966 in Guymon, Oklahoma.
5.     Louie Ann Henson born February 1881 in Jacksboro, married Asbery A. Callaghan circa 1898 in the Methodist Church of Panhandle, Texas.  He was a ‘tenderfoot’ successful businessman and a state political figure in a pioneer cow town.  She died circa 1960, her husband died a few years later, both in Panhandle. They had two daughters, Lillian and Pauline, who married but had no children.

In the 1850’s a few cattle from Texas were moved to the Mississippi River enroute to market along the Ohio Valley.  Texas cattle fever spread into Missouri, Illinois, and Ohio cattle.  Later drives were met with growing hostility.  Farmers along the way feared the fever invariably carried by hardy and resistant Texas longhorns.  Armed men killed any cattle the drivers did not turn back.  The closing of these trails forced cattlemen to pass west through Indian Territory, Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa, a task that proved nearly impossible.  However cattle that were selling for $ 3 or $4 a head in Texas would sell for ten times that in Sedaliah, Missouri, and Texas cattlemen were game to give it a try. A herd of 3,500 head was about as large as a crew and the grass and water could handle.  If delivered in Missouri, such a herd would net $ 90,000 dollars.  Indian raiding during these years halted ‘head-right’ settlement so that ranching developed freely in the public domain. When the War Between the States broke out, cattlemen marketed Jack County herds in the first few months by driving them to Vicksburg, Mississippi and swimming them across the river, but soon northern gunboats blocked them.  The war drove most of the settlers out of the county, but a few cattlemen held on.  There were sixty-one cattlemen in 1860, but by 1870 only twenty-one remained.  After the war cattle raising grew rapidly over the next twenty years.  Indians in reservation in Indian Territory and those on the open plains tested those driving cattle.  During the ten year period 1858-1868, Jack County and the adjoining counties  to the northwest lost an estimated 35,000 cattle to Indians (many were Kickapoo) who trailed them across Indian Territory to Union buyers in Kansas.  Those plains were empty of cattle.

The plains Indians were focussed on the Texans who were on their ancestral hunting grounds and were hostile to the movement by Texans of herds through the Indian Territory.  Goodnight and Loving blazed a trail westerly around the Indians into Colorado.  In 1867 Indians attacked Oliver Loving and his herd on the Pecos and fatally wounded him.  The following year, his son James Loving took the Loving herd north through Indian Territory, accompanied by herds of several other cattlemen of Jack county.  They represented themselves as Kansas citizens in order to avoid attacks from Indians. The cowboy lived a hard and demanding life.  He provided his own saddle, bridle, spurs, and a ‘hot roll’-a few quilts and blankets rolled in canvas; the rancher furnished the horses, wild-eyed and barely broken.  He braved ‘northers’, ate trail dust, slept fully clothed on the ground, ate flapjacks of flour and water, drank coffee made of last week’s beans, and bathed when he stunk so bad that he was compelled to -if there was spare water.

The newspaper ‘the Frontier Echo’ of July 18, 1875 reads “taken up by A.J. Henson and estrayed before Thos. W. Williams J.P. Prct. No. 1, one gray mare 14 hands high, 7 years old, branded 8R on its left shoulder and appraised by Jas. R. Robinson and John Cameron at $30”

The Frontier Echo of September 18, 1875 reads “A camp meeting will commence on Carrol’s Creek near Mr. Henson’s on Friday the 24th instant.  Some good preaching and a pleasant time is expected”.

The issue of December 15, 1876 reads “A little child of A. L. Henson’s met with a painful accident a few days ago.  The little one was sitting on the floor before the fire when a kettle of hot water turned over and almost saturated the little one and there was boiled baby in that house.  The little sufferer is getting along as well as could be expected”.  This child was probably their daughter Eula -age 2.

From the files of the Jacksboro Gazette newspaper dated July 23, 1880, “A. L. Henson has returned from Chicago and reports the cattle market very dull.  He spent a day or two in that city looking at the sights and says it compares favorably with Jacksboro.”

 The Jacksboro Gazette of July 17, 1884 reads in part “the Democratic primary convention was held in Jacksboro, the list of delegates to the county convention includes.Will Henson”
This same issue also reads”The attempt made by a few to call a mass meeting of the citizens for the purpose of organizing a force of men to drive cattle out of the county in the direction of the Red River is very much discountenanced by the majority of our best people.  This scheme is virtually killed in Jack County.”

The book “Trail Drivers of Texas’ gives these accounts of several trail drives in which Bill/Will Henson was involved  It is not clear if this was Joseph’s nephew, (son of Clement Henson who came to the Hill Country of Texas about this time) or Joseph’s son.  The initials W.T. apparently do not match either but are probably a misread : quoting R.F. Gilbreath of Devine, Texas “in 1873 we made a drive from Medina County and near Castroville to Ellsworth, Kansas, crossed the Guadalupe at New Braunsfels, then on to San Marcos, crossed the Colorado River at Austin, on to Fort Worth, crossed the Red River at Doane’s Store, on through Pond Creek, Indian Territory to Russell, kansas, thence to Ellsworth, kansas.  They then took another herd on to Cheyenne, Wyoming near Big Spring on the Platte River when Sam Bass and Joe Collins made a big haul from a train robbery.  The drive crew included Bill McBee, Quillen Johnson, Bill Henson, Jim Berrington, and three negroes.  The trip took about five months.”

Quoting Joe Chapman: “On March 5th 1874, we took a herd of 1,000 head from Pearsall up the Chisholm Trail , crossing the Guadalupe River at New Braunsfels in a severe rain storm with thunder and lightning.  It was cold.  All hands went to the chuck wagon except W.T. Henson, Old Chief ( a negro) and me.  We had to let the herd drift.  Took us 2 or 3 days to recover the herd, 30 head short.”

Quoting Jesse Kilgore of San Antonio:  “About the last raid made by Indians near Frio City was in 1877, when a band of redskins passed through the Oge and Woodward pasture 5 miles from Frio City.  Louis Oge, Cav woodward, Bill Henson, and two Mexicans took their trail, sending one Mexican to town to notify the citizens and requesting help. Some thought it was a ruse to break up the dance so did not respond.  In the afternoon, word came that the fight was on with the Indians, men rushed but arrived too late, leaving 46 head of stolen horses.  There were about ten Indians.”

“In 1880 we took a herd of 3,200 head from Mount Woodward Ranch on the Leona River in Frio County to Ogalla, Nebraska.  Billy Henson was the trail boss.  Took us 5 months and 10 days on the trip.  The boss took sick and had to quit.”

Very early in Jacksboro history, September 1858, it became a station for the Butterfield Stage Line which provided service to Santa Fe and California twice a week. On one occasion the stage raced its route in competition with a steamship rounding the lower tip of South America, as to which would reach San Francisco first.  The Stage line won a substantial amount of money by
winning this well publicized race. The Butterfield operated there until the end of the War Between the States.

28 years later, the railroad still had not reached Jack County and the issue of the Gazette of August 23, 1886 notes this advertisement by the Jacksboro & Weatherford Stage Line: “Reduction in fare: On account of hard times the fare on the stage line from Jacksboro to Weatherford in the future will be as follows: Jacksboro to Weatherford $2, round trip $3.  On this route the stage leaves Jacksboro at 7 o’clock a.m. and arrives in Weatherford in time for the 7 o’clock train, and enables travelers to reach all points east as soon as by any other route.”

The issue of the Gazette of October 7, 1886 reads “The Indians are determined that the whites shall not use their country for free range any longer.  The sheriff of Cowee Cowee, one of the districts of the Cherokee Nation, passed through Vinita, Indian Territory with thousands of cattle belonging to United States citizens.  The officers first tried to drive the stock into Kansas, but the citizens in the state secured the enforcement of Kansas law against their introduction.  But determined not to be outdone they drove over into Arkansas, where there is no law preventing.  In some instances the intruders had hay put up, and established ranches and made many other improvements.”

The Gazette issue of October 14, 1886 quotes a candidate for the office of Sheriff “I came to the area in 1849.  It was a wilderness.  How did I come?  I came from Fort Smith swinging a whip over a government ox team, my shoes were worn out and I was barefooted, the grass burrs being so bad and I not being able to get a pair of shoesI served as sheriff of Young County for a year and a half (1856) and received $75 in county script”.

There are deeds recorded in Jack County, transferring, in consideration of $5 in hand, 150 acres of land by Joseph and Mary Henson to their son Asa Henson in July 1870, also the transfer of 168 acres of land in consideration of $136 to M. A. Lawrence in October 1871, also the sale of two town lots to James R. Robinson in consideration of a note for $200 in October 1871, also
the transfer of another tract of land to their son Asa Henson in July 1869, acreage unclear.
 

. There are deeds for Jack County, transferring, in consideration of $5 in hand, 150 acres of land by Joseph and Mary Henson to their son Asa Henson in July 1870, also the transfer of 168 acres of land in consideration of $136 to M. M. A. Lawrence in October 1871, also the sale of two town lots to James R. Robinson in consideration of a note for $200 in October 1871, also the transfer of another tract of land to their son Asa Henson in July 1869 acreage unclear.

There are probate records dated April 1888 from Jack County for settlement of the estates of Joseph Henson, who died in 1887 wife,Polly Henson heir and executor,  and of J.G. Lawrence brother-in-law Joseph Henson Jr.guardian and executor, and of J.S. Lauderdale who died 1867 brother-in-law Joseph Henson Jr. executor and guardian, and of Joseph T. Henson Jr. who died June 1900 wife Nancy Caroline Henson heir and executor.

Probate of the estate of Joseph Henson Sr.,January 10, 1888 lists the following property :

 -Three town lots _______________________________$  800.-
 -Two town lots  _______________________________ $  500.---
 -Three pair of blankets @$2.50,  One quilt $0.50    _____$      8.---
 -One bedstead_________________________________$       .50
 -One set of books ______________________________ $       .50
 -Four chairs ___________________________________$     1.-
 -One cooking stove  _____________________________$   10.---
 -Four plates, one cup and three saucer   s_____________ $       .40
 -One old gun  __________________________________$       .50
 -One table  ____________________________________$       .50
 -One clock @ $3--,  One looking glass $0.05    ________ $     3.05
 -Note on W. L. Garvin @ 12% interest    _____________ $ 537.28
 -   “      “   D. C. Brown            “              ____________   $1,194.06
                           -with credits as follows:
 -Paid on said notes   _____________________________$    63.83
 -  “      “    “     “       _____________________________ $  572.06
 -  “      “    “     “       _____________________________ $  143.85
 -  “      “    “     “       _____________________________ $   125.-
 -  “      “    “     “       _____________________________$     77.90

 When his father Joseph died in 1887, Ace’s mother, Polly, was numbered among the many widows of the veterans of the Texian War of Independence.  The State of Texas had honored these widows by a special 2,000 acre grant to be exercised in the public domain of Texas.  After his father’s estate was settled and the receipt of a 2,000 acre widow’s grant from the State of Texas for his mother, Asa and his associate Charles Hensley decided to leave Jack county and enter the final Texas frontier of the high dry plains of the Panhandle of Texas,  where the Panhandle of Oklahoma was loosely considered a part of the Indian Territory and an outlet for the Cherokee Nation as it moved back and forth to hunt.  Part of Joseph’s family moved to a fork of the Red River only to later find to their surprise that they were in Oklahoma rather than Texas.

  Charles Goodnight established one of the first ranches in the Texas Panhandle, the JA Ranch in 1876.   Thomas S. Bugbee established the first ranch in Hutchinson County later that year.  As a result of soaring beef prices, ranching proliferated in this region of the United States in the 1880’s.  The Texas Panhandle with its open range and expansive grasslands became the preferred winter grazing site for cattle migrating south from Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Kansas.  This seasonal influx disrupted the practice of local area ranchers who went to great lengths to respect adjacent ranch boundaries.  Members of the Panhandle Stock Association pooled their resources and in 1882-85 erected barbed wire barbed wire barriers along a 200 mile stretch of the Panhandle including Hutchinson County to prevent cattle from drifting south into the fertile Canadian River valley.  This “drift fence” worked too well in the winters of 1886-1887 when thousands of cattle drifted south ahead of strong storms.  These cattle stalled at the fence line and froze or were trampled to death.  The staggering losses prompted Federal and state legislation which limited fencing on public lands and the “drift fence” was removed or incorporated into private ranch farming

 Ace Henson came to the Canadian River in the Panhandle of Texas in 1887.  Times were not good in Jacksboro.  He had been ranching in Jack County, but his father’s death and , reportedly, some problems in family and the further beckoning of the frontier led him and his family about 400 miles to the NorthWest..  The Plains country had the wide open ranges he was looking for.  The vast herds of buffalo had been decimated.  The Comanche had all their ponies killed in the Palo Duro Canyon by the U.S. Army and were on the reservation in white man’s schools.  Free range on the Staked Plains of the Panhandle was there for the taking.  He first located in Hutchinson County, North of the Canadian River on Morse Creek, about six miles east of the present town of Plemons and ten miles west of Adobe Walls, where they received their mail and attended the Methodist church.  In 1890, the Henson family moved into the new town of Panhandle.   His family would spend the next twenty years riding to pickup their mail in Adobe Walls, Mineral Wells, Hutchinson City, and Carson City.  Hutchinson City and Adobe Walls became ghost towns.  Carson City became the present town of Panhandle, county seat of Carson County.

Potter County was organized August 30, 1887 by 53 qualified electors.  With the vote of the 38 cowboys from the LX ranch, Amarillo was elected as the county seat.  Hutchinson County was formed at about the same time out of Wheeler County.  In 1887, Ace took his son, Jim, engaged a number of cowboys and drove one thousand six hundred head of cattle from Jacksboro range to the Canadian River in Hutchinson County as noted above.  He had colleagues from Jacksboro in the cattle business, Mr. Harrell and Charles Hensley who also moved herds into the area of Hutchinson and Carson Counties.   Ace worked his cattle with  Jim Lachman of the DBL brand..  These three (Henson, Hensley, and Harrell) formed a Cattle Company, known as the Hensley, Harrell, and Henson that, in 1890-1891, had nearly 48,000 acres under lease at three cents a year per acre, in Carson and Hutchinson Counties, extending over intoOklahoma Territory to what is now Roger Mills County of Oklahoma.  Charles Hensley and Charles Adair were credited (Trail Life of the Cowman, by E. P. Earhart) in first driving a trail from Jack to Abilene crossing the Red River in Montague and the Arkansas at a trading post run by Cherokee Jesse Chisholm.  This became the famous Chisholm Trail.

Charles Hensley was the husband of  Mary Cooper, whose brother Ira had married Susan Jay, the half-sister of Ace Henson’s wife Julia. Ira’s son Cal Merchant, age 22, helped drive a herd of O.S. Company cattle in 1887 to the DBL Ranch, then went to work for the DBL.  The DBL was sold to the Turkey Track Ranch then to a group headed by Mr. Wells from the International Meat Packing Company of Chicago in 1890-1891 before being swallowed up by a Scottish Syndicate known as the Hansford Land and Cattle Company).  Cal continued there for fourteen years, first as trail boss to Dodge City for three years, then as foreman at the Adobe Walls HQ for the ranch.  In 1898 Cal filed on three sections (approximately 2,000 acres) of land in Hutchinson County, north of the Canadian for which he paid $ 2 per acre.  He later bought two additional sections of land (approximately 1,300 acres) at $ 5 per acre.  Ace henson,s grandaughter,Louie Goodnight, spent a summer vacation on this ranch while at business school in Amarillo around 1914 and maintained a close relationship with the Merchant family..

 Ace had his own DBL ranch and managed other ranches for groups such as the International Packing Co. of Chicago, and the University system in Nebraska.  International paid him $2,500 a year to manage their interest.  Ace kept, I believe, nearly every receipt, letter, notebook, tally book, and other business document that he received. The notations are poignant, revealing lonesomeness while on the range.  There were various hand written promissory notes with his father, and several business men.  Often most of the words were phonetically spelled.  All were honored and, as they were paid, the signature was torn off and destroyed.  At his death in 1925, his daughter Eula had a small trunk where his gunbelt, photographs, and these documents were stashed. At one time this included a brochure from the railroads offering lands to settlers along the main line that connected through to California. Driving across the Canadian River, south of Dumas, Texas, years later, his daughter Eula would point out, every time, a small mesa north of the river on the east side of the highway where her father would go to watch over his cattle.  He drove cattle through Indian Territory, later Oklahoma Territory, and through Canadian, Texas to the rail head in Kansas.  He was the first sheriff of Carson County and had passes on all the railroads in Texas.

The following excerpt is from a Panhandle, Texas newspaper article on Carson County pioneers:
 “In the fall of 1889, Ace brought the other two members of his family, his wife, Ann, and their two daughters, Eula and Louie to their new home.  They came from Jacksboro by train to Washburn and on to Panhandle.  The Plains country put on a weather demonstration for their arrival; the ground was white with a heavy covering of snow.  The weather was very cold.

 Ace hired a hack, put hot bricks and warm blankets in it to keep the family warm while enroute to their new ranch home which was about sixty miles away.  Before leaving for the ranch, they stopped in front of the one drug store and the post office, which were both operated by Ed Carhart.  Typical of the friendly spirit of the new country, Mr. and Mrs. Carhart came out to the hack and met Julia Henson and daughters.

 The trip to the ranch took nearly all day.  There were only two wire fences between the town of Panhandle and the Henson Ranch; these enclosed the ranch on Dixon Creek.

 After a long cold drive Julia Henson saw in the distance a rambling ranch home.  Closer view told her the house was made of adobe brick, with dirt roof and plastered walls.  The rooms were like the country they had crossed, wide and spacious.  All eight rooms were very large.  The kitchen and dining room were together.

 Julia Henson’s room was larger than the other rooms and had a big fire place filled with a roaring fire.  Jim and group of the cowboys were sitting around the fireplace polishing buffalo horns.  The house also had a commissary and numerous bedrooms. Ace kept a large number of cowboys, and there was a bunk house provided for them.

 “Really my mother and father were pioneers, Jim, Eula and I had our ways as modern as it was possible for our parents to make it," said daughter Louie Callaghan.   "Even my mother, though she was among the early settlers in this country knew little of the hardships that many of the pioneer women experienced.  Perhaps my father knew her background and wanted her to love the wide open country he had taken her to, so he planned and made life as near like it was in Jack County as it was possible for her and our family”.

 Ace brought Jake, the first Negro to this country.  Jake was very loyal to the Hensons.  He always addressed the white people as 'Mr. Ace', 'Mr. Jim', always using a title before the name.  When round-up time came Jake went with the chuck wagon.  However, Ace had another one of the boys trained to help around the Henson home.  His extra helper, a German man, was entrusted with the responsibility of killing and curing the meat, rendering the lard, making the supply of hominy in the big hoppers, as well as taking Jake’s place he went with the chuck wagon.  He also used his ingenuity and made barrels of home-made grape wine from the wild grapes that grew on the river.

Ace bought in wholesale lots.  The commissary was stocked with barrels of flour and sugar and cases of coffee, the Arbuckle kind.  “I was so small that one of my most vivid memories was going into the commissary and opening the packages of coffee to get the prizes they contained.  Jake was really angry with me for opening the coffee,"   Mrs. Callaghan said.

 "My mother”,  said Mrs. Callaghan. “was a wonderful woman.  In later years I have wondered just how much mother missed the friends, her home, her church and the much more cultured way of life that she had left behind her.  She knew that her husband was a real cattleman and these vast acres was just what he needed and wanted, so she never complained or murmured about the new way of life.  If she were lonely for the old home or disappointed with the new one, no one ever guessed it."

 At the time the Ace Henson family came to their ranch, Panhandle was a very small town.  There was only one house between Panhandle and the ranch, a place on Dixon Creek.  There were the Paul Bank; a feed store owned by J. E. Southwood; John Young, a Scotchman operated a general merchandise store; a hotel; a livery stable run by Will Coon; the school house; the courthouse; 2 saloons; and no churches.  All social life and church life centered on the court house.

 Mrs. Callaghan was at one time one of four children in Hutchinson County.  There were Mr. and Mrs. Carter who had three small children.  Mr. Carter died and Mrs. Henson cared for the three children until their father made plans for them.

 Mrs. Callaghan says her mother was very happy when Rev.  Sells, a minister in the Methodist Episcopal  church, came to Panhandle and led the people in constructing the first church building. The church really belonged to the people, for everyone gave money for the erection of the building, the saloon keepers, the gamblers, the cowboys, the church people.  Almost everyone contributed something.

 One of the outstanding social events during this time was a dance held at the Ace Henson ranch.  People had come to the plains because they wanted broad acres, so they did not let long distances handicap them.   People came to the dance from Liberal, Kans., Beaver, Okla., Canadian,  Amarillo, and Panhandle.  Among the guests was Miss Rose McQuillan, formerly of New York, N. Y., who had come to live on her brother’s ranch at Beaver County, Okla.  The music was furnished by Jess Wynne, of Panhandle, and John Haggart.  Sheriff T. N. Adams came with his bride, the former Kate Farlow.

 The guests were served in the early evening when they arrived.  At midnight a sumptuous dinner was served.  They danced all night and were then served breakfast before they departed.  The people were widely scattered, so when they did get together they made a real affair of their social gathering.

 Miss McQuillan was a very accomplished musician, and Ace persuaded her to come to his home as a governess and music teacher for his daughter Louie.

 Perhaps the greatest worry of these pioneers was when illness came.  At first a doctor was not available and as they did come later, the first ones were called ‘horse doctors’.  One winter several of the cowboys became ill with what people in those days called la grippe (influenza).  Mrs. Henson gave them quinine and whiskey; soon all had recovered.  Later she learned this was the doctor’s remedy.

 At another time Julia Henson was very ill and Cal Merchant swam his horse across the Canadian River in order to reach Panhandle and get medicine for her.  The treacherous Canadian quicksands always had to be dealt with and this time it was a factor when illness came.

 Later the family moved to Panhandle in order to be accessible to school. Ace bought a house east of the Assembly of God church; it is one of the landmarks still standing.  The townfolk were impressed when Ace had the first lightning rods installed on his house.  The Carhart’s home was at that time just across the street from them.

 Mrs. Callaghan always had a warm feeling for the first little church built in Panhandle.  It came as a loving gift from all the people, so its dedication was real and sacred. For years she was organist of the church.

 Ace’s first daughter, Eula, (Louie’s mother) was married at this church. Their attendants were: Frank Elston, father of Mrs. Letha Gramer; Jessee Jay’s grandaughter Annie Cooper, who later became Mrs. Cal Merchant, of Clarendon; Tom Cleek; Olive Coffer, who became Mrs. Lucien Sellers; Willie Cooper , who is now Mrs. Roy Carhart; and Roy Carhart.”

 Ace was a steward and trustee of the First Methodist church.  He was the first mayor of Panhandle, served two terms as Sheriff and tax collector and was for many years a member of the school board.  He was also agent for the Lone Star Commission Company for many years.  During his tenure as the first sheriff of Carson County, Ace had free passes on all the railroads serving Texas.  His cattle business took him to the conventions in Kansas City, to all the towns, big and modest, along the trail.  While in Woodward, Oklahoma Territory, he received a letter from his family including scrawled notes from his children and a note from his wife informing him that their youngest daughter, Louie, had been confirmed in the Methodist Church.  He responded along these lines ‘Louie girl I’m proud of you.  I know you’ll do your best.  Write to me again, I’ll be stayin in Jake’s Saloon.’

 Asbery and Louie Callaghan had two daughters, Pauline (Mrs. H. J. Friday Hughes of Panhandle), and Lillian (Mrs. Howard Anderson of Corpus Christi, Texas).  Neither had children.”

   Guymon, Beaver County, Oklahoma Territory
The towns of this region are young enough that many of the original buildings and houses are still standing.  Some are gone, in the course of growth, but those that remain would have some interesting tales to tell.  In Hardesty, the saloon of trail driving days was dismantled, moved to Guymon, and is gone .  The house built near the present Guymon hospital by the early Norwegian land promoter, Mort, still stands.  The Panhandle Hotel and  the old Fire Station on the Main Street of Guymon are gone as is the skating rink which stood in the 600 block of Ellison Street in Guymon.  Of those early houses that remain in Guymon,  to me the most intriguing is the wee house just next to
the Garst Hotel on Ellison Street.  To chronicle these houses and buildings is an important part of the history of the region and perhaps we can develop a reasonable thread of articles on those.

One such house, a large two story white house,  was built on the northeast corner of the intersection of Fifth and Main Streets in Guymon.  Eight members of the McQuillan  family from Belfast, Ireland, brothers (  John A., Thomas R., and James L.) and sisters (Elizabeth Mary O’Neil, Mary Ann, Margaret, Nellie, and Rose Anna) had originally emigrated with their parents ( Alexander A. McQuillan and his wife-Margaret O’Kane) to Boston and New York City around 1880.  These  siblings  were in Meade County, Kansas before coming into No Man’s Land and homesteading on or near the Beaver River.  Fred Tracy in his memoirs notes the startled impression on his wife as they were travelling through the Beaver valley to note that ‘all of the furniture, piano, sterling silverware, and art work’ were in the kitchen of the house of John McQuillan.

The children of that generation recalled often visiting on the family ranch (The old OX) , hunting Indian graves and beads along the fences and hiding in the buffalo wallows.  Writing in 1965, one of the them recalled standing on the porch of the old OX at Christmas time when John McQuillan pointed across to the trestle over the Beaver River being built for the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad which was ‘coming through the region’.  Some of the men of the town suggested to John that the new town be named ‘McQuillan’ but he told them that ‘Guymon’ was a much better name for the town.  On December 7, 1904 some three years after the railroad came in and Guymon began to be laid out, John McQuillan and his wife Bella bought all seven lots on the east side of Main Street  between Fifth and Sixth streets from the InterState Land and Town Co. for the price of $185.

Rose Anna (Rosie) Henson had come out to visit her brothers and took a job teaching the children of the Henson, Goodnight, and Cator families on their ranches on the Palo Duro creek along the trail from Old Tascosa near Old Hansford.  Jim Henson courted and married this young Irish lass a few days before her twenty-third birthday in November 1893 in the McQuillan house on the old OX Ranch just downstream from where Hwy US54 now crosses the Beaver River.  This was the the first Roman Catholic solemnized wedding in the area.  In 1904, with several children under the age of eleven, the Henson and Goodnight families packed their wagons and moved to the young town of Guymon, where Jim Henson ran the Senate saloon, Bill Goodnight ran a dray line, and the children started public school.

On February 7, 1905, Rosie Henson bought the southerly three of these lots from her brother John for $105 and the story of this big white house began.  The streets were unpaved and there were board sidewalks.  In September and October of 1905 Jim and Rosie borrowed $1,750 on mortgage and went to work to develop this house for their large family.  In 1916 and 1920 they took additional loans on mortgage to the Texas County Bank and from Rosie’s sister Elizabeth (Lizzie).  Their growing family of nine children needed all the space they could manage.   The family loved this house and, as downtown Guymon grew, they finally decided to move the house and their family to 808 N. Quinn Street and sold the old site in July 1922 to the Masonic Lodge for $6,000.

Rosie was a musician and taught her children to play music and to dance jigs.  This home was the center of what came to be an extended family of several dozen who would gather each year for Christmas, sleeping on the stair landings and spread on the floors and beds.  Music was made every time they were together.

The house was sold again around 1950 and moved to another site, location unknown.  John McQuillan died around 1928 and his family moved back to New York.  Two of his children, Alexander and John, were in the First  World War where John received fatal shrapnel wounds,  Tommy McQuillan was a well known photographer in the region until his death around 1912.  Jim McQuillan ran the saloon and the OX brand north of Guymon on the river.  He later went on a trail drive to Montana where he trapped and died in 1932 in Big Timber, Montana.  Rosie died in Wichita, Kansas in 1937.  Her husband Jim Henson, ran the Senate Saloon and Smoke House in Guymon for many years and  died in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma around 1960.
 

The following excerpt is from a Guymon, Oklahoma newspaper article on Pioneer Queens

“OLD TIMERS HAVE THEIR QUEEN, IT’S EULA HENSON GOODNIGHT”

 Eula Henson Goodnight of Guymon has been selected as the “Old-Timers Pioneer Day Queen”, Tom Houser, chairman of the old-timers committee said Friday.

Mrs. Goodnight succeeds Mrs. Helen Booth Forman of Guymon , last year’s queen.  She is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Asa L. Henson and was born on March 27, 1874 at Jacksboro, Texas.  She came to the Texas Panhandle when 15 years old.

 Her father “Uncle Ace” Henson, had moved his cattle to the High Plains in 1887, locating on the old D.B. L. ranch on the Canadian river, ten miles west of Adobe Walls, and moved his family to the ranch in 1889.

 She and her brother,  Jim Henson, spent their time in riding the range helping with the cattle.  Her special job was to ride to Adobe Walls once each week to get the mail.

Education during that day and time was not neglected, however, Mrs. Goodnight’s father obtained the services of Miss Rosa McQuillen of New York City, who was visiting her brother, Jim McQuillen, on the Beaver.

 Miss McQuillan became a private tutor, teaching “books and music” to Misses Eula and Louie Henson, and later became the bride of Jim Henson, their brother.

 In 1891 the Hensons moved to Panhandle. Texas, 30 miles East of Amarillo.  Square dances were held in the Carson County court house with people riding in from miles away with their families for these wonderful social occasions.  Eula soon met a harmonica playing cowboy with the Matagorda ranch who called these dances.
.
February 19, 1893, Miss Eula Henson was married to a harmonica playing cowboy,William M. Goodnight, at Panhandle.  The couple had seven children, two of whom died in infancy.  Their oldest son, Harry, died in 1941.

 Mr. and Mrs. Goodnight moved to the Palo Duro in 1900.  This tested her mettle as a real Pioneer.  When her husband had to leave to freight their supplies from Channing with a six-mule team and wagons, she had to stay at home alone with her children.  Rattle snakes, coyotes, sickness and hard living were encountered.

 Mr. and Mrs. Goodnight moved to Guymon in 1903, coming  in covered wagons.  It took two days to make the trip with their their children, baggage, and a milk cow.

 Since Mr. Goodnight’s death she has made her home with her daughter, Mrs. Louie Adams, 816 N. Ellison .  Other surviving children are James Goodnight of San Francisco, California; Mrs. Helen Oliver of Amarillo, Texas; and Jack Goodnight of Great Bend , Kansas”