Will Conner was born on October,29, 1971 at Bickle’s Cove in Stone County, Arkansas. He was orphaned at age two and raised by the Joseph Walker Bickle family there. In 1892, Will and friends, Andrew and Ulysses “Liss” McIntire, with a wagon and two horses came to Texas. They settled at Garland, where Will later […]
George and Miley Nelson were the first residents of the Liberty Grove Community to own a television. Miley Hatley Nelson was born in the foothills of the Ozarks alongside the Arkansas River. She was the only child born to Martin and Willis Hatley. However, her father already had six children before he married Willis, and […]
THE STATE FAIR of Texas, at eighty-six years of age (1977 article), the largest and most successful in any of the fifty states, had a far from tranquil start. Extending over a period of months, the issue of where to launch the fair split the business element wide open. Since neither side would give in, […]
Wesley Fletcher Curtis and his wife, Elizabeth Pearl, arrived with some of their family in Dallas County in 1873. As indicated by a deed, they purchased two-and-one-half acres in the Lagow Survey in east Dallas and built a house. Two years later they moved to the area now in north Mesquite where they settled first on the […]
According to Beatrice Pelton Merritt, it was sometime around 1922 when the old Liberty Schoolhouse (northeast of Rowlett) and the Elm Grove Schoolhouse were closed. These schools were merged and the principal of the new Liberty Grove School would be Professor J. K. Wells. This new modern school had four rooms for grades one thru […]
Elizabeth Jane Routh was born near Knoxville, Tennessee in 1828. She married 25 October 1850 to James Thomas born 1822 in Tennessee. One year after their marriage, she accompanied her brothers Jacob and Joseph Routh, her mother, and an orphaned niece, Rachel Elizabeth Mann, to Texas, leaving Dandridge, Jefferson County, Tennessee on October 2, 1851, […]
MAYOR BEN LONG’S second term at the city hall, which opened in November, 1872, was faced with an alarming number of urgent urban problems. Dallas was at a turning point in its development. The new board of aldermen—the first to be elected rather than appointed since 1861—not only faced but sought to solve those problems […]
AMONG DALLAS COUNTY communities better known for their peaceful ways and well-ordered society is Lancaster, long a model of law and order. In the earliest days of its settlement, though, life in Lancaster was fairly rough and tumble. The open saloon—six of them, as a matter of fact—held sway there until well toward the end […]
The unofficial Mayor and First Lady of Rowlett would have been celebrating their 95th birthdays this week had they remained with us. But, Vernon Schrade passed to his reward on December 12, 2015 and Lorene followed on August 16, 2016. They were married for 69 years. Vernon was the son of Gottlob and Martha Bryant […]
John Vest Folsom was born in Coryell County on November 11, 1898 to Agnes Ann Traller and Samuel Christopher Folsom. Samuel, the son of Nancy Cobb and Elias Folsom, was born in Georgia in 1857. Agnes, the daughter of Sara Steven-son and Joseph H. Traller, was born in Gatesville on July 5, 1869. Her father […]
James Paris Goodnight (1831-1885) and Mary Ann Hill (1835-1900) were married on September 21, 1854 in Franklin, Kentucky. Early in October, 1854, they left for Dallas County, Texas. They traveled for six weeks with a party of several families, using horse-drawn wagons to transport themselves and their household goods. They settled on a farm in […]
Major (Confederate Army) John Mayrant Smith was born May 31, 1842. He and his wife, Mary Terry Smith, moved to Dallas from Galveston shortly after the hurricane there in 1900. His wife was the daughter of Colonel Benjamin Franklin Terry, 8th Texas Cavalry of Terry’s Texas Rangers. His statue (on horseback) is on the State Capitol […]
Dearest, sister Jane, This country is unbelievable! You cannot imagine the weather. Last weekend we had ice and a bit of sleet.Today the temperature feels like early summer. I am not even wearing a coat as I begin this epistle. I look out over the countryside and see a few patches of green. This morning […]
The roots of the Patrick Community in southeastern Dallas County reach back to Ireland. Isaac Patrick and his wife came from Ireland and parented John Patrick. John married Elizabeth Calloway and had a son named Alexander, November 14, 1794, in Virginia. Alexander moved to Madison County, Kentucky, and married Catherine White in 1818. From their […]
One early Pleasant Valley (Sachse) area settler was a preacher man that ran a mule powered cotton gin to supplement his income. J. B. Minnis settled here in the 1870’s. He had even invented a sucking machine for unloading cotton, and was offered $30,000 for the invention (about $7500, 000 today). He refused to sell […]
James M. Parker was born October 1, 1801 in Shelby County, Kentucky. He came to Pleasant Valley (now part of Sachse, TX) in the early 1850’s and settled on a farm that consisted of wild prairie grass so thick that it would take a double yoke of oxen just to break it open. James had […]
THERE IS SOME QUESTION whether Dallas County’s red stone courthouse belongs to the story of local government or to the history of warfare between divergent tastes as to what constitutes good architecture in a public building. If the old building itself could speak, it would undoubtedly say that the first seventy-five years are the hardest. […]
GEORGE M DILLEY, a highly successful railroad-building contractor who had a major part in the expansion of rail lines in Texas in the final quarter of the last century, moved to Dallas from Huntsville in the late 1880s and enjoyed a certain instant fame from almost the moment of his arrival on the local scene. […]
The first white settlers in Dallas County owed a great deal to Gen. Edward H. Tarrant, as did those who settled some thirty miles to the west in the county that was named for the general. It was on May 24, 1841, that Tarrant headed a company of seventy Republic of Texas soldiers who expelled […]
THE CONTINUOUS need for homes to house the growing population made the opening of new real estate “additions” familiar to the town from the days of John Neely Bryan himself. In 1852, three years before Dallas was incorporated, William Caruth bought the land north of Bryan’s tract — bounded today by Ross Avenue, Lamar, McKinney […]
