Grayson County; an illustrated history of Grayson County, Texas. Page: 15
180 p. : ill., maps, ports. ; 28 cm.View a full description of this book.
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the land to which they had come had a tendency to go
bone dry in the summer and was far from sub-tropical
in the winter. Besides, there were just enough Indian
outrages committed in the colony limits during those
years to keep the whites nervous. Some of the settlers
found that they were on land that had already been
preempted. All in all they became pretty disgusted.
They attempted to gain relief through the Republican
congress and through court action but with no decisive
results.
Aware that their project was about to fail, the Company
sent Henry O. Hedgecoxe to Texas as representative
plenipotentiary. Hedgecoxe combined elements of
personality which made him totally unfit for negotiation.
He was inflexible, haughty, and had been born in
England, although he had lived in America for many
years. Hedgecoxe attacked his duties with unfortunate
zeal He immediately notified all settlers that they owed
the Peters Company one half of the land that they had
taken up as per the original contract with the Republic.
Relations between Hedgecoxe and the colonists deterioated
rapidly. At length in 1852 the colonists in
Dallas County under the leadership of John J. Goode
rode to the Collin County headquarters of the Company,
captured the Company files, roughed the agent
up a bit, and told him to leave Texas. Although Hedgecoxe
did not leave as directed, his usefulness to the
Company was at an end.
At this juncture it was deemed expedient to hold
meetings of settlers in each of the counties in which
the Peters Company had operated to elect delegates
to a convention in McKinney where they should determine
the action to be taken. From Grayson County, the
delegates were William S. Reeves, the Rev. Azariah
Bone, William Southwood, J. B. Earhart, T. H. Wilson,
and Burrell P. Smith. Bone was elected president of
the McKinney meeting.
Interest in the affairs of the Peters Colony was by
no means confined to the colonists themselves. Holders
of land script were equally concerned, and many of
those who attended the meeting in McKinney were not
Peters Company settlers. The situation was finally settler
by act of the Legislature in 1853 which in effect
ratified the status quo. In Grayson County there were
192 grants issued. Not all of these grants were actually
occupied, however.
The Peters colonization did a great deal for Grayson
County. Among early leaders of civic and social
life were the following colonists: Solomon Bostick, the
Rev. Asbury Cartwright, James Chaffin, John Haning,
George R. Reeves, James G. Thompson, James H. Vaden,
Charles C Quillan, William W. Wheat, and Joshua
West. Of the 192 settlers all were of course farmers
but many of them were versed in a trade as well. There
were three clerks, five blacksmiths, two merchants, one
grocer, one shoemaker, two preachers, nine carpenters,
one cooper, two physicians, one school teacher, one saddler,
two men who listed their occupation as "justice
of the peace," and one whose occupation was listed as
"sheriff."
SOUTHERN PRECINCTS.
The settlement of the southern precincts of the
county began about 1844. Among the first settlers were
the Everharts, the Milams, the Creagers, the McKinneys,
the Dumas family, and the Wheats.
James Everhart was born in Tennessee about 1813.
We may assume that he settled in Grayson no sooner
than 1843, when Fletcher Everhart was born, and no
later than 1845 when he is known to have been in the..?i:5~ -5:; (" . 5?
x
MARY A. E. DUMAS-The magnificent crocheted mantilla of
Mrs. J. P. Dumas indicates that the pioneer woman was as fond
of beautiful clothing as are her descendants.
The McKinney family is one of the most distinguished
of frontier families Daniel McKinney migrated
from Ireland to America about 1750. Two of his
sons were Daniel and Collin McKinney. The latter is
well known to Texans from the circumstance that he
was honored in the naming of Collin County and its
county seat, McKinney, Texas. By his second wife he
was the father of Eliza McKinney Milam and Younger
Scott McKinney. Daniel McKinney II was the father
of Bexie (or Beckie) McKinney, who married William
Creager. Thus Daniel McKinney I is the ancestor of the
pioneer Grayson families of McKinney, Milam, and
Creager, among others.
Eliza McKinney Milam was the wife of Jefferson
Milam, the brother of the famous Ben Milam, hero of
the battle of San Antonio. It would seem that the
Milam family was among the very first of the settlers
in the southern part of the county since Jefferson
Milam died there in 1844. William Creager settled in
Grayson County in 1845. Collin McKinney moved
from Bowie County to the northern border of Collin
County in 1846, and Younger Scott McKinney came in
1849.
James Pinkney Dumas was born in Greenville District,
South Carolina on September 12, 1820. In 1841
he married Mary Anne Elizabeth Thompson, born
in Fayette County, Alabama, and they moved to
Texas. During the first four years of their residence
in Texas they lived in the following places: Nashville,
Milam County; Little River, near Cameron; the falls
of the Brazos; "Buck Snort;" and Dallas. In the latter
city, Dumas built the third house and in the capacity of
surveyor laid out the pattern of the downtown streets
exactly as they are today. For this work he was paid in
'lots in the townsite he had laid off. Unfortunately he
thought so little of the prospects of the city that he
did not bother to record the tite.
In 1845 the Dumas family spent some months with
Robert Fitzhugh in Collin County and became impres-
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An illustrated history of Grayson County, Texas with numerous photographs and a pioneer name index (p. 120).
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Landrum, Graham. Grayson County; an illustrated history of Grayson County, Texas., book, 1960; Fort Worth, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth24647/m1/19/: accessed April 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.