Untitled Document

Tench Carson Sammons b June 10, 1845, Greenville Dist, South Carolina

Elvira DeShazo b November 3, 1846, AL

 

Tench Carson and Elvira Deshazo SAMMONS

Tench Carson Sammons

was a Presbyterian minister. Graduated Larissa College, TX, run by Cumberland Presbyterians which later combined with two other colleges to form Trinity University. He believed in evolution. He helped to found Presbyterian, Baptist, Lutheran, and Methodist Churches in McGregor area. Elvira DeShazo's family were staunch supporters of the Southern cause in the War Between the States. She lost four brothers in the war.

Tench served with Ben Sawyer's Company- "Jabe Curry Rifles" (Co K, 24th AL Infantry)

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Information from Hope Pees ([email protected]):

Tench Carson Sammons, son of John Reed Sammens (Sammons) and Narcissa Norris Killough Sammens, was born in Greenville District, South Carolina on June 10, 1845. The family moved to Cherokee County, Texas in 1850 and to Alabama when the Civil War began. He fought with Company K, 24th AL regiment of Volunteers in the Confederate Army and suffered a Minnie ball wound in the knee which left him with a life-long limp. Tench Carson Sammons learned the trade of cabinet maker from his father, John Reed Sammens, before taking up the trade of pattern-maker at the iron works in Shelby County, Alabama. In 1870, he returned to Texas and entered the Presbyterian ministry of the Cumberland Presbyterians. He was a devout student, learning both Hebrew and Aramaic. He was ordained in 1874.

In the 1880's he moved his family to McGregor where he was the minister of McGregor Cumberland Presbyterian Church from 1885 to July 1891, and later engaged in evangelistic work while having charge of the churches at Crawford and Tonk Creek. He was clerk of the Trinity and Brazos Presbyteries for a total of fifteen years. He also served two terms as engrossing clerk of the State Synod. In addition to preaching, he was a carpenter and in his spare time did engraving, fitted glasses, repaired watches and made all the pulpits in town.

In an effort to prove that the Brazos River was navigable, he and two other residents of the county successfully navigated the Brazos River from Waco to the Gulf of Mexico in an eighteen foot motor boat which he built himself in November of 1908. He built a boat every winter, fished from it all summer and then gave it to whoever owned the pond he had fished in that summer.

In 1868 (or 1867) he married Elvira DeShazo; they had two daughters, Corrie Augusta Sammons and Lilly Ella Sammons. Sammons was a member of the McGregor Masonic Lodge and the Knights of Pythias. He was a 33rd degree Mason.

 Elvira DeShazo Sammons

Elvira DeShazo, age 15

 Tench Carson Sammons

Tench Carson Sammons

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