BENTON
Our Benton
family ancestry can be positively traced back to Nancy
Ann Gooch, who was born in Caswell County, North
Carolina around 1757. She married Jesse Benton around
1777 in Granville County, North Carolina. Jesse
died young, leaving his wife Nancy with several children
and very little money. In life Jesse Benton was
considered to be a wealthy man but he made some bad
investments and was deeply in debt when he died. In
lawsuits that followed, most of the property she
inherited was taken away. In the late 1790's, she packed
up what she could carry in a wagon and struck out for
Tennessee, with her children. They settled on homestead
land north of Nashville and were some of the earliest
settlers in that part of Tennessee. She was the
mother of Thomas Hart Benton, who was later a lawyer
and a distinguished U.S. Senator from the State of Missouri.
BERRY
Our Berry
family history can be positively traced back to Francis
Berry, who was born in Virginia around 1763. He was a
pioneer and adventurer who always lived on the edge of
civilization. I believe he wandered into the rugged
Rocky Mountain country when he was younger and lived
there for several years as a trapper and mountain man. He
came to Texas in 1823 and was
one of the original settlers of the old Dewitt’s Colony.
It is believed that his wife was a young Indian squaw. Their daughter, Lourahama
(Lorohama) Rue Berry, married Samuel Clinton
Neill in Texas around 1845. Their daughter, Sarah
Elizabeth Neill, married James Sanford Callahan in
Caldwell County, Texas in 1866.
CALLAHAN
(click here to view more
about this family)
Our Callahan
family history can be positively traced back to James
Hughes Callahan, who was born in Georgia in 1814. The
Callahan's have a rich history in Ireland and it is
believed that his grandfather came to America in the
1700's. probably settling in Pennsylvania. The family
migrated on to North Carolina, South Carolina and
Georgia.
He left his
home in Georgia to travel to Texas as a young volunteer soldier in 1835. He
was in Captain Ward's company and served under Col. Fannin
for a short time. He narrowly escaped being
executed by the Mexicans at the Goliad Massacre. He
later served as a Texas Ranger and became a Captain,
operating out of Seguin, often
leading companies of minute men which were hastily
formed for short term service to defend the settlers on
the frontier in early day Texas. He
rode with Jack Hays and Big Foot Wallace and
participated in many battles against marauding Indians
and bandits. He led the ill fated “Callahan’s
Expedition” into Mexico in 1855. He was killed by a
neighbor during a dispute in April of 1856, probably
over a slanderous comment the neighbor made against
Capatin Callahan. His son, James Sanford
Callahan, saw service as a Cavalryman in the Confederate
Army during the Civil War, and also saw service as a
frontier Texas Ranger in the 1870's. James Sanford Callahan
married Sarah Elizabeth Neill in 1866 in Caldwell
County, Texas. Their daughter, Willie Katherine
Callahan, married John Wesley Phillips around 1890 in
the Indian Territory. Their son, Walter Lee Phillips,
was my father.
DAVIS
Our Davis
family history can be positively traced back to Sarah
Elizabeth Jane Davis, who was born in 1846. She married
William Elijah Gooch in 1872 in Lee County, Mississippi.
They were my great grandparents. Research about the Davis family is on-going.
DAY
(click
here to view more about this family)
Our Day
family history can be positively traced back to Sarah
Medisa Day, who was born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama in 1823.
She came to Texas as a child with her family in 1836. He
father was Johnson Day and he was referred to as "Judge
Day" in early correspondence. He died in 1838, shortly
after the family settled in Texas. Her brother, James
Milford Day, was quite famous in his own right - a frontier Texas
Ranger and a close friend of her future husband, James
Hughes Callahan. James Milford Day was badly wounded while fighting Indians
around 1841 near Gonzales, Texas. His wounds left him
crippled for the rest of his life. He could not ride a
horse and his primary means of getting around was in a
specially equipped buggy. After he was injured, his
ranch near Seguin, Texas was often used as a staging
point and logistics center for the Rangers, as they
prepared for expeditions to search for bandits and
Indians. His home was sometimes turned into a makeshift
hospital, to care for those who were wounded. He remained active
in local politics and lived a
full life. Sarah Medisa Day married James Hughes Callahan in Gonzales County,
Texas in 1843. When her husband was shot and killed in
April of 1856, she was overcome by grief and died five
months later, leaving their five minor children parentless.
James Hughes and Sarah Medisa Day Callahan were my 2nd
great grandparents.
FANNIN
(FANNEN/FANNING)
Our Fannin
family history can be positively traced back to Bessie
Fannin, who was born around 1882 in Texas and married Jesse Gooch in 1901 in Paris, Lamar
County, Texas. They were my grandparents. Research about the Fannin family is
on-going.
GOOCH
(click
here to view more about this family)
Our Gooch
family ancestry can be positively traced back to William
Martin Gooch, who was born January 3, 1824 in Tennessee
or South Carolina. I am not sure about his roots but I
believe his father was also named William Gooch - a son of James Gooch
and grandson of William W. Gooch. There seems to be some family
connections to a Billy Gosling Gooch of Lancaster County,
South Carolina. Billy Gosling Gooch was a cruel planter
and slave owner. He is the “Mr. Gooch” who is mentioned
in the “Narratives of the Adventures and Escape of Moses
Roper from American Slavery”, written by an escaped
Negro slave in the 1800’s. I can find no evidence to
indicate that William Martin Gooch was one of his sons,
but I believe there was communication between those two
Gooch families. William Martin Gooch married
Elizabeth Jane Oliver in Mississippi in 1849. They later
settled in Hunt County, Texas, around 1889, near the town of Celeste,
where both of them later died. Their son, William Elijah
Gooch, reportedly ran away from home to join the
Confederate Army when he was twelve years old and served
as a Drummer Boy. He married Sarah Elizabeth Jane Davis
in 1872. Their son, Jesse Gooch, married Bessie Fannin
in 1901 and they were the parents of my mother, Mava
Opal Gooch.
For the most
part, the Gooch's in our family line were people of the
land - hard working, law abiding, Church going, no
nonsense farmers. They had the old ways of the English -
basically tried to mind their own business and let the
other guy mind his. There were a few exceptions, but
most of them were not in the aristocratic class. Only a
few of the Gooch families owned a large number of Negro
slaves, but most of them believed it was their right to
do so and
they fought and died for the Southern Cause. There were
a few Gooch Yankees in our family tree - especially
among those living in Missouri and Kentucky during the
Civil War years. A few of the older Gooch's I have been
in contact with are still touchy about discussing things
that happened during the Civil War. But once they open
up, they have some very interesting stories to tell.
HART
Our Hart
family ancestry can be positively traced back to Keziah
Ann Hart, who was born in Virginia between 1720 and
1730. She married William W. Gooch around 1746 in
Virginia. The Hart's were frontiersmen and
some of them were closely associated with Daniel Boone,
during his early expeditions to survey and map what is
now West Virginia and Kentucky. The Hart's were early
settler's in Kentucky and became prominent citizens.
They migrated on to other areas from there. William W.
and Keziah Ann Hart Gooch were my 5th great grandparents
(not yet proven).
HEMBREE
Our Hembree
family ancestry can be positively traced back to Sarah
Hembree who was born August 6, 1795 in the Pendleton
District, South Carolina. She married Johnson Day in South
Carolina around 1814. Their daughter, Sarah Medisa Day,
married James Hughes Callahan in Gonzales County, Texas
in 1843. She was the daughter of a minister and deeply
religious. Johnson and Sarah Hembree Day were my 3rd
great grandparents.
KIMBROUGH
(KIMBRO)
Our Kimbrough family history can be positively traced back
to Elizabeth Gooch, who was born around 1750 in Hanover
County, Virginia. She married William Kimbrough around
1770 in
Caswell County, North Carolina. The Kimbrough's were
early settlers around Nashville, Tennessee. Several of the
Kimbrough's were prominent citizens in Tennessee in the
middle 1800's. During the Civila War, many of them were Confederate soldiers
and a few were regimental commanders. Like many others,
some of the Kimbrough's migrated to Texas during the
dreary years after the Civil War was lost by the
Confederates. The Kimbroughs are an allied family, not
in my direct line.
KUYKENDALL
(click
here to view more about this family - PDF document)
Our
Kuykendall family history can be positively traced back
to Mary “Polly” Kuykendall, who was born in 1814 in
Tennessee. The Kuykendall's came from Holland and
originally settled in New York in the 1600's. By the
1800's, Jesse Kuykendall had established a prosperous
plantation in Tennessee. He was not in favor of the
marriage of his daughter, Mary, to Elijah Oliver because
he thought of him as a poor wanderer with little to
offer. She
went ahead and married Elijah Oliver around 1830 anyway, against her father's wishes.
By family stories, she was a very aristocratic
and haughty lady who looked down on many of their white neighbors in
the backwoods country of Mississippi. She also disliked the Chickasaws. Their daughter, Elizabeth Jane Oliver,
married William Martin Gooch in 1849 in Tishomingo
County, Mississippi. Mary was deeply shaken by the
conditions around her in northeast Mississippi after the
Civil War ended. Most of the farms and beautiful homes
were left in shambles and disarray. There was little
money or manpower to do the repairs that were so badly
needed or keep the plantations and farms operating. There were few crops planted and poverty
escalated so that even the most wealthy of the families
suffered. Migrations started in the mid and late 1860's,
after the war ended.
Mary died in 1871 - with a broken spirit and a heavy
heart. There were
mass migrations out of there in the 1870's and 1880's,
when many of the families moved to Texas. Elijah and
Mary "Polly" Kuykendall Oliver were my 3rd great
grandparents.
NEILL
(NAIL) (click here to view
more about this family)
In the early 1970's, my uncle, Otho Benjamin Phillips,
was talking to me about the history of our family in Texas. I
remember him saying, "We are part of the Nail family and
they go back to the Alamo." I was not interested in
genealogy back then but I remembered what my uncle said
years later when I started my research. I ran into a
brick wall in researching the name "Nail", as it could
be related to my family lines in early Texas. Then in
the late 1990's, I came across an old document that
described several branches of the Neill family and in
many places the name was spelled "N-A-I-L". After
following up on that and doing some more research, I
learned this about the family connections:
Our Neill
family history can be positively traced back to Sarah
Elizabeth “Sally” Neill, who was born in 1845 in Texas.
It is believed that she was a daughter of Samuel Clinton
Neill and a grand-daughter of Lt. Col. James
Clinton Neill, who was in command of the Alamo until
shortly before it fell. He was of Scottish descent and
was born in North Carolina around 1790. An old soldier, he fought in the
Indian Wars, serving under Andrew Jackson. It is written
that he was a friend of Sam Houston. They were both
young soldiers at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in
Alabama in 1814, serving under Andrew Jackson. They also
crossed paths later while serving as politicians in
Tennessee. I believe he
had much in common with Houston, including occasionally
taking a drink or two or three of "Tennessee Special Recipe" whiskey,
better known by some as "Tennessee Skunk Piss".
They were both criticized for being too cautious, as
they thought it was nonsense to try to defend the
Alamo with the forces and resources they had available against a horde
of invading Mexicans. Houston wanted to evacuate the
Alamo and "blow it up" - Neill did not want to give it
up but constantly hounded Houston and the government for
more soldiers and direly needed supplies. These assets
were just not available. They both had a hard time dealing
with the younger hot-heads and the politicians that
surrounded them. He is briefly depicted in the
2004 movie, "The Alamo", starring Dennis Quaid
as Sam Houston. In the movie, he turned the command of
the Alamo over to Lt. Col.
William Travis in early February of 1836, taking a temporary leave of absence for
personal reasons involving a serious sickness in his
family - expecting to return to the Alamo in a few
weeks. I believe that part of the movie is historically
accurate. The sickness in the family was probably
Neill's wife, Margaret, who died in the middle of
February of 1836 in Seguin, Texas, which is a short
distance east of San Antonio and the Alamo. During his
leave, he returned to the Alamo briefly to help settle a
squabble between William Travis and Jim Bowie. They were
arguing over who was in command of the Alamo. Through
his powers of persuasion, in his blunt manner Neill made it clear that they
would share in the command of the Alamo until he returned. In historical works - he is described as a
brave man, a capable commander, with a huge drooping
mustache that completely covered up his mouth and a
generally cantankerous disposition. The Alamo fell before he returned. It is written that he
was on his way back to the Alamo, along with about 50
men and a
wagon loaded with medicines and other essential supplies, when he
got the word that the Alamo was captured by the
Mexicans, with the loss of all of the Texian defenders. He was
almost back to the Alamo when the party was confronted
by Mexican soldiers, guarding the perimeter of San
Antonio. He changed his route to head back to link up with General
Sam Houston and the main Texian Army, then located along
the Brazos river. He helped cover the evacuation of
Houston's Army at Gonzales, firing at Mexican Army
patrols with an old artillery piece, which was then
dumped into the Brazos river as the Texians hastily headed east
in their withdrawal. He commanded the artillery at
the Battle of San Jacinto, where he was badly wounded in the hip. History has not been
kind to Lt. Col. Neill and many believed that he was a
coward for leaving the Alamo when he did. He is known as "The Forgotten Commander"
and there is still some controversy about what happened
at the Alamo.
I believe his wife was dying and he took a leave of
absence to be with her. In the early 1840's, he was appointed as the chief Indian Agent by the
Republic of Texas, primarily to oversee a band of Cherokees and
other Indians then living in reservations in east Texas. He was probably appointed
to that position by Sam Houston himself. He died in 1845,
near present day Corsicana, Texas - with the dark shadow
of it all still hanging over him. His
granddaughter, Sarah Elizabeth "Sally" Neill, a daughter
of Samuel Clinton Neill, married James Sanford Callahan in Caldwell County,
Texas in 1866. Sally Neill was described as a
small woman with a huge heart. She worked as a laundress
at an Indian School in Wapanuka, Chickasaw Nation,
Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). She was also a midwife
and nurse, and she would ride a horse side saddle for
many miles to help deliver a baby or treat a sick
neighbor that needed help. She apparently had a fiery
side. In an old family journal, she is quoted as saying,
"I hate Indians. If I knew where the Indian blood was in
me - I would rip those veins out". That journal
also indicated that her husband's father was tortured
and scalped by Indians in Texas, before he was killed.
We now know that was not true. She died in 1900,
several weeks after she was bit by a large rattlesnake.
James Clinton
and Margaret Harriet Ferguson Neill were my 3rd great
grandparents.
OLIVER
Our Oliver
family history can be positively traced back to Elijah
Oliver, who was born in 1814 in North Carolina. He came
out of North Carolina in the 1820's. He started out with
very little as a peddler, selling simple merchandise to
the Chickasaw's and a few white settlers then living along
the old Natchez Trace in
Tennessee and Mississippi. It is written that he was an
honest, fair and friendly man who made friends easily.
He was generally well liked by the white settlers and
Chickasaws he did business with. He was not well liked by the
father of the woman he married around 1830, Mary (Polly) Kuykendall,
because he was poor and had little to offer her. Before
their marriage, he
vowed to her father, Jesse Kuykendall, that he would
someday be a very wealthy man. He kept his promise. By the middle 1840's, he was a wealthy
store owner, merchant and land speculator in
northeast Mississippi. He may have sold Negro slaves, as
a sideline activity, but I cannot prove it. He was an influential citizen and
served as a Justice-of-the Peace in Corinth, Mississippi
in the early 1840's. He died in 1883 in northeast
Mississippi. His daughter, Elizabeth Jane
Oliver, married William Martin Gooch in Tishomingo
County, Mississippi in 1849. She inherited a large
parcel of land in Mississippi upon his death - by then I
do not think there was much more property to worry
about. Their son, William Elijah Gooch married Sarah
Elizabeth Jane Davis in 1872. Their son, Jesse Gooch,
married Bessie Fannen in 1901, and they were the parents
of my mother, Mava Opal Gooch.
PHILLIPS
(click here to view more
about this family)
Our Phillips
family ancestry can be positively traced back to Calvin
Phillips, who was born in South Carolina or North
Carolina between 1820 and 1830. It is believed that he
was part Cherokee. He probably had family ties in
Tennessee and Alabama. I believe he spent some of his
boyhood years there. He married Rachel Reddick in 1849
in Benton County, Arkansas. Through his life, he was a farmer and blacksmith.
An old family Bible shows that he served a soldier in
the Confederate Army but I have not found an official
record to verify it. My father talked about an old
grandfather who used to visit with him when he was a
small boy, living on a farm with his family in the
Chickasaw Nation, Indian Territory. The old man looked
like an Indian and had a bad scar on one side of his
face that could have been a wound from a sword cut. Part
of the ear on that side was missing. My father was
Walter Lee Phillips and he was one of the seven children
of John Wesley and Willie Katherine Callahan Phillips.
In general,
the Phillips's in our family tree were more laid back
and did not take things as serious as some of the others
did. Even today, the Phillips's in my family tree seem
to be less class-conscious and do not care much about
hearing about their heritage. They live for
today and do not like to dwell on the past.
REDDICK
Our Reddick
family ancestry can be positively traced back to
Shadrach Reddick, who was born in South Carolina around
1799. He was a soldier, adventurer and pioneer. He
fought in the early Indian Wars - sometimes serving under Andrew Jackson.
He was a restless man with the spirit of an explorer and
he was always on the move. He
married Nelly Smith in Illinois in 1821. Their daughter,
Rachel Reddick, married Calvin Phillips in 1849 in
Benton County, Arkansas. Shadrach Reddick made the trip
from Arkansas to the Oregon Territory by covered wagon on the old
Oregon Trail in the early 1850's, when he was already an old man
- by the standards of that time. He died in 1860 in Sauvie Island, Oregon.
Shadrach and Nelly Smith Reddick were my 2nd great
grandparents.
SNEAD
(SNEED)
Our Sneed
family ancestry can be positively traced back to Mary
Gooch, who was born in Hanover County, Virginia around
1748. She married John Snead in Caswell County, North
Carolina in 1766. They had 14 children. The Snead
(Sneed) family has a rich heritage and can be traced
back to the Custis family in early Virginia. Martha
Custis married George Washington. The Snead's are an
allied family, not in my direct line.
A study of our family is a
study of American history.
The study of genealogy can be
tedious and very frustrating at times. In fact - it is
very boring, if you think of it as just a list of names
and dates. But I try to put a story with the names. I have found it all fascinating. It
is like working on a big puzzle that will never be
finished. As one old gentleman I ran into several years
ago said about all of the research involved, "We just do
the best we can."
|