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Five generations of my
family have lived in Coleman County,
beginning with Mary Melissa (Boggs)
Christian, my maternal
great-grandmother. My
great-grandfather, George Asbury
Christian, died in Brenham, in 1882 at the
age of 81. In 1886, she came to
Coleman County with her daughter, Bettie
Lucretia (Christian) Walker, her
son-in-law, William L. Walker, and their
three children, Milton Leon, Eula Lee, and
Mary Elizabeth, known as "Bessie.
Bessie was a deaf mute, and was educated
in Austin at the Texas State School for
the Deaf. My Great-grand-mother
Christian died in Gouldbusk, in 1911, aged
83. Six more children were born to
the Walkers, all in Coleman County.
(1) Milton Leon,
born in Brenham in 1880; married Kitty
Grady; four children; died Santa Anna,
1947.
(2) Eula Lee,
born Brenham, 1882; married W. C. Matthews
of Chapel Hill, two children; later
married Charles Stevens; died in
Bakersfield, California, 1952.
(3) Mary
Elizabeth (Bessie), 1885 in Brenham;
married R. F. Line in 1918; later
divorced; no children; died 1979; buried
in Coleman.
(4) Ruby, in
Coleman County, 1887, married John Seybold
of Temple. Had five children, of
whom three survived past infancy.
Died in Temple in 1945.
(5) Cora
Katherine, born 1889 in Coleman County;
married John A.D. Cooper, Sr. One
child, John A.D., Jr., M.D. Ph.D.,
Washington, D. C., presently president of
the Association of American Medical
Colleges. Cora (Walker) Cooper died
in 1977 in McLean, Virginia,
(6) Fannie Mae,
my mother, 1891 in Coleman County, married
Finis Ewing Rich in Gouldbusk in
1912. Three children, two of whom
survive.
(7) Willie Belle,
1893 Coleman County. Married E. C. (Clyde)
Edens, Sr., who became prominent in
Coleman in banking, as mayor, on school
board. One child, Edward Clyde, Jr.
Clyde, Sr. died in Coleman in 1971 and
Willie Belle in Houston in 1980, both
buried in Coleman (see Charles Allen
Edens).
(8) Pattie Pearl,
1895 in Coleman County, died 1900.
(9) Jim Alice,
1897 in Coleman County, married A. J.
(Jack) Durham, Jr., from Belton (see
Robert L. Snodgrass Family). Worked
for abstracting firm for many years.
Jack was involved in banking/insurance,
Jim Alice Walker Durham died in 1976 in
San Angelo.
My father, Finis
Ewing Rich, was born March 19, 1876 in
Tiplersville, Tippah County, Mississippi,
youngest of five children of Duncan and
Elizabeth (Bennett) Rich. An orphan
before he was ten, he was raised by Uncle
John and Aunt Sallie Leatherwood. He
came to Texas as a young man and went to
work as a bookkeeper in Whitesboro,
Grayson County, for a firm which included
Sam Hale. In 1909, when Mr. Hale
moved to Gouldbusk, where he had bought a
gin, Finis came along to work for him
again. I think Sam Hale introduced
him to his future wife, Fannie Mae
Walker. Fannie Mae Walker and Finis
Ewing Rich were married in Gouldbusk in
1912, moving soon after to Silver Valley,
where my father had a general store.
I was born there December 26, 1914,
Frances Ewing May 30, 1916, and Howard
Leatherwood August 22, 1918. At that
time Silver Valley was thought to have a
very promising future. The Santa Fe
Railroad had come through on its push to
the West. Blocks and blocks of sidewalks
had been laid out in anticipation of the
expected growth of the metropolis.
Those sidewalks are still out there,
hidden by scrubby mesquite, weeds and
sand, in a ghost town. But 1918 was
a bad year; a drouth ruined the economy of
the little town, which never did become a
metropolis. My father lost his
business. He went to Atoka,
Oklahoma, and went into the grocery
business with a cousin, "Dolph"
Leatherwood. My mother was awaiting
the birth of their third child that August
and the plan was that after the baby was
born, and was old enough to travel safely,
we would all join him in Atoka. But
something more devastating than the drouth
intervened - the influenza epidemic of
1918. In November, when Howard was
less than three months old, my mother fell
ill with the flu. My Aunt Kitty
Walker, who had only my cousin, Elizabeth,
at that time, called Dr. W. L. Jennings
and here they came, by horse and
buggy. Aunt Kitty stayed, and she
was still with us when the World War I
Armistice was signed on November 11,
1918. No one else in the family got
the "flu," my mother recovered, and in
January 1919, we moved to Oklahoma and
joined my father. We moved back to Coleman
in the spring of 1924. My father
worked for Alex Crawford, who had a
wholesale grocery business, and mother,
who had had a private school (kindergarten
and first grade) in Atoka, resumed her
teaching career in Coleman.
Eventually, my father was the local agent
for the Sinclair Refining Co., and for a
while he worked for his brother-in-law,
Milton L. Walker. When my mother
retired in her seventies, she was teaching
the third generation of some of the
families of children who had gone to "Mrs.
Rich's school."
In the meantime,
Grandfather Walker, who had been born in
Matagorda or Wharton, in 1849, had died in
Colorado in 1905. He was an
asthmatic, and in that day and time,
little was known about either the
treatment or causes of asthma. It
was thought that he had sought a cure in
that climate. Grandmother Walker,
who had been born in Alabama in 1861, was
to live on until the ripe old age of
96. She died in Coleman in 1957.
My parents'
marriage did not last, and my father went
to Tennessee in the late 1930's. He
was living in Memphis when he died in
July, 1949. My mother moved to San
Antonio to be near Howard when she retired
from teaching and she died there in August
1982.
I am a registered
x-ray technologist and a laboratory
technician, and I had gone back to college
(University of Texas) in the 1940's after
a lapse of several years. I was in
Austin when I met Guillermo Paez, a native
of Chile, in 1946, coming to the states in
1941. He was naturalized while in
the service, shortly before we married in
Austin, November 1946. We have been
in Houston since November 1949, and have
had two children: Frederick William,
1953-1980; and Mary Elizabeth (Betsy),
born 1954. Betsy earned a Bachelor
of Science degree from Texas A&M in
1976, worked a few years, and went back to
college (Texas Tech, Lubbock) for her
Master of Science Degree (May 1983).
Her field is park administration and
planning.
I am retired
after more than thirty years with the
University of Texas M. D. Anderson
Hospital and Tumor My husband in retiring
(August, 1983) after thirty-four years
with the University of Texas Dental
Branch, where he is an assistant professor
in the Department of
Medicine/Radiology. He was elected
to membership in the International
Association of Maxillo-Facial Radiology
some years ago, and is presently a member
of the American Academy of Oral
Radiology. We are communicants of
Christ Church Cathedral (Episcopal).
I am on the board of directors of
Hear-Say, an organization for the
adventitiously deaf. (I've had a hearing
loss since childhood.)
Frances Ewing
Rich, married Travis Clayton Lee in 1935
in Coleman. They were divorced, but
even after subsequent remarriages, she
retained the name Lee. She had a
successful real estate career in Dallas
for many years. She had no children,
and died in Ventura, California, in 1980.
Howard L. Rich
married Esther Margaret Whipple of San
Antonio in 1939 in Coleman. (Esther
Margaret was a niece of Clyde Edens and
Howard was a nephew of Willie Belle
(Walker) Edens.) Their first child,
David Allen, was born in Coleman in
1940. They had four children, of
whom three are living. Howard and
Esther Margaret live in San Antonio.
William L. Walker
was a grandson of Joseph and his second
wife Elizabeth (Thompson) Campbell.
They had one child, also named
Elizabeth. Elizabeth (Thompson)
Campbell and Little Elizabeth, and
Joseph's older children (by his deceased
first wife) all came to Texas before the
Texas Revolution, after Joseph Campbell's
death. William L. and Bettie L.
Christian were married by Cyrus Campbell,
a minister of the gospel. Campbell
was a son of Joseph Campbell, and his
first wife. I suppose Cyrus Campbell
would be called Walker's half-uncle (see
J. E. Stevens); his daughter, Ann Frances
Campbell, married James E. Stevens, who
later founded J. E. Stevens Company in
Coleman. William L. was very fond of
his relative by marriage, James E.
Stevens, and planned to name a son for
him. His first son was named Milton,
for another relative, and the next one was
to be named for "Cousin Jim." In
rapid succession, Grandmother presented
him with eight girls. He must have
given up hope for ever having another boy,
and that last girl was named Jim
Alice. The Jim in my name is for
her.
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