Mallory Family Book

Letitia Owen was married to Benjamin Franklin Mallory for over 50 years, raised eleven children, and lived to be 83 years old.  She was born in San Saba, Texas, in 1866, the daughter of Erasmus Miller Owen , a Methodist Minister, and Rhoda Salome Eastman .  She was the fifth of Rhoda’s twelve children.    Letitia traveled extensively through the American Southwest, often while pregnant or caring for an infant.  She helped settle Grouseflat, Wallowa, Oregon, and lived there for more than 30 years.  She died in Clarkston, Washington, in 1950 and was buried in the Vineland Cemetery in Asotin, Washington, with many of her family.   Letitia’s ancestry can be reliably traced to the American Revolution and the founding of American colonies before that.  This entry will focus on her mother’s line, the Eastman family. Rhoda Salome Eastman (Letitia’s mother) was born 1837, in Mississippi.  Her father was Levi Jacob Eastman , who spent most of his days ...

The author of Grayson County an Illustrated History of Grayson County, Texas , stated that Jesse Loving wrote a list of early settlers shortly before he died, and Grayson County TXGenWeb posted a “Fiftieth Anniversary Edition” of the list as it was published in The Sherman Courier , on August 15, 1917.   Among the settlers named was “John Mallory, stone-mason and farmer” who “came to Grayson county in 1860, settling near Whitesboro” and “Built chimneys all over North Texas and Indian Territory.” John Mallory was enumerated in the 1860 Dade County, Missouri, census and other records placed John and his son, William F., in the Missouri State Guard shortly after.   (The conscript law was passed by the Confederacy in April 1861.)   The State Guard was merged with the Confederate army in 1862, and William served until the end of the war.   John was wounded and spent some time in the hospital before going home to Grayson County, Texas.   Deed records in Grayson Coun...

Many, many years ago, when I first began genealogy work on the Mallory Family line, the only sources I had to start with were the things my grandmother, Leona Mallory Poor, told me and some letters from her brother, Houston Lee Mallory.  Neither of them knew much beyond the names of their grandparents and the stories their father, Benjamin Franklin Mallory, told (which were often embellished).  Later, I had the family history written by June Mallory Ferguson, which was an enormous help, and letters from other Mallory researchers in Missouri and elsewhere.  But, prior to that, all I had were a few names and locations.   This was before records had been scanned to computers, and everything was in book form or on reels of microfilm.  Records had to be searched by location first, then by name in the source itself.  It was time-consuming and often fruitless.  I started with the names I knew and checked the U.S. Census for the years before the Civil War....