John Mallory and Family in Grayson County Texas
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 County record that John and Eliza Mallory sold some Missouri property from there in 1866. John died in Grayson County in 1869, but by the 1870 Census, the entire Mallory family were living in Texas, particularly in Grayson county. Eliza died in 1870. William F. Mallory remained in Grayson county for the rest of his life, with his children and grandchildren.
To put these dry numbers into context, Texas did not become a state until 1846, when “the first legislature of the newly formed state created from a part of Fannin county, a new county to be called Grayson” (Lucas 61)
“The county at that time had a population of 500” (Lucas 63) but a significant number “had gathered in and around Coffee’s Bend on Red River and the town of Preston was laid off. Several buildings were erected and some mercantile firms…moved to Preston. Regular boats were run up Red River…bringing supplies” (Lucas 60).
Holland Coffee “was a man of determination whose object was wealth. He seems to have had in mind the pattern of plantation life from the beginning of his settlement in northern Grayson, and his design assuredly included tremendous land holdings” (Landrum 1-2). His wife, Sophia, described their first home in Preston Bend: “‘The first quilt I had in Grayson County, I picked the cotton out with my fingers and I quilted it. I then made me a rag carpet and put it on the puncheon [log] floor. A goods box nailed up to the house for my wardrobe—and on viewing my quilt, carpet and wardrobe, I was the happiest woman in Texas.’” Shortly after, Coffee built an impressive house they named Glen Eden, and Sophia owned as many as thirty slaves to work on the plantation. (Landrum 4)
This pattern was repeated by those who followed, such that along the “Red River were a number of large plantations whose owners possessed many slaves, and they raised some cotton, fine stock, cattle and sheep. The settlers did not think much of the prairie land—it was good only for cattle” (Lucas 68). Like Holland Coffee, “The majority of the people had come from the southern states, bringing their slaves and southern ideals and practices of social life and education” (Lucas 71-72).
In 1846, county commissioners staked out the Grayson county seat of Sherman, Texas. In 1852, the town was described as “a row of clap board business houses along the east side of the public square. A long house on the northeast corner was used as a saloon and a double log house on the north side was the Sherman Hotel, run by John R. Bean. A small log building on the south side of the square was the district clerk’s office and the Sherman post office. Two blocks south of the square, on Travis, was the two room frame house painted white, of Dr. R. L. Bullock, and a few more log houses were scattered near the square. … The log court house stood on the southeast corner of the square, under a pecan tree; the courthouse had no floor, no chimney, and the cracks between the logs were unstopped” (Lucas 69-70).
Ambrose B. White arrived at the settlement called Wolfpath in 1848. According to the Handbook of Texas quoted by the Grayson County, Texas Genealogy and History website, “The settlers who came after A. B. White chose to live very near one another. The Butterfield Overland Mail route used White's Westview Inn as a stop on its trail from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Coast from 1858 to 1861. Fourteen families lived there by 1861. A post office, under the name Whitesborough, began operations in 1860” (Town Histories). A personal narrative, quoted by the same website, described the pioneer experience: “We came overland in wagons…a few miles south of the present town of Whitesboro on the evening of November 24, 1845. There were then six families…[and] it was twenty miles to the house of the next settler, near where Sherman is now located, and we had to go for our mail to Preston, in the bend of the Red River…. Near the present Denison was a big plantation belonging to a Mr. Mitchell, who had a lot of [slaves] to cultivate his crops, and who had on his place the first flour mill in the county, and later a cotton gin, and I have hauled corn there to be ground” (County Beginnings).
Following the election of Abraham Lincoln, tensions ran high in Grayson county, with many residents calling for secession. One minister observed that communities “were not altogether harmonious on the war question” but “a preponderance…favored the Union” (Lucas 112-3). White’s colony (later named Whitesboro after A. B. White) “contained no more than fourteen families. Nevertheless the town had been the site of one of the most important secession rallies in North Texas; and…Whitesboro furnished its full share of soldiers for the Confederacy” (Lucas 31).
After the death of her husband, Sophia Coffee remarried but continued to entertain at her grand home. “Among the officers stationed at Fort Washita who were frequent visitors at Glen Eden, were Robert E. Lee, U. S. Grant…Mrs. Coffee said of Robert E. Lee that he was ‘very dignified in his bearing, neat and prim in his dress’; while of U. S. Grant, she said he was ‘free and easy in his carriage and deportment, not unlike a gentleman of the true western type’” (Lucas 57).
During the war, William Quantrell, raider and bushwhacker, seems to have also been well-regarded in Grayson. Lucas stated that he “was a familiar figure in Grayson county, in company with Jesse James, Frank James, Allan Palmer, and others of his band” and “had many friends in the county” (Lucas 116-7). The author went on to describe the raiders: “The men in Quantrell’s band were mostly young and a ‘dare-devil lot’. They would sometimes come into Sherman, race up and down the streets, shooting and yelling. They would shoot out the lights, shoot off doorknobs, and such little tricks. They were well acquainted with Mrs. Sophia Coffee Butts of the Preston community, but that did not prevent their shooting the ribbons off her bonnet as a salute when they saw her on the streets of Sherman” (Lucas 121-2). But that was only a foreshadowing of what was to come.
“After the Civil War residents were attracted to Whitesborough in such numbers that it became a relatively ‘wide-open’ frontier town” (Town Histories). The author of An Illustrated History of Grayson County, Texas wrote, “The main street was narrow, being only fifty feet wide, and normally congested with traffic. The stage coach and the Indians in native dress must have given the village much the appearance of the western settlement stylized in a later day by cowboy fiction and films. Nearly all memoirs of the period refer to a number of saloons which attracted the Indian and a rough element of whites. Mrs. Lillie Jane Kelly, daughter of Dr. Huff, recalled that ‘Women folks were forbidden to get out on Saturday nights because there was so much shooting. Men were often shot in the streets.’” (Landrum 32). Even so, “Whitesboro received its part of the migration that provided so much of the county’s population” at the end of the war (Landrum 32).
Part of the reason for the sudden influx of settlers was that Texas “had suffered little in comparison with her sister states. There had been no destruction of farms, stock, and homes, as in the older states that had been invaded by northern troops. Money was more plentiful due to the Texas trade with Mexico” (Lucas 122). Near Whitesboro, “Wild plum trees grew everywhere, and grapes and blackberries abounded. Obviously the land was rich, healthful, and easily reached” (Lucas 31).
Another reason for the sudden interest was that the “great expanse of unsettled domain was ideal for the cattle business; no wire fences to limit the cattle range, grass was knee high, and cattle roamed freely over the hills, valleys and prairies. The long-horn was in the hey-day of his glory” and “When the soldiers came home from the war, there was no money, there were no industries—but there were cattle. The state was overstocked with cattle, but no market. In 1867 and 1868, some venturesome stockmen took a few small herds of cattle to New Orleans, Baxter Springs and Abilene, Kansas, and other markets. The drives were fairly successful despite the dangers and hardships and the news spread like wild fire, so that in 1869 many more herds were driven out of the state” (Lucas 143-4).
“Whitesboro was incorporated on June 2, 1873. At that time it had a population of 500, saloons, several stores, and other businesses. By the end of the decade the community had a bank, a newspaper, and train service from the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad, which had extended its tracks to Whitesborough from Denison in 1879” (Town Histories).
Of the children of John and Eliza Mallory:
Lorana Jane Mallory m. William Harrelson Fine in Sherman, Grayson Co., Texas on 5 Aug 1866
William F. Mallory m. Margaret Mary Thomas in Sherman, Grayson Co., Texas on 20 Jan 1867
Amanda Lucy Mallory m. John Rickman Miller in Sherman, Grayson Co., Texas on 27 May 1869
Landrum, Graham. Grayson County; an illustrated history of Grayson County, Texas., book, 1960; Fort Worth, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth24647/: accessed May 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.
Lucas, Mattie Davis & Hall, Mita Holsapple. A History of Grayson County, Texas, book, 1936; Sherman, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth24648/: accessed May 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.
“County Beginnings,” Grayson County, Texas Genealogy and History
http://genealogytrails.com/tex//prairieslakes/grayson/history_beginning.html retrieved 5/23/24
“Town Histories,” Grayson County, Texas Genealogy and History
http://genealogytrails.com/tex//prairieslakes/grayson/history_towns.html retrieved 5/23/24
“100 Pioneers & Early Settlers of the County,” Grayson County TXGenWeb
https://usgenwebsites.org/TXGrayson/ANewLand/History/Pioneers/Pioneers.html retrieved 5/23/24
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