WILLIAM JAMES FREE

 The following bio was taken from page 203 of the book entitled “Rusk County History” compiled and edited and used with permission of the Rusk County Historical Commission.

 Transcribed by Shirley Koym

Submitted by Gloria Briley Mayfield, Rusk County TX Coordinator

 William James Free was born October 31, 1854, in Gwinnett County, Georgia, the oldest son of Dr. Dennis Free and his wife, Louisa Moore Free.  He grew up in Gwinnett and Haralson Counties,  Georgia.  He was very young when the Civil War started, and his father served in the Confederate Army.  Young William slipped out one morning with the family gun when a detachment of Yankee soldiers was passing on the road.  When his mother found him, he had the gun in the fork of a tree, lined up on the soldiers. 

William married Alice O. Robertson, daughter of William F. Robertson, a veteran of the siege of Vicksburg, and his wife Mary E. Moore Robertson, on January 28, 1877, at Buchanan, Georgia.  They lived near Cedartown, Georgia, in the first frame house built in that part of the state; it was a region of log houses.  He was a farmer and builder.  He had charge of a crew of men that built a swinging bridge over Little Falls River, which was still in use in the 1960’s and is still in place.  He was also a watch repairmen and a country dentist at a time when dentists were very scarce. 

In 1887, William moved his family to DeKalb County, Alabama, and lived there until 1892, when they moved to Rusk County, Texas.  He farmed there and was a carpenter and blacksmith as well.  He built a cotton gin on the road from Henderson to Marshall, across the road from the old two-story Montgomery house.  He also built a house for Lon A. Smith on the Smith farm on Highway 43. 

In 1907 William and Alice and the youngest members of the family moved to Midlothian, Texas, in Ellis County.  He died in Venus, Texas, March 9, 1912, and is buried in Mountain Peak Cemetery.  Alice lived with her two youngest sons in Rusk County until her death in 1929.  She is buried in Vincent Cemetery, near Tatum. 

William James and Alice have seven children:  Ellen O., who later married Andrew N. Brown and lived near Marshall, and later Childress, Texas; Hettie Dolena, who married John Robinson Vincent and lived near Tatum; Eliza Ann (Ludie), who married Mack Vincent and lived near Tatum and later Childress and Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she died in 1943; William Dennis who married Eunice Jane Richardson and lived at Abilene, Texas; Homer James, who married Rosa Turner Sewell, and still lives near Tatum with his daughter Rosene  (another daughter, Christine Miller, and her husband Robert live nearby); Ollie Belle, who married Roy Blaine and did not survive the 1918 flu epidemic; and John Walker, who married Zelma Susan Faires and lived near Tatum and later Lancaster, Texas.  All of William James’ children were born in Georgia except Homer James, who was born in Alabama, and John Walker, who was born in Rusk County, Texas.  Many relatives still live in Rusk County. 

Submitted by Clyde Free Summers