GALLAWAY FAMILY

 The following bio was taken from page 206 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

 The Kenneth Whitten home in Laneville spans the generations.  It was built by the paternal grandfather of Mrs. Whitten, the former Mary Jim Gallaway.  It was owned and occupied for many years by her parents, passed on to the Whittens, and restored in the late 1970’s to its turn-of-the-century Victorian Style.  It serves as the retirement home for the Whittens as well as a gathering place for the families.  The house displays family heirlooms side by side with crafts made by the Whittens’ children and other members of the clan.  (See Kenneth Whitten Story.)

 About 1850 Colonel John Pruitt and his son-in-law, Dr. Amos Ponder Gallaway, came on horseback from their home in Lawrence County, Alabama, to look for land to buy in Texas.  Land records show that on July 14, 1852, A. P. Gallaway paid $9,000.00 for 4,428 acres in the William Williams survey in the Redland district of Rusk County, Texas at the present site of Laneville.  On July 24, 1852, Gallaway sold one-half the acreage (2,214 acres) to John Pruitt for $4,500.00.

 Originally Laneville was an Indian village called San Cosme, established by friendly Indians.  Could they have been influenced by an early Spanish Christian Missionary, Saint Cosme?  Such seems likely.

Colonel John Pruitt built the first house in Laneville after clearing the virgin forests.  He brought one hundred Negroes from Alabama, and they hewed the logs to build a large house.  They also built forty-five smaller houses, quarters for the Negroes, and a log barn.  Only the barn still stands in the 1980’s.

 Dr. Allen Hart Gallaway, son of A. P., built a house sometime around 1900 and set it aside as a “teacherage:”  Originally, the house had two rooms on each side of a wide, open hallway.  Mrs. Whitten’s father, John Gallaway, a farmer and rural letter carrier, inherited the house before his marriage to Nettie Blair, another Laneville native.  Both of their original homes also have been restored.

 John David Gallaway planted some sycamore trees in front of the house about 1912.  Those same trees now tower over the house and provide early morning shade for the front porch.  Also, Mr. Gallaway closed in the hallway and added a screened porch, a kitchen, and a bath at the rear of the house.

 John David Gallaway, grandson of A. P. Gallaway, was the father of the five children who still have roots and own some of the original land.  They are:  Josephine Hines, Jack D. Gallaway, Elsie Crisco, Mary Jim Whitten, and Mark Gallaway.

olonel John Pruitt, Laneville’s first white settler, has many descendants who still live there, though none bear his name.  (See John Pruitt Story.)  John Pruitt and his first wife, Martha H. Hart, had eight daughters, four of whom married and lived at Laneville.  Mary Pruitt married Amos Ponder Gallaway; Margaret Pruitt married Benjamin Franklin Walker; Elizabeth (Bettie) married James T. Irwin; and Lucy Pruitt married Patrick Henry Tally.   Another daughter, Catherine Pruitt, married Robinson Hendon Gallaway.  After Catherine’s death, Nancy (Nannie) Pruitt married Robinson Hendon Gallaway.

. H. Gallaway moved from Alabama to Laneville, Texas before the Civil War and later settled in Coryell County, Texas.

 ubmitted by Mary Jim Gallaway/Whitten