Frank HORTON

The following bio was taken from pages 245-246 of the book entitled "Rusk County History" compiled and edited and used with permission of the Rusk County Historical Commission.

Transcribed by Gloria Freeman Riley

Submitted by Gloria Briley Mayfield, Rusk County TX Coordinator

No one living today can remember the place from which Frank Horton came to East Texas in the 1880’s or the name of his first wife, the mother of his three sons. Frank, his sons—Woodson, Henry, and Tom—and their stepmother, Kitty, made their new home in East Texas. Oral history and old letters indicate a great number of their relatives lived in Wichita, Kansas.

Henry Horton married Mattie Hood. They had no children.

Woodson and Tom married sisters, Eliza and Fannie Jones. Eliza and Fannie were daughters of two former slaves, Soloman and Nicey July. Soloman and his wife migrated to Texas from Alabama or Georgia following the Civil War. He changed his name to Jones after a man they worked for when they got to Texas, Colonel Jones.

Woodson and Tom bought adjacent eighty-acre farms from D. W. Crow in 1903. The farms were part of the T. J. Jackson survey, located five miles south of Henderson, the county seat of Rusk County.

Tom Horton’s farm was sold by his children as they grew up and moved to other parts of the state and county. Woodson Horton’s farm remains intact except for forty acres of royalties sold by him. His children and three generations of grandchildren have enjoyed its wide spaces.

Woodson and his wife, Eliza, raised three children—Johnny, Bertie, and Eulala. Both daughters married and moved away. Johnny married Millie Jane Oliver in 1917 and continued to make the farm his home. He operated his father’s two syrup mills until the late 1940’s and continued to cultivate the farm until 1966. Following his death in 1967, his wife, his daughter, Mereline, and her family lived on the farm until 1972.

Johnny and Millie had eight children, seven of whom lived to adulthood. All of their sons served in the armed services during world War II. They returned home safely at the end of the war and later helped to build many of the roads that serve Rusk County. Their eldest daughter, Doris Levonia, married William Ira Ross, Sr. and moved to the Longbranch Community. This left the two youngest daughters, Birdie Mozell and Mereline, at home to help maintain the farm. The men they later married were veterans of the Korean War, Floydell Sanders and L. B. Starling, Sr., respectively. Mereline Starling, the youngest of the eight children, became a well-known gospel singer throughout East Texas.

The Hortons have always been active in the church, primarily at Reese Shiloh C.M.E. Church, founded in March 1888. Each year the money raised during the annual family reunion is donated to Reese Shiloh for the upkeep of the church and Crow Cemetery. These donations are made in the memory of Johnny and his sister, Bertie Horton Medford.

Written by M. Joyce Starling