Joel YOUNGBLOOD

The following bio was taken from page 467 of the book entitled “Rusk County History” compiled and edited and used with permission of the Rusk County Historical Commission.

Transcribed by Gloria Riley

Submitted by Gloria Briley Mayfield, Rusk County TX Coordinator

Joel L. Youngblood (1820-1903) was born in Twiggs County, Georgia. In 1839 he married Ruth Ann Porter. At the age of forty, because of the threat of war, he moved his wife and nine children to Dale County, Alabama, and stayed there for nine years. By the time he decided to move on to Texas in 1869, four of his children had married and there were four grandchildren. They came by train to Shreveport, Louisiana, which was as far west as the railroad was built at that time. In Shreveport, they met Jim Garrison, who married one of the heirs to the Devereux Plantation. Garrison was meeting newcomers and trying to interest them in buying land. They accompanied him to the Glenfawn Community, twenty miles south of Henderson, arriving on December 24, 1869, Ruth Ann’s fiftieth birthday. They purchased land from Sarah Devereux on September 19, 1873, and moved on to Henderson January 21, 1882. Joel and Ruth Ann’s fifth child, Peter Baldwin Youngblood, was married to Elizabeth Jane McKnight in Dale County, Alabama. At the time of the move to Texas, they had two children, Ruth Lenora, born June 11, 1867, and Joe Leroy, born September 29, 1868. Peter bought land in Glenfawn in 1879, then moved to Henderson in 1884. There were nine additional children in the family. Most of them moved to other parts of Texas, but Joe L. lived in the Glenfawn-Henderson area for the remainder of his life. He married Sudie Finley, daughter of John Riley Finley and Mary Jane Briley at Henderson September 17, 1896. In 1900 he bought a farm in Glenfawn, where they raised their four boys and five girls. Joe died in 1952 at the age of eighty-four. Sudie died on October 12, 1975, twenty-six days before her ninety-fifth birthday. They are buried in the family plot of the Glenfawn Cemetery. Only two of Joe and Sudie’s surviving children remain in Rusk County. Mabel Delafield in Glenfawn, and Ned Youngblood is at Henderson. One other daughter, Gladys Mullins, was living in Henderson at the time of her death, June 14, 1975. Two sons, Douglas and Bailey, live in Mexia; and a daughter, Mary Lehman, lives in Sherman. Six generations of the Youngblood family have lived in Rusk County. Written by Mabel Delafield