CLYDE COPELAND

The following bio was taken from page 156 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

On December 22, 1909, Forrest Clyde Copeland drove with Lillian Mahalia Strong in his buggy to Henderson, where they were married by Reverend Horace Williams, Pastor of Church Hill Circuit Methodist Church. The wedding took place in the parsonage. The bride, who was eighteen years old on the day after her marriage, wore a blue dress which she made herself. The groom was twenty-one. A wedding dinner and dance were held that evening at the bride’s parents home five miles east of Henderson on the old Ben Chapman place. The old house is standing there today and is occupied by a black family. It is still owned by Chapman descendants.

After the wedding the young couple made their home with his parents, W. C. and Tabitha Copeland, in the Oakland Community five miles east of Henderson and lived there the rest of their lives. He was a farmer, raising the usual cotton, corn, peanuts, and potatoes. To them were born eight children, six girls and two boys. They were: Lorene, Arra, Alfred, Dennis, Mildred, Elsie, Nell, and Dorothy. All grew to adulthood except Elsie, who died when she was three years old. We children went to Oakland School and walked down that cold lane with our books and lunch. It was a two-room school with grades one through eight. Some of our schoolmates and neighbors were the Ben and Paul Craig’s, Robert and Julian Stones, Bish Pools, A. S. Heims, W. O. Ballows, the Yandles, and others. School was held for six or seven months a year, taking up and letting out as the pupils were needed in the fields for planting, chopping, and picking cotton, and other farm chores.

Clyde Copeland was born in Panola County in 1888. He moved to Rusk County with his parents when he was fourteen years old and settled on two hundred acres of land out of the Chireno survey given to his mother by her father, Andrew Jackson Prior. They cleared this land, and one of the first things planted was a big orchard behind the house. It grew there for years and was loaded with all kinds of peaches, apples, pears and plums. In the backyard at the old home place one of the original pecan trees still bears pecans.

All the Copeland children live at present on the same land where they were born. Each has his own home. Dorothy married Gerald Burke and they have one daughter, Penny Sue, born in 1970. Arra has been widowed three times and has one son, Thomas Van Auken, who lives with his wife and two children in Richmond, Virginia. Alfred and Dennis are retired postal workers. Nell is librarian at Carthage High School. Lorene, Mildred, and Dorothy own and operate a feed and service station on Highway 79, not far from their home.

Clyde Copeland died July 19, 1974. Lillian Copeland also died, about two years later on April 4, 1976. Both are buried in Strong’s Cemetery. They were wonderful parents, and I, Arra, have many happy memories as I write this small bit of history.

Submitted by Arra Copeland Gat-