BELLE MONTGOMERY DAYE

 The following bio was taken from page 171 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

My maternal grandfather, Anderson Boid Collins, came to Texas from Jackson, Tennessee in 1849.  He met and married my grandmother, Susan Nye Lee, who had come to Texas at age two with her parents from Roberson County, North Carolina where she had been born on December 13, 1835.  They settled in Vanzandt County where her father was a large landowner.  A. B. Collins’ journal records that he bought a horse and buggy in Memphis, Tennessee in 1848 for $139.67 and that his travel expenses to Texas were $59.17. 

 A.B. and Susan were married in Winnsboro, Texas in 1852 and came immediately to Henderson, bringing with them two of her younger sisters and three slaves, the gift of her father, Benjamin Lee.  “Mr. A. B.”, as he came to be called, worked first for a Mr. Haltom and then for Mr. C. Vincent.  He later opened a general mercantile store which was located on the present site of Wright-Dyer Drug.

 My grandparents were members of the First Baptist Church where he served as church clerk for a number of years.  On one of his buying trips to New Orleans he saw a very beautiful chandelier which he bought for $5.00 and gave to the Baptist Church where it hung for a number of years.  He was also one of the early members of Clinton Masonic Lodge.

 In 1862 Grandfather bought a home at the end of South Main Street. . .the present site of Westminster Bible Church.  My grandmother planted the magnolia trees that stand there now.  In this house she cared for their ten children while my grandfather rode off to serve with the confederate troops.  He was accompanied by his slave, Jerry Lee, who returned with him and lived with the Collins family until he died.  It was in this house that my mother, Emma, my sister Mildred, my brother Dan, and I were born and continued to live until a year prior to my marriage in 1937.

 My paternal great grandfather, Benjamin Franklin Montgomery, brought his wife, Harriet Moss and children from Spartanburg, South Carolina to the New Prospect Community in Rusk County where he and Thomas Ballenger founded the Baptist Church in 1853 or 1854.

My grandfather, Joseph Oscar, was born in 1856.  He attended the Millville Male and Female Academy and a report card dated January 26, 1866 shows that he made a “3” (perfect) in every subject.  It was signed by Ben Griffin and Will E. Ragsdale.  He met and married Sarah Minerva Hamilton of the Caledonia Community, who had come with her family from Georgia.  Nine days before my father, Joseph Oscar, Jr. was born, my grandfather died and my father, an only child, lived with both his Montgomery and Hamilton relatives.

 In 1896, at age seventeen, my father began work in the hardware and furniture store owned by Mrs. A. J. Lacy, whose son-in-law, George W. Rogers, was manager.  This store later became Burton and Crim Furniture Store.  Here he worked until he retired because of ill health around 1936.  During this time he also operated a dairy and a wholesale ice cream business.

 The seven-year courtship of Oscar and my mother, Emma Collins, was bitterly opposed by her mother.  Mother was visiting a sister in San Antonio when by father wrote her that he was taking the next train down and expected to be married immediately…so they were.  After six months my grandmother forgave them and asked them to come home to live…an arrangement that lasted a lifetime.  My father died in 1938 and my mother in 1956.

 Submitted by Belle Montgomery Daye