DANIEL MARTIN  

The following bio was taken from page 299 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, Cemeteries of Texas

Daniel Martin came to Texas in 1833 and settled in what would later become Rusk and Panola Counties.  He was born in 1781 in South Carolina and joined Andrew Jackson in fighting in the Creek War of 1813-1814.  After that war, he went to Florida and met Mary Eleanor Ayers, who had been born in 1791 in North Carolina.  Her father did not approve of the marriage, so Daniel stole Mary Eleanor away from a dance one night and fled with her.  They settled in Clay County, Missouri.

The lure of the frontier was too great for Daniel Martin and in 1832 he took his wife and seven of his eight children and headed for Texas.  His eldest son remained in Missouri, and a ninth son was born in Texas.

Along the Trammel Trace the Martin family settled on a creek that was later to be named for him on the present-day Rusk-Panola County line.  By 1845, the Martin Settlement consisted of approximately seventy-five inhabitants.

The family was harassed by the Cherokee Indians who had been pushed from their homelands into this part of Texas, and there are several family tales about Indian fighting.

This backwoodsman, Daniel Martin, cared so little for ownership of land that he did not push the claim that he had applied for in 1835.  That grant was not approved until 1858, seven years after his death.  By the time his title was issued, he had sold most of his half-league in Rusk County.  He sold the Western part in 1849, and in 1855 John Kuykendall established the town of Harmony Hill on that land.  The Martin home was located three miles southwest of that town.

Submitted by Cecil Williams