DAVID RISINGER

The following bio was taken from page 365 of the book entitled "Rusk County History" compiled and edited and used with permission of the Rusk County Historical Commission.

Transcribed by Claudia Schuster

Submitted by Gloria Briley Mayfield, Cemeteries of TX

The wild, fantastic stories of gold in the west and land that might be had in abundance were heard in the late 1840’s by children of Jacob Risinger back in Bibb County, Alabama. Jacob Risinger, wanting more "elbow room," had come to Alabama about 1820 with his wife, Mary Elizabeth Morgan, and eleven children. His father, Peter Reisinger, had reached America’s shores from Germany before our nation was founded. Peter fought in the Revolutionary War.

With this pioneer spirit in their blood, four of the Risinger brothers set out for Colorado in search of gold and land. As was the custom when wagons came westward, they did not keep moving constantly, but stopped along the way.

The Risingers had always made their living by tilling the soil, so they stopped each spring to raise a crop before going on again. Sometimes a family would become so attached to the countryside where they stopped that they would stay on. One brother, John F. Risinger, liked the land in Louisiana so much that he stayed.

When the other brothers got to Rusk County during Christmas week in 1849, they allowed others to go on in search of gold, and made Texas their home. George eventually settled in Tyler County and Amos in Shelby, but David Risinger stayed on at Laneville in Rusk County.

Brother David was tall, Amos was short, and George was an average-sized man who contracted in building dams. They were distinguished by High Dutch (David), Low Dutch (Amos), and Darn Dutch (George).

David Risinger had brought slaves with him from Alabama. After reaching Laneville, he traded his slave cook, Ann, for the land that he farmed. David sang sacred harp music and taught in harp music schools. He was quite famous for this ability to play the fiddle and sing.

David was born October 22, 1808 in North Carolina and his wife, Nancy Terry, was born January 19, 1806 in South Carolina. Both moved with their parents to Bibb County. They married on April 18, 1824. Seven of their children were born before the family moved to Texas. They were: Eleanor Thompson, Susanna Watson, Maccary, Jackson, Emeline Buckner Smelley, Landon, and David Terry. On the way to Texas, Rosanna Baker was born in 1847 in Mississippi, and John Hugh Franklin Risinger was born in Laneville, Texas, on February 1, 1853.

Although too late for the Risinger to participate in Texas’s fight for independence, it was only a decade until the Civil War began. David and Nancy lost four sons and a son-in-law in the Civil War. Three of the sons – Mack, Jackson, and Landon – were married and had children. It is said that David built four little houses in the corners of his yard for the four widows and the sixteen grandchildren.

David Risinger always had an "itchy foot," and in the years after coming to Texas, he lived in the counties of Rusk, Shelby, Tyler, and Nacogdoches, where he finally settled. Both David and Nancy are buried in the Old North Church Cemetery in Nacogdoches County.

Two of the daughters, Ellen and Rosanna, lived to be one hundred years old. Daughter Emeline married Moses Buckner in the home of her parents in Rusk County. He died in the Civil War and she later married Jim Smelley. Today many descendants of Emeline Buckner live in Rusk County. John Hugh Franklin Risinger lived at Glenfawn in Rusk County where he raised a large family.

(Information in this account was compiled from notes of Era Mae Smelley (1899-1973) that were collected over fifty years.)

Submitted by Gayle Sones