ALBERT TATUM
The following bio was taken from page 404 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, Rusk County TX Coordinator
Sometime during 1849, Albert Tatum, who lived in Chambers County, Alabama took his wife Mary and their four sons—William, Wesley, Paul and James—to Texas to begin a new life. He left behind Andrew Jackson Tatum, a young son who had recently died. Mary was his second wife and was still quite young because she had married when she was only fourteen years of age.Tatum had been a prosperous man in Alabama. He owned land and several slaves and left many relatives and friends who were important citizens in the South.
The Tatum family, their slaves, and several relatives first settled in Harmony Hill. Their first daughter was born there and is buried in the Harmony Hill Cemetery.
Albert’s next move was to the intersection of the Grand Bluff Road and Trammel’s Trace. In 1850 his slaves cut pines to build a comfortable home for the growing family. He planted cotton and corn and had a sawmill and gristmill for added income. At one time he owned more than 4000 acres of land.
The Tatum children were offered the best education available. Wesley became a schoolteacher, James became a physician, and Paul studied architecture in New York. Rhonda was an accomplished pianist and later operated a school of music in Henderson.
The plantation house of the Tatum family still stands today in Tatum. It formerly had beautiful carved furniture from France and England, and books of the classical writers filled the house.
Young Paul Tatum grew up during harmonious times in a family whose members adored him and helped him to achieve whatever he wanted to accomplish. His father died in 1870 and Paul took over the management of the Tatum family properties for his mother.
Paul had great love for his community and donated the streets for the soon-to-boom town. He personally surveyed the original streets that ran westward from the railroad. His mother donated land for the railroad to run through the new town, and he gave land for a community church.
Paul Tatum was an inventive thinker, at one time he decided to jump from the second story of his house and float to the ground by holding two umbrellas. This experiment predated the Wright Brother’s flight at Kitty Hawk, but it ended in failure when the umbrellas collapsed.
Another experiment which was devised by Paul would, he thought, allow him to walk on water. He attached large buckets to his feet and walked into a local pond north of Tatum. His brother James rescued him when he turned upside-down.
"Uncle Fox," as Paul was affectionately called, cared for the young people of Tatum and often entertained them. He married Miss Lizzie Allen, age fourteen, late in his life, and they soon divorced.
Upon Paul’s death February 27, 1 914, at the age of sixty-seven the Reverend T.M. Kinsey, editor of the Tatum Progress" wrote: "Deceased was a very unique character possessed of extra-ordinary intelligence, he conceived and promulgated many original ideas, some of which were good, while others were wholly impracticable. The fact is he lived far in advance of the times, but there was one idea dominant in his life, that was to help others…" "…He was a man possessing a kindly disposition, but of strong prejudices,… he claimed to have no religion except "to do a dollar’s worth of good where he did a dime’s worth of harm."
Submitted by Cecil Williams