JOHN WATSON

The following bio was taken from page 84 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

John Watson, my father, was the eldest son of Jim and Myra Watson. He was born December 26, 1868, in the Peatown Community, Rusk County, Texas, now Gregg County. He was almost two years old when his parents bought a farm three miles south of Peatown. There he grew up working on the farm and at the cotton gin with his father and brothers. He attended school at Cross Roads, and later, college at Professor Orr’s Select Normal at Omen, after which he taught school two years. Seeing teaching was not for him, he followed the carpenter trade and farming. John married Minnie McHaney, daughter of Robert Harrison McHaney and Ella Katherine Holloway McHaney. John and Minnie had five children: Ralph, Orian, Katie Mae, Stroud, and me, Lillian. Mama and Daddy first made their home in the Cross Roads Community, where Mama had grown up.

For several years Daddy ran a sawmill for his brother, one mile south of his father’s home. It was a famous place where many people worked, and every one around liked to go there. All the children cousins especially enjoyed going there. Daddy would let us ride on the carriage that took the logs to the saw and on the dollies on the dolly tracks that took the lumber to be stacked. Then there was the sawdust to play in also. He had big buckets of candy, so we had all we could eat. It was very interesting to see the oxen pulling the log wagons piled high with big logs.

Two young men, Harry and Howard Cordell, came from Houston to work at the mill and lived with us. Later their parents bought the mill and moved to the mill to live. They had small children to play with us, and did we play all day long? The Cordells, after several years, went back to Houston. Now after sixty years, the Cordell baby, Bill, and his family have come back to Henderson to live. It was a real reunion for Bill and me.

Daddy’s parents were getting old and needed someone to live with them, so Daddy moved his family into the home with them. Daddy was so glad to be back home with his parents, and Mama loved them. Her mother had died when she was five years old, and she adopted Grandmother as her mother. Grandfather died a few months after we moved in with them. Then Daddy died in 1918 during that terrible flu epidemic. We lived on there a few years; then grandmother went to live with her daughter in Longview and we moved to Henderson.

Orian worked for Alford Brothers most of the rest of his life. Katie Mae and I got our degrees from North Texas State University and taught school. Katie was killed in the New London School explosion.

Ralph married Bonnie Windle and had three children: Emma Jean, Hazel, and John Windle. Stroud married Charisie Penny and had two children, Phillip and Martin. Five of the grandchildren have homes on the Grandfather land, which has been in the Watson family since 1870. Of my immediate family, I am the only one left.

Submitted by Lillian Watson