George Rogers
George Rogers was born on 14 October 1815 near Rogersville, in Hawkins County, East Tennessee. His gravestone gives that day. His son remembered it as the 24th. He was the only child of William Rogers and Bettie Gonce.
His father came home from the War of 1812 in broken health and died in 1816, when George was six months old. In about 1818 his grandfather Isaac Gonce took the whole family south, to the Crow Creek valley of Jackson County, Alabama. George was three. His mother went with her father and his seven other daughters and two sons.
On 29 December 1818 his mother married James B. Matthews. George grew up in a large Matthews household of half brothers and half sisters. James Matthews became a prominent planter in the valley.
In about 1835 he married Eliza Jane McCrary, daughter of Samuel McCrary. They farmed in Jackson County. The 1850 census lists George, thirty five, born in Tennessee, with Eliza and seven children. Their son William Leroy was then twelve.
In the Civil War he served alongside three of his sons. His son Jim was killed at Chickamauga. A memorial compiled for his grave calls him captain of Company C, 18th Alabama Infantry, the Jackson Rifles. That service has not been checked against a record.
He and Eliza moved to Texas. The 1880 census finds them in Justice Precinct 1 of Young County with their daughter Ann and son John. Late in life he was baptized in Young County into the fellowship of the old Baptists, the church his son William preached in.
He died at his home eight miles east of Graham on 20 March 1892. The Graham Leader reported it a week later. He was buried at Center Ridge Cemetery in Young County. His stone, headed FATHER, is shared with Eliza, headed MOTHER.
Sources
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Cite: Heirology, "George Rogers (1815-1892)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/george-rogers-1815-1892-4ed102.