Ancestors

James Beverly

James Beverly was born in Tennessee in 1832. As a young man he settled in Collin County, Texas, in the black land prairie north of Dallas, which was then newly opened to settlers. There he married Mary J. Huffhines, who was a native of Kentucky.

They had three sons. Leonidas Clark, called L. C., was born on 29 April 1855 near Fort Worth, in Tarrant County. While he was still a baby the family moved one county west, to Parker County, on the frontier around Weatherford. John Allen was born there, three miles south of Weatherford, on 30 March 1857. A third son was named James for his father.

James Beverly farmed before the Civil War. He went to the war, and he came home from it with one arm. Soon after the war he was sheriff of Parker County. In those years Parker County was on the frontier of settled Texas, and Comanche and Kiowa raiding parties still came into it.

He died in Parker County in 1874, at about forty two. His sons were still boys, and they went to work with cattle. L. C. was herding cattle for wages at fourteen. In 1874, not yet twenty, he put his savings into a herd of 686 head and started for Mexico with them; Comanches attacked the party near El Paso and took the whole herd and the saddle horses. John rode the trail drives north to Dodge City, Kansas, and lived to be ninety eight.

In 1892 L. C. was elected sheriff of Donley County, in the Texas Panhandle, the same office his father had held in Parker County. When a book of Texas cattlemen's lives printed his story in 1895, it opened with his father: "His father, James Beverly, was, in his time, a prominent citizen of Northern Texas."

If James Beverly is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "James Beverly (1832-1874)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/james-beverly-1832-1874-98a25e.