Ancestors

John Allen Beverly

John Allen Beverly was born on 30 March 1857 near Weatherford, in Parker County, Texas, on what was then the western edge of settlement. His death certificate names his parents as James Beverly and Jane Huffine, and an 1895 sketch of his older brother L. C. calls their mother Mary J. Huffhines, a native of Kentucky. His father farmed before the Civil War, lost an arm in it, and was sheriff of Parker County after it. James Beverly died in 1874, when John was a teenager.

He grew up in the cattle business. As a young man he rode the old trail drives north to Dodge City, Kansas. In the 1870s and 1880s Dodge City was the railhead where Texas cowboys delivered their herds to be shipped east, at the end of a drive of several hundred miles. He later worked for the Mill Iron ranch, a large cattle outfit in the Texas Panhandle.

On 14 November 1876 he married Julia in Parker County. Their children were Wade Allen, born in 1877, Leonidas Dow, called Lon, in 1879, James T. in 1881, and Ora Ethel, born at Fort Worth in 1887. The family moved west with the cattle. John became manager of a ranch near Watrous, in Mora County, New Mexico, and Julia died there in 1900 and was buried on the Phoenix Ranch.

On 18 December 1900 he married Katie Jordan at Clarendon, in the Texas Panhandle. A daughter, Katy Alleen, was born and died in 1903. He ran a drayage business in Clarendon, hauling freight by wagon, and later moved to Pampa, where he lived at 501 North Cuyler for twenty six years.

On 29 March 1955, the day before he turned ninety eight, the house at 501 North Cuyler was full of women baking his birthday cake, and the Pampa paper sent a reporter. He told him he felt just like a sixteen year old. He said he had first hit the cattle trail in 1881 and reckoned he was the first man to run the Mill Iron brand on a dogie, a motherless range calf. On his birthday he was to go on Pampa television, on Channel 4, and do a dance to a guitar.

He died in a Pampa hospital at three in the morning on 2 January 1956, after a two weeks' illness, at ninety eight. The Pampa Daily News put him on the front page that afternoon under the headline "John Beverly Dies Today." He was buried at Clarendon beside the place kept for Katie, who died in 1962.

If John Allen Beverly is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "John Allen Beverly (1857-1956)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/john-allen-beverly-1857-1956-005a4c.