Ancestors

Ryal Barber Woodall

Ryal Barber Woodall, called Riley, was born on 5 January 1828. His birthplace is given as Johnston County, North Carolina. That tie rests on a family Bible, the Lassiter-Woodall Bible, which names a James G. Woodall and Sarah Barber of Johnston County as a married couple; his own middle name, Barber, points the same way. No record found so far names Riley as their son. He had left North Carolina before 1850.

On 27 November 1849, in DeSoto County, Mississippi, he married Mrs. Mary Ann Haliburton. She was born Mary Ann Dollahite and was the widow of B. F. Haliburton, with two small children, Sarah and James. The marriage is cited from the county's record of marriages, volume A, page 357.

They moved to East Texas and settled at Nip and Tuck, near Tatum in Rusk County. Their children were Mattie, born in 1850, James Dollahite in 1853, William Troy in 1854, Wylie Bert in 1858 and Ira Tommy in 1861.

On 26 April 1862 he enlisted at Carthage as a private in the 28th Texas Cavalry, the regiment called the Texas Lancers, in the company of Captain A. W. DeBerry. The regiment served in Louisiana. There he caught camp fever, the typhoid and dysentery that ran through army camps. The 1959 family genealogy says his wife "went down and sneaked him out of the camp and brought him home where he died." He died at Nip and Tuck on 5 April 1865, aged 37.

He was buried in the Harmony Hill Cemetery near Tatum. The 1959 genealogy says its first two acres had been given in 1852 by Dr. John William Kuykendall. The same genealogy makes him the grandfather of Laura Miles, who married Riley's son James in 1877. A portrait of Riley survives.

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Cite: Heirology, "Ryal Barber Woodall (1828-1865)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/ryal-barber-woodall-1828-1865-b7429d.