Thomas Alexander Lyles
Thomas Alexander Lyles was born on 23 February 1825 in Chester District, South Carolina. A descendant who wrote up the family in a Shreveport newspaper's genealogy column in the 1960s or 1970s said the name changed as the family moved west. It was spelled De Lisle in Chester District, Lisle in Greene County, Alabama, and Lyles once they reached Louisiana.
Thomas went to Greene County, in the Alabama Black Belt. There, on 11 March 1847, he married Jane McCracken, born about 1826, a daughter of Anthony and Margaret McCracken. They had a son, John P. Lyles, born in 1847, and a daughter, Rebecca Jennie, born in 1849. In the census of 1850, which reached the house on 2 January 1851, Thomas A. Lyles was a farmer of 23, born in South Carolina, with Jane, 22, also born there, and their children John, 3, and Rebecca J., 1. Margaret McCracken, 36, born in South Carolina, and Robert McCracken, 25, an Alabama-born farmer, lived with them. The age of 23 is two years short of a birth in 1825, and later censuses shorten it further. Jane died young.
On 18 November 1854 the probate judge of Greene County issued a license for "Mr Thomas A Lisles" to marry "Miss Julia A E Cockrell." A justice of the peace married them that month, on the 19th by the family's account. Julia Ann Elizabeth, born in 1836, was a daughter of Elias Cockrell, a farmer who lived about thirty houses down the road; the family gives her mother as Martha Colvin. Their first child, Frances Patterson Lyles, was born on 12 November 1857. That same year the family moved to Jackson Parish, Louisiana. John P., his son by Jane, had a guardian back in Greene County, William P. May, who paid Thomas for the boy's keep. On 9 April 1859, at Vienna, Thomas signed a receipt by his mark for 50 dollars, John's board for the year from May 1858. In Louisiana eight more children were born: Nora Belle, Alice Vernon, Mabel Estelle, Alsey Pollard, William Gordon, Eula Florence, Orville Braxton and Wesley Broadwell. Wesley, born on 11 April 1879, married Julia Hinton of the Wesley Chapel community. His brother William Gordon married a Hinton too, Claude Hinton.
Thomas served in the Civil War. The 1870 census of Jackson Parish lists a household headed by T. A. Lyles. By June 1880 the family was farming in Ward One of the new Lincoln Parish. The census taker wrote Thomas down as 47, born in South Carolina, with Julia Ann, 42, born in Alabama, and nine children at home, from Frances, 20, down to Wesley, 2. The children were all born in Louisiana except Frances, born in Alabama, which fits the family's move in 1857. He died in Jackson Parish on 6 July 1904, aged 79. Julia Ann outlived him by nearly nineteen years and died on 20 February 1923.
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Cite: Heirology, "Thomas Alexander Lyles (1825-1904)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/thomas-alexander-lyles-1825-1904-1dd4a4.