From Proud Heritage, Vol. 1 by DCPA, not currently in print.
John Henderson was born on 4 January 1821 in what was then the Arkansas Territory; during the same month Moses Austin received permission from New Spain to settle three hundred American families in Texas. John Henderson arrived in Texas as a single man in 1840; his Republic of Texas land grant for 320 acres was issued in Red River County and is dated 10 January 1840.
Over the next half-dozen years John migrated from far north-east Texas into the Dallas County area. Only a year after the organization of Dallas County, on 25 November 1847 John married Malvina Kimmel there. Malvina was a young bride, having been born 8 February 1834. She was one of two daughters (the other being Anna Minerva) and a son (Philip) who migrated to Texas from Union County, Illinois, with their widowed mother Catherine. John and Malvina settled on Pleasant Run in the south-west part of Dallas County on land that was originally patented to Catherine Kimmel.
Over the next fifteen years the Hendersons became the parents of seven children. Four of these, George W. (born 1849), Jane (born 1852), Jasper (born 1854), and Mary Elizabeth (born 1859), survived to maturity; Jessie, James, and another son died in infancy. The Hendersons were members of Little Bethel Baptist Church, and John was instrumental in establishing Little Bethel Cemetery, whose earliest graves are those of his infant children. Malvina Henderson died 3 February 1863, in the midst of the Civil War and shortly after the birth of her last child, Susan. Within the year, on 16 September 1863, John Henderson married Rhoda Darby. Rhoda was the widow of Joseph Darby by whom she had two children, Isaac (born 1854) and Rebecca (born 1856). John and Rhoda had no children of their own.
John Henderson served the Confederate Army as a private in Griffin’s Battalion, Company C, 21st Regiment, Texas Infantry. After the war he returned to farming in Dallas County, an activity which he continued until the end of his life. Through purchases of neighboring tracts he gradually doubled and then tripled his original holdings, meanwhile starting each of his children off with smaller parcels of their own. John Henderson lived to see the completion of the railroad connecting Texas with California before he died on 13 April 1882 at the age of sixty-one. Rhoda, his second wife, survived him by more than twenty years, her death occurring 2 September 1906. John and both his wives are buried in Little Bethel Cemetery. His son, George W., married Mary J. Baggett (1874), and Jasper married Rachel Bryant (1879); his daughters Jane, Mary E., and Susan married Drury Campbell (1871), Valentine Crawford (1885), and George Weaver (1882), respectively. All of this information relating to John Henderson and his family can be verified from the United States Censuses, from Dallas County deed, marriage, and tax records, and from the gravestones at Little Bethel Cemetery.
By Mary Beth Lasater, great grand-daughter of John Henderson, Dallas.
Note: The Hendersons and Kimmels are forever linked. John’s brother in law was Philip Kimmel, brother of Malvina, who appears to have been murdered along with a friend by the name of William Stiles on August 21, 1856. One account names another of John Henderson’s brothers in law, a Calvin Guest, as the assailant. Guest was married to John’s sister Nancy Henderson. However, there is no other mention of the incident that can be easily found. In addition, no cause is offered for any conflict between the parties and no mention is given as to whether or not there were any legal proceedings arising from any such incident. Philip Kimmel’s widow was the former Susan Henderson, another sister of John Henderson. After Philip’s death, she married T. W. Moore. After her death, Moore married a daughter of John and Malvina named Jane Henderson.
Some of the family members are buried in the Trees Cemetery, Ellis County, named for the family of Crawford and Anna Minerva Kimmel, another sister of Philip. Other family members are buried in Little Bethel Cemetery, in Duncanville. Mr. Guest is buried in Mansfield.
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