From Proud Heritage, Volume I by DCPA, currently out of print.
Edmiston Kennedy Martyn, born in Columbia, Maury County, Tennessee, on January 9, 1856, was a son of Judge William Pitt Martin and Sarah North Martin of Columbia. He rode out of Columbia on his horse in September, 1873, accompanied by two other boys, and headed for Texas. They arrived at Sherman, Texas, five weeks later. Ed lost track of the other boys after that.
He achieved his destination, Dallas, by February, 1874. The family story goes that Ed was infatuated with a little girl named Fannie Mellersh, formerly of Memphis, Tennessee, and had insisted he was going to marry her when she grew up. She was born August 5, 1865 in Memphis and was the daughter of Captain George M. Mellersh and Elizabeth D. James Mellersh. The Mellersh family was already in Dallas in 1874, but Fannie was attending a girls’ finishing school, the Athenaeum, in Columbia. On April 24, 1888 Ed and Frances Maria Ann Mellersh were married at First Baptist Church in Dallas.
When he first came to Dallas, Mr. Martyn engaged in the livery business. In 1887, he began a two-year stint as deputy sheriff under W. H. Lewis. Then he joined his brother, Henry James Martyn, in the real estate business. After his brother’s death in early 1908, he continued the firm under the same name, Martyn Brothers, specializing in commercial real estate. Among the prominent real estate deals he handled were the Union Station, Sante Fe Building, Medical Arts Building, and the warehouse district northwest of Sanger Bros. Department Store ln the Texas & Pacific railroad area and now Dallas’ first designated historical district.
During the Spanish-American War the E. K. Martyns lived for several years in Denver, Colorado, where his youngest brother, Arthur Pillow Martyn, was located. They were there when President William McKinley’s funeral train passed through Denver. For three years during World War I, they farmed ten acres on the interurban route between Dallas and Fort Worth near the present site of the General Motors plant. Mr. Martyn also commuted to Dallas to his office.
Not long after his arrival in Dallas originally, Mr. Martyn discovered another Martin with identical initials, which proved too confusing. As a result, he and his brothers, Henry James and Arthur Pillow, changed their spelling to Martyn. William Pitt Martin Jr. never did, nor did his sister Emma Kennedy Martin.
William Pitt Martin Jr. lived in Dallas for a while, but mostly in Weatherford, Texas, and also at Fordyce and Searcy, Arkansas. Their sister, Emma K. Martin, was the wife of John Patrick Murphy, founder of the well known real estate brokerage firm of Murphy & Bolanz. They resided on Mastin Street near Ross Avenue and later for many years at 2516 Maple Avenue, the three-story house still standing directly across the street from the new development called the Crescent. Their mother, Sarah North Martin, moved to Dallas after the death of her husband in 1886. She died in Dallas in 1889. The E. K. Martyns earlier lived on Sale Street in Oak Lawn and Sanger Avenue but the longest at 3308 Colonial Avenue.
Judge Martin was a circuit court judge in Maury County, both before and after the War Between the States, for thirty-five years. George Montgomery Martin, E. K.’s grandfather, taught foreign languages at a college at Nashville, Tennessee, before moving to Columbia, where he headed the Martin School for Girls a number of years. Later he was clerk of the circuit and chancery courts. William Edmiston Kennedy, E. K.’s great-uncle, was circuit court judge several years, preceding his father. His aunt, Mary Martin, married Gen. Gideon J. Pillow, prominent in the 1861-65 war. Prior to the war, General Pillow had been a law partner of James K. Polk before he was elected President of the United States. Portraits of the Pillows still hang in the Polk home in Columbia. Two of his brothers, Capt. Hugh Bradshaw Martin and William Pitt Martin Jr., served in the cavalry under Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest. One of his maternal great-grandfathers, Major Ennion Williams of Philadelphia, was in the 1st Battalion of the Pennsylvania Rifle Regiment of the Continental Line, participating in the Battles of Princeton, Trenton, and Long Island during the American Revolution. Other Revolutionary War relatives included Gen. William Campbell and Col. William Edmiston, both of Virginia, prominent at the Battle of King’s Mountain. General Campbell was married to Elizabeth Henry, a sister of Patrick Henry. Thomas Ellis, who arrived at Philadelphia in 1682, was Registrar-General of Pennsylvania. John Knox, founder of the Presbyterian Church, was another ancestor. Mr. Martyn on the maternal side could also trace his lineage to the Magna Carta Baron Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford, of Norman descent. The de Veres for many centuries were a very wealthy and powerful family with the hereditary title “Lord Great Chamberlain” and Oxford Castle and Castle Hedingham.
Mr. Martyn died March 22, 1928 in Dallas, and his widow on May 28, 1941, also in Dallas; both were buried in Greenwood Cemetery. Their children were Frances Mellersh, Mrs. Frederick Reece Horton, (1892-1971); Ida Elizabeth, Mrs. William Egert (1894-1970); Emma Ruth, Mrs. John Blanchard Harris (1896-1976); and Marian Gwendolyn, Mrs. James Russell Mount (1905-1956). Grandchildren are Bette Ruth Horton, Mrs Dennis Black DuPriest, Jr. (1922 – ?); Elizabeth Jane Harris, Mrs. Leonard Griffin Boswell (1932 – ?); James Russell Mount, Jr. (1932 – ?) and William Martin Mount (1936-1983). Great-grandchildren are Elizabeth Ruth Boswell, John Griffin Boswell, Paul Mount, Carol Margaret Mount and Stephen Martin Mount.
By Bette Ruth Horton DuPriest, granddaughter, Dallas
