From Proud Heritage, Volume I by DCPA, currently out of print.
One of the earliest recorded Land Grants in the Cedar Hill, Texas area is signed by the then Governor E. M. Pease to E. C. Thomas to Milton Merrifield. In 1849 among the first to arrive in Dallas County by ox-drawn wagon were the Merrifield brothers from Kentucky. They rode in wide wheeled crescent-shaped covered wagons, which were able to navigate the deep black mud they often encountered on their trip. The wagons were later used in the freighting business which the father, John “Jack” Merrifield, and the boys operated. They hauled supplies from the Gulf Coast to Dallas; Milton hauled wheat to Dallas and took ice and coal back to Cedar Hill on the return journey.
Milton married Margaret Ann Singleton in Kentucky. He was born 5 September 1817 in Kentucky, and Margaret’s birth was 13 May 1824. To them were born nine children: 1) Jeff, never married, and was killed in the Civil War; 2) Sue Ellen married James Bracken Bryan, whose father was a brother of John N. Bryan; 3) Mattie married Mr. Cook; 4) Mary Jenny became Mrs. Vickery; 5) Fannie married Samuel Hunnicutt; 6) Ester married Mr. Lowenstine; 7) Effie C. married Mr. Ennis and lived in Waxahachie; 8) Elizabeth married Scott Beeman, a member of the East Dallas pioneer family; and 9) Margaret Ann married Henry Forrest Haswell of Cedar Hill.
In 1976, B. A. Hendricks wrote in The Chronicle of Pioneer Cedar Hill Families: “Milton Merrifield settled on 320 acres that lies bet ween US Highway 67 and Roberts Street and just to the North of Pleasant Run Road in Cedar Hill. Their homestead adjoined land owned by Robert Crawford who with Milton donated the four acres of land on which the first church in Cedar Hill was built. After only a few years of use the little log Methodist Church was blown away in a terrible tornado that swept across the prairie on 29 April 1856. The Merrifield home was demolished.” But none of the family was killed, though many families were not so fortunate.
When the storm struck the Merrifield home baby Maggie was lying in her cradle. Both baby and crib were blown out into the yard into a large rose bush; the bush cradled and held the crib, protecting the baby, perhaps saving her life. Maggie’s grand-daughter has a rose, a cutting off that old bush, in her yard still thriving and giving joy to the family. Baby Susie was lying on a feather bed and was not harmed. Son Jeff was out in the field, away from the house in the storm, but he lived to go to the Civil War and give his life to another more vicious storm.
After the house was destroyed, they built a large two-room log cabin after the Texas fashion of the times with a great “dog-trot” running between the rooms, sometimes called a double log house. That location is presently occupied by dentist’s offices in Cedar Hill.
At one time Merrifield land ran from Belt Line Road to the Trinity River; it was owned by the several Merrifield brothers who helped pioneer western Dallas County. Their many descendants still live in Cedar Hill and western Oak Cliff; some still own parts of the original home places.
Belt Line Road ran between Milton and his neighbor to the south. When the commissioners asked permission to widen the road when Cedar Hill began to grow, Merrifield gave all the easement needed to widen, this caused a definite jog in the roadway which can be seen today.
Milton was severely crippled by exposure to the blue northers that he often encountered in his freight hauling. It was said that Sue Ellen often helped her father, driving the oxen for him. Milton died 20 November 1888, and he is buried at Little Bethel Cemetery in Cedar Hill. His wife, Margaret Ann Merrifield, died 22 February 1901.
His daughter, Margaret “Maggie,” was born 8 December 1855 in Cedar Hill and married Henry Forrest Haswell, who is listed in the 1881-82 Dallas City-County Directory as an attorney. Haswell was born 1 October 1845 in Pennsylvania and died September 1906. Their son, Walter George, married Lizzie Mae Crandell. The information for this pioneer family was supplied by their daughter, Dorotha Haswell Thomas, Mrs. Walter John Thomas, who lives in 1985 on property that has been in her combined family since 1849.
By Dorotha Haswell Thomas, granddaughter, Cedar Hill
