From Proud Heritage, Volume I by DCPA, currently out of print.
Eliza Jane Cole was the third daughter and fifth child of John Cole born 1795 and Polly McDonald Cole born 1794. She was born in northern Tennessee May 11, 1825. When she was four years old the family moved to Arkansas, first to Crawford County then Washington County. A neighboring family had also come to Arkansas from Tennessee; the Tilley family. Eliza married a Tilley boy by the name of Jefferson; and a son, Stephen, was born just before they pulled stakes and moved to Texas with her father’s family.
Jefferson and Eliza were granted 640 acres through the Peters Colony Company. Half of the land was patented in Nacogdoches County with the other 320 acres being patented in Robertson County. The Robert son County acreage would now be in north west Dallas County close to the northern edge of D.F.W. Airport. The Nacogdoches half of their headright was just north of her father’s headright. The boundary today would be Lovers Lane, Greenville Avenue, Dyer, and Hillcrest, including the upper half of the S.M.U. Campus.
Family tradition is that Jefferson Tilley disappeared from a riverboat while en route to New Orleans on a business trip. Eliza was widowed and moved with her son, Stephen Tilley, from Dallas County back to the area where she was born in Arkansas.
In 1853 she married Dr. John Jacob Funkhouser whose first wife had been Jefferson Tilley’s sister. Their children were: Henry F. Funkhouser born August 6, 1854 and Mary Ellen born February 23, 1856.
Eliza Jane Cole Tilley Funkhouser died February 12, 1916 and is buried in Sugar Hill Cemetery in Washington County, Arkansas.
By Homer Warlick, Dallas
