Dallas, TX
972-260-9334

Latest News

1856 Tornado

From: History of Dallas County Texas, 1837 to 1887 by John Henry Brown.  The locally famous cyclone struck Cedar Hill, eighteen miles southwesterly from Dallas, April 29, 1856. Mr. Dickson, a merchant, James Berry and family, Mr. Hart and family, and perhaps others were killed. Mrs. Merrifield and children escaped almost miraculously, the house being lifted…
Read more

Dr. W. W. Samuell

William Worthington Samuell was born 13 January 1878, in Georgetown, Kentucky, the son of Capt. Hazael O. and Sallie (Worthington) Samuell. His parents moved to Dallas County, settling in the vicinity of New Hope when he was a year old. After education in the Dallas schools, he attended the University of Texas and took his medical…
Read more

John Neely Bryan

John Neely Bryan was born December 24, 1810 in Fayetteville, Lincoln County, Tennessee to James and Elizabeth Neely Bryan. Bryan lived for a number of years in Tennessee where with his local liberal education, he was able to teach school. When he was a young adult, he studied law and was admitted to the Tennessee bar.…
Read more

Sarah Horton Cockrell

Sarah Horton Cockrell was born in Virginia on 13 January 1819 to Enoch and Martha Stinson Horton. She moved with her family to Dallas County, Texas near Eagle Ford in 1844, becoming one of the pioneer families in the area. In September of 1847, she married Alexander Cockrell. Alexander was a native of Kentucky and came…
Read more

The Ayers Family in Dallas

From Proud Heritage, Volume III by DCPA. This 352 page hardcover book is available online. In the middle of the nineteenth century, Simpson G. Ayers was a cotton farmer in Tippah County, Mississippi.  Little is known about Simpson Ayers, other than he was the father of twenty or more children by two wives. Among Simpson’s children was William R.,…
Read more

Osborn Love and wife, Jane Fondren

From Proud Heritage, Volume III by DCPA. This 352 page hardcover book is available online. Osborn Love was born in 1800 in Rutherford County, North Carolina to Charles and Fereby Love.  He was the third of eight children: John, James, Osborn, Elizabeth, Charity, Sarah, Charles and Nancy.  He married Jane Fondren in Rutherford County on 15 August 1825.  She was born in…
Read more

Emet David Florence and Perl (Curtis) Florence

From Proud Heritage, Volume III by DCPA. This 352 page hardcover book is available online. Emet David Florence was born on the family homestead in Mesquite on 22 November 1885.  He was the third child born to David Walker and Julia Savannah (Beaty) Florence. David was born 28 October 1848 in St. Clair County, Alabama, where the Florence family…
Read more

The LaFons: From Tennessee to Texas

From Proud Heritage, Volume III by DCPA. This 352 page hardcover book is available online. L. C. (Leeander Calvin) LaFon rode a horse to Texas from Tennessee, according to a family story my grandfather, Vernie Lee LaFon, related to me several years ago. That journey would have been in the early 1880s, as he married Susan Elizabeth…
Read more

Family Of John Byron And Sarah (Thompson) May

From Proud Heritage, Volume III by DCPA. This 352 page hardcover book is available online. Favorite memories of my childhood, when we lived at 4654 McKinney Avenue, were the times my mother, Annie Marion, loaded her five children (John Ray, Faye, Robert, Ida Lea, and Dulcie Anne) and her mother, Allie Cox, into her 1929 Nash and…
Read more

Donald Huffhines (1929-2000)

From Proud Heritage, Volume III by DCPA. This 352 page hardcover book is available online. Donald F. Huffhines was born December 9, 1929, and died November 18, 2000. During World War II his father, J.C., worked as a government inspector for Guiberson Motors, the company holding the contract for installing motors in tanks for the U.S. Army.…
Read more