From Proud Heritage, Vol 1 by DCPA, not currently in print.
My grandfather, William Henry Chewning, used to tell his children that when he was a little boy growing up in the Lancaster Hutchins area of Dallas County in the late 1870’s, his mother would hide him beneath a table or under her long skirts when roving Indians came near their homestead.
Henry’s mother, Fannie Buckridge, was born March 3, 1855 in Louisiana to parents who had sailed to New Orleans from England sometime after 1835.
Fannie’s mother, Elizabeth L., later married a man whose name was Sheppard (or Shappard). However, on December 11, 1865 she and George Marsden were married by Circuit Judge A. L. Bledson in Dallas County.
George and Elizabeth owned 80 acres of land on the Alanson Dowdy Survey near the Trinity River, which had been deeded by Dowdy to Marsden May 15, 1860.
Fannie and her younger sister Eliza, in July 1870 in Precinct 5 of Dallas County, were living with Elizabeth Marsden and two young Marsden boys, William H., age 3, and George, age 1. Neighbors included John M. Rawlins, Virgie Lavender, John Daniel, Samuel Martin and George Rawlins. The elder George Marsden died March 27, 1868 without a will. However, an inventory of his assets included the timbered land on the eastern shores of the Trinity and, “40 acres of prairie land, including homestead, lying on waters of Ten Mile Creek,” a part of the William Fleming Colony headright Survey. He had sold a parcel of land to Henry Lax prior to his death.
My great-grandmother, Fannie Buckridge, and Jacob A. Chewning were married April 8, 1873 by John S. Davis, Episcopal minister, in Dallas. Jacob was said to have had a twin brother who was living in Georgia after their sailing with another brother from England to America.
Their son, William Henry Chewning, was born August 26, 1873 near Grapevine where his father was a cowboy/ranch hand. In 1876 Fannie divorced Jacob in Dallas County, and on July 20, 1877 she married William Rochester, a farmer.
In 1880 their rural Lancaster-Hutchins neighbors in Precinct 5 of Dallas County included Andrew Peterson, Legislative Representative John Daniels, A. B. Rawlins, and Fannie’s mother, Elizabeth, and James F. Lewis, whom she had married November 26, 1874 at St. Matthews Cathedral on Ervay Street in Dallas. The marriage was performed by Episcopal minister S. D. Davenport.
Fannie and William Rochester divided their time between farm life and city living in Denton where he was a cattle salesman. My grandfather, Henry Chewning, was raised by both his grandmother, Elizabeth, and his own mother and step-father, shuffling between the Lancaster-Hutchins area and Denton. He attended Hutchins school with William Atwell, later a prominent Dallas judge. As a lad, Henry worked on a Trinity River ferry boat.
Fannie and William Rochester had seven children of their own: Nettie Elizabeth born July 30, 1878, died October 19, 1879; Annie Eleanor born July 29, 1880, died April 7, 1962; John Anthony born August 12, 1882 (the family lived at 1100 Commerce Street in Dallas at his birth), died May 24, 1949; Gussie Tenner born May 23, 1885, died March 25, 1899 from a mad dog attack; Charley Arthur born December 31, 1887, died August 23, 1918; Jim born September 17, 1890, died August 14, 1944; and Frank born October 12, 1893, died February 1, 1925.
Fannie was a small woman who endured much sorrow and hardship in her 63 years – an unhappy first marriage; divorce by abandonment; remarriage to a good, hard working man who died at age 40 on November 24, 1893, leaving her with six young children to raise.
In the early 1900’s Fannie sold two lots of land in Lancaster where Interurban tracks were eventually built.
Land records in Dallas indicate Elizabeth and James F. Lewis owned and lived on property that is today home of the Fin & Feather Club, near the Trinity River and New Dowdy Ferry Road, south of Lyndon B. Johnson Freeway (IH 635) in the Hutchins area.
They and other family members are buried in Lancaster’s Pioneer Section of Edgewood Cemetery in a lot close to the creek, with large trees and with corner posts that my grandfather, William Henry Chewning, hammered into the ground.
In 1900 Fannie lived in Denton with her son, Henry Chewning, and his young family, later living with them in Wichita Falls. On August 17, 1918 she died at the home of her daughter, Annie Rochester Hart, in Whitesboro. Her son, Charley, died there six days later, and both are buried in the Hart Family plot of rural Sadler Cemetery.
Thus, my direct generation family list in Dallas County is – Elizabeth Marsden Lewis; Fannie Buckridge Chewning Rochester; William Henry Chewning; Jack Chewning; myself, Nancy Elizabeth Chewning Farrell and my daughters Melissa, Cathy, Sharon and Kim; and a grandson, Joseph Ray Ursery.
By Nancy Elizabeth Farrell, Dallas.
