In earlier days, it was not all that unusual for brothers of one family to marry sisters of another family. There were fewer potential mates back then. In one generation of the Lagow and Murchison families, three Lagow brothers married three Murchison sisters.
Four brothers of the Thomas and Sarah Bennett Lagow family were orphaned within about a year when Sarah died in 1844 and Thomas followed her in death the following year, in 1845. The Lagow family had been living in Houston County, Texas when the parents died. Two of their six children, John and Mary Ann, also died in 1845 of causes unknown Their four surviving sons, Harrison, William, Silas and Richard were taken in and raised by Sarah’s parents, Armstead and Faith Permelia Bennett when the boys would have been about 12, 10, 5 and 4, respectively.
Thomas Lagow had been born in 1801 in Tennessee and had married Sarah Bennett, a native of Georgia born in 1805, in 1830. They were acquainted with Daniel Parker, of Fort Parker, having been members of the same church and came to Texas about the same time as the Parkers, though settling about seventy-five miles east of the Parker settlement, in 1835 in what is now Houston County. The Lagow family had the six children mentioned above.
Thomas had served in the War of 1812 and also in the Texas Army during the Texas Revolution, for which he received Headright Certificate #68 for just under 4,500 acres of land in North Texas. He died before he could settle on the land, but his acreage fell to the sons, some of whom did reside on it, and the allotment included land along White Rock Creek. This later comprised a core portion of Dallas County when it was incorporated in 1846.
Three of the sons of Thomas and Sarah Bennett Lagow married three daughters of William Martin Murchison (1805-1866) and Mary Wilson Murchison (1814-1903). William M. Lagow (1835-1910) married Lucinda Jane Murchison (1840-1924). Richard Lagow (1841-1885) married Nancy Ann Murchison (1843-1887). Silas Frank Lagow (1840-1897) married Elizabeth L. Murchison (1845-1876).
Sources include Stella M. Lagow McClure’s article about her great grandparents in “Daughters of the Republic of Texas, Vol. II.”
By Mike Magers
