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 McCoy, January 30, 1884, in Dallas County. Jonathon LaFon, my great-great-grandfather, who had married Silvera Huntsman about 1853, remained in Tennessee with his brother, Emmanuel.
John and Matilda McCoy had brought their eight children from Bowling Green, Kentucky, arriving in Dallas by train, September 1, 1881. The children were Turner, 1862; Mack, 1865; Susan (my great-great-grandmother), 1867; Sam, 1869; Jim, 1871; Dolly, 1873; Mairl, 1875; and Mary, year of birth unknown. They brought a dulcimer, which they played everywhere. They lived in Dallas a short time and moved to Cass County.
The first child for L.C. and Susan was my grandfather, Vernie, born November 30, 1884, in Dallas. L.C. sharecropped land around the area of what is now Hall Street and Gaston Avenue, back towards what is now Fair Park. Years ago there was a creek by their cabin. Then they moved to Collin County and bought land before December 1885, when their second child was born. They went on to have thirteen children.
It wasn’t until 1944, during WW II, that my parents, Pearl (Nickerson) and Jessie Leonard LaFon, my sister and I moved to Dallas from Lawton, Oklahoma. Daddy was able to get a special housing permit for a two-room apartment in a large house at 3809 Gaston Avenue because he had been in the Civil Service as a fireman at Fort Sill. We had gone to Lawton during the Depression for his job at the Butternut Bakery. In Dallas, Daddy went into business with family members to form American Clutch Products, which was first located on Main Street and later on South Haskell Avenue. The company was sold in the late sixties, and he worked for Louis Auto Parts until he passed away, October 25, 1985.
Our family joined St. John’s Methodist Church in 1945, when we bought a house at 5510 Worth Street (the house on Gaston was taken over by a business). I attended Stephen F. Austin Elementary, which was torn down by Baylor Medical Center, and then William B. Lipscomb Elementary, Long Junior High, Woodrow Wilson High School, and SMU.
While working on the family history, I have traded information with William B. Orr of Atlanta, Georgia, who told me, “Part of the LaFons left Henry County, Tennessee in 1859, including William and Juliann LaFon, who left with their son, Frederick, and his family. They settled in Johnson County, Texas. Another son, Lewis, and his family settled in Johnson County before the 1870 Census.”
By Bradley Sue Howell
