Bosque County: Land and People (A History of Bosque County, Texas) Page: 355
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Valley Mills football fan, and an annual
award is made in his name to two outstanding
players on the Valley Mills team.
9. Ada Lou Harris (1878-1970) married
W.A. Simpson in 1905. They had no children
but owned and operated a clothing and dry
goods store in Valley Mills for many years.
The J.A. Harris family was one of the very
old and highly respected families in the
Valley Mills area, and all of the children, with
the exception of John L. Harris who moved
to Oklahoma and Lula Harris Long who lived
at Taylor, raised their families and lived
within a 25-mile radius of the old family
home place near Valley Mills.
by Ada Windham
HARRIS, ROBERT B. AND
ARNOLD L.
F494
Robert Beverly Harris, my maternal great-
grandfather, was born in Georgia, in 1831, the
second child of six children born to Elbert
and Elizabeth (Harkins) Harris. He married
Amarintha Tindall in 1853, to whom six
children were born. Their fourth child was
my grandfather, Arnold Lane Harris. Robert
B. Harris arrived on Spring Creek, south of
Iredell, in 1870, with his wife and young
children, from their home in Alabama. Bob
Harris was engaged in farming and later
became road commissioner. In the year 1902,
my mother, who was at the time, four years
old, was sitting on Robert's lap (he was her
paternal grandfather) as he sat before the
fireplace. He arose to rake from the ashes in
the hearth a sweet potato which he had
placed there earlier that morning. He was a
huge man. When reaching for the shovel, he
toppled over dead. Of this my mother kept
a vivid recollection.
My maternal grandfather, Arnold Harris,
tall and grey with a handle-bar mustache,
owned one of the two cotton gins in Iredell.
At the beginning of the cotton season the
entire town listened anxiously to see which
gin would receive the first wagon-load of
cotton. When the first one arrived, the gin
whistle blew furiously, and everyone knew by
the sound of the whistle which gin was
honored to gin the first bale of cotton.
My grandfather also played the fiddle. He
used to play "Arkansas Traveler" on his
fiddle while grandchildren (he had 21) sat all
around the porch railing, the steps, and on
the ground. But I sat beside him on the porch
swing. He was a most respected gentleman.
When brother Tom and I rode with him in his
big, black touring car with isinglass windows,
we felt very privileged. When folks asked
him, "How are you, Mr. Harris?", he replied,
"Just tolerable, just tolerable." Instead of
saying, "Thank you," he always said, "Much
obliged."
"Gotch" Gregory ran the 'suction' at the
cotton gin, which was a long round pipe that
drew the cotton from the wagon and up into
the gin where the cotton went through eight
different hoppers to remove the seeds from
the cotton fibers.
Then the cotton was compressed into a
burlap covering by a huge press, then tied
with six steel belts. We watched Bill Phillips
ride the big eight-foot wheel of the steam
engine that made a deafening put-put noise.
After the cotton was baled, the farmer tookit to the cotton yard where my paternal
grandfather, Will Conley, would hook into
those big bales of cotton which weighed about
five hundred pounds, and he would swing
them down from the wagon to weigh them.
Then he marked them with blue ink and
placed them in long straight rows to await the
arrival of cotton byyers, important looking
strangers with straight brimmed black felt
hats who ripped the burlap in a three
cornered slit to test the length of the cotton
fibers and the color of the cotton to appraise
its value.
How Tom and I marveled at the great bulk
of our grandfather's frame, six feet and over
two hundred pounds. His blue eyes, reflecting
bright Texas skies, sparkled as he placed
those bales of cotton like dominoes in rows.
Arnold Lane Harris, born in Alabama, in
1860, died at Iredell, Bosque County, Texas
in 1935.
Ella (Heflin) Harris, wife of A.L. Harris,
was born in Alabama, in 1868. She died at
Iredell in 1949.
Charles Robert Conley, son of William
Washington and Mollie (Mitchell) Conley,
was born at Iredell, Bosque County, Texas,
in 1893. He married Eugenia Elizabeth
Harris, daughter of Arnold Lane and Ella
(Heflin) Harris at Iredell in 1898.
by Charlene Conley Sloter
HARRISON FAMILY
F495
(See photo next page)
$ eDennis Carroll Harrison
Harrison 1880-1885and wife, Martha Flore
Dennis Carroll Harrison, the son of
Nathaniel Harrison and wife, Sarah Carroll,
was born in Shelby County, Alabama, April
21, 1819. His mother was the daughter of
Dennis Carroll who was born in Wake
County, North Carolina about 1766. It is
believed that Sarah Carroll Harrison died
about 1820, and Nathaniel Harrison then
married Peggy Crowson, who may have been
the daughter of Moses Crowson, a Baptist
minister who helped organize severalchurches in Shelby County and Bibb County,
Alabama.
Dennis Carroll Harrison is believed to have
had the following brothers and sisters: Benja-
min; Elizabeth, married Orville Franklin
Chesley Castle; Thomas, married Louisa
Houser; William, married Sarah Seaman;
Nancy; Mary; Sarah; Joel, married Martha
Weeks; and Altna, married James Monroe
Burk.
Dennis Carroll Harrison married Emily
Ford in Shelby County, Alabama, 1843. They
moved to Noxubee County, Mississippi,
where he was a planter, and where the
following children were born: Sarah Jane,
born 1843, married George Washington
Castle; John Nathaniel, born 1845, married
Laura Bell Crow; Mary Louisa Catherine,
born 1847, married J.L. Vanzandt; Martha F.,
born 1849, died 1851; Eveline, born 1852,
married John W. Stinson; Thomas J., born
1854, never married; Benjamin Franklin,
born 1857, married Laddie Ada Meyers; and
Elizabeth N., born 1859, died 1859.
Dennis Carroll Harrison served in the Civil
War, enlisting as a private in Capt. D.M.
Rogers Company Reserve Forces of Missis-
sippi on July 22,1864. His name was on a Roll
of Prisoners of War who surrendered at
Citronella, Alabama on May 4, 1865, and
paroled at Meridian, Mississippi May 10,
1865. His son, John, also served in the Civil
War, enlisting February 1, 1864 at Gholston,
Mississippi. John was in Perrins Regiment,
a Private in the 11th Mississippi Cavalry,
Company B.
Dennis Carroll Harrison's wife, Emily
Ford, died in 1859, and after the Civil War,
he married Martha Flore and moved to
Fannin County, Texas about 1866. By his
second wife, he had the following daughters:
Emily, born 1865, married Ollie Jemkins;
Laura Bell, born 1876, married Ellis Sumrall;
Lucy, born 1871, married William T. Boyd;
Fannie, born 1872, married James Wylie
Young; and Annie, born 1876, married John
Nathaniel Burk.
Between 1870 and 1880 the Dennis Carroll
Harrison family, with the exception of Sarah
Jane (who married G.W. Castle and remained
in Fannin County, Texas) moved to Bosque
County, Texas, and in 1880 bought land from
the Ward Keeler estate, 247 acres in the
Forks of the Bosque and Duffau Creeks. In
1883, he and his son-in-law, J.W. Stinson,
bought 133-/3 acres on the waters of the
Bosque and Duffau Creeks. This was near the
town of Iredell, Texas. In 1890, Dennis
Carroll Harrison and wife Martha bought
more land on Duffau Creek from P.E.
Trimble and wife.
Dennis Carroll Harrison died in July, 1892;
his wife, Martha, had preceded him in death,
passing away in February, 1892. They had
lived to see all but two of their five daughters
married. They are buried in adjoining graves
in an Iredell, Texas cemetery, their resting
places identified by a single ornate head-
stone.
by Betty Jo Hulse355
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Bosque County History Book Committee. Bosque County: Land and People (A History of Bosque County, Texas), book, 1985; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth91038/m1/371/?q=campbell: accessed May 7, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Denton Public Library.