Texoso

Texas Fever

In the mid 1800s a disease began to infect southern cattle and had the potential to devastate the entire United States cattle industry. It was called tick fever, Texas fever or Texas cattle fever. Other names were Spanish fever, redwater or splenic fever. The comments below represent our best effort to understand the history of this malady and how the treatment developed over the years.

Ela Hockaday

Ela Hockaday was born March 12, 1875 to Thomas Hart Benton Hockaday (1835 – 1918) and Maria Elizabeth Kerr Hockaday (1838 – 1881) in Ladonia, Fannin County, Texas. She was the eighth of nine children and the youngest daughter born to the couple. Mr. Hockaday was born in Virginia but grew up in Maury County, Tennessee, southwest of Nashville. The couple married in Tennessee and began to raise their family there before first moving to Arkansas where he worked as a teacher before relocating to Texas prior to 1860. Once in Texas, Mr. Hockaday started a school. He was well educated and operated the school until he began to serve in the 6th Texas Cavalry during the Civil War. After the war, Mr. Hockaday seems to have mainly worked in farming his north Texas property.

Dr. Ashbel Smith

Dr. Smith was born in Hartford, Connecticut on August 13, 1805 to Moses “Bliss” Smith and Phoebe L. Adams Smith. Phebe Adams Smith was said to have been descended from the large Adams family that included Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams. The two family lines do not appear to be directly related in the same direct line, but there are numerous common and similar names. The families were both active on the colonial side of the American Revolution, but the two president’s ancestors and descendants lived in Massachusetts while the Phebe Adams line seems to have settled in Connecticut. Most likely, the families were related.

Zachary Scott

Zachary Thomson Scott, Jr. was an actor. He was born in Austin, Texas to Zachary Thomson Scott, Sr. (1880 – 1964) and Sallie Lee Masterson Scott (1888 – 1983) on February 21, 1914. His father was a medical doctor who practiced most of his career in Austin. Zachary, Sr. happened to be studying medicine in Galveston in September 1900 when the hurricane struck the island. A 1978 newspaper account from the Galveston Daily News related that the future Dr. Scott was there at an infirmary working as an orderly when he decided to try and make a quick trip to see his parents in Central Texas. Zachary Sr.’s father, Richmond Lewis Scott was a dairy farmer in Bosque County in the Clifton area. The young man walked to the station and was told that they weren’t selling any tickets because the tracks were already partially submerged by water. So, he returned to the infirmary where he continued to work and helped others as the storm pounded the island. He survived the storm, completed medical school and in 1909, he married Sallie Lee Masterson. The couple had three children: Abigail Ann, Zachary, Jr. and Mary Lewis.

William Milton Tryon

William Milton Tryon (1809 – 1847) was an early Texas resident. His parents were William Tryon (1784 – 1820) and Jane Phillips Tryon (1790 – 1830). William Milton Tryon was born in New York to the couple and was the oldest of six children, three boys and three girls. William, the father, is sometimes said to be a descendant of the Loyalist (loyal to the Crown of England) Governor William Tryon (1723 – 1788). The Loyalist Tryon had served England as governor both of North Carolina and New York during the years 1765 to 1780. His title primarily had military responsibilities and he was actively engaged on behalf of the British during the Revolutionary War. The governor was born and died in England. Given the relative closeness of the ages the governor and the known ancestors of the Texas Tryon family, it is possible to determine that the father William Tryon does not appear to have been descended from the governor, though they may have had common ancestors back in England. The father’s ancestors are reasonably well identified in online genealogy sources and they had resided in America as far back as around 1700.