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Captain Clinton Thomas Peoples was born August 25, 1910 in Bridgeport, Wise County, Texas to William Thomas and Susie May Johnson Baugh Peoples. In Bridgeport, his parents ran a cafe and candy store. The family later moved to the King Ranch where his father managed a section of the ranch. He attended high school in Conroe where they were living at the time.
Continue reading Clint Peoples, Texas RangerWilliam Rufus Shafter was a Union officer in the Civil War. Born in 1835 in Michigan, he was in seminary at the outset of the Civil War and enlisted in the Union Army. About thirty years after the end of the Civil War, he was awarded the Medal of Honor for meritorious service pertaining to an incident on May 31, 1862. Shafter had been a lieutenant involved in bridge construction near Fair Oaks, Virginia when the Union forces were engaged by Confederate troops. Shafter left the bridge and took about twenty-two men to counter the Confederate attack. All but four of his troops were killed and he received a flesh wound and possibly other wounds. However, Shafter stayed on the field, concealing his wounds. In a later battle, he was captured by the Confederates and served three months in a prison camp in 1864 before being released. He was then assigned to the 17th United States Colored Infantry, which appears to be his command when the war ended. Shafter had been elevated to the rank of brevet brigadier general.
Belle Starr, the famous “female outlaw” was born Myra Maybelle Shirley on February 5, 1848 to John and Elizabeth Shirley in rural Missouri near the town of Carthage. It was a time when bandits, either male or female, were celebrated in some ways. Her family lived on a farm. Reportedly, they were also slave owners in a time when strong attitudes for or against slavery divided residents especially in so-called border states. Her family later sold their rural property and moved into Carthage where they ran the inn and several other businesses. The civil war came and a brother joined the Confederate army and more specifically the controversial outfit known as Quantrill’s Raiders. Her brother Bud Shirley was killed in Missouri in a skirmish between Union and Confederate troops. The economy had generally deteriorated in Missouri because of the war and the Shirleys packed up and moved to near Scyene, Texas, at the time located southeast of Dallas, around 1864.
Herbert Lee Kokernot, Sr. was born in 1867 to Levi Moses and Sarah Littlefield Kokernot. Levi had been born in 1836 in Louisiana and lived most of his adult life in Gonzales County where he was a cattle rancher. Levi had first married the former Sarah E. Littlefield with whom he had a number of children including Herbert Lee. Sarah died in 1878 at around the age of thirty. He later married Hulda Jane Carnes. Hulda had also been born in Louisiana and lived most of her life in the Gonzales area with Levi and her family.
Continue reading Kokernot o6 RanchDr. Junius Mottley was born in Virginia in 1812 to John P. and Mary Williams Elmore Mottley. His ancestors came to Virginia from England in the 1600s. Dr. Mottley received his medical education at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky. Transylvania was founded in 1780, was the first university in Kentucky and is still operating. A number of early Texans have ties to Transylvania. After completing his studies, he studied with a practicing physician in Kentucky by the name of Dr. Charles Hay. Shortly after leaving Kentucky, Mottley moved to Texas in 1835. He joined the Texas Army and served as Post Surgeon at Goliad. Mottley was serving in that capacity in early 1836 when he was appointed as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in Washington County. Accordingly, he was a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence.
Continue reading Dr. Junius William Mottley, namesake of Motley County
Texas History Notebook 