Real People Telling Real Stories
Recently a friend forwarded an eBay notice of an item for sale. The item was being sold from someone in connection with other items from Grayson County, Texas, a portrait of a young woman identified as Macie (sic) Devall, Mt. Vernon, Texas.
That might not generate much excitement but I knew of Macie Devall. I had been seated next to Michael Rutherford of Tyler at a recent dinner party and the talk invariably turned to genealogy and history. Mr. Rutherford advised that he had determined that his ancestors were brought up as slaves to Mt. Vernon by the Devall family from the port of New Orleans.
I pulled obituaries and got a fascinating account of the life of Macie Devall. The obituary from my grandmother’s scrapbook (published by Franklin County Genealogical Society) reports that Macy Devall was born Dec. 7, 1877 at Mt. Vernon; her father died when she was eight and her mother when she was twelve. She attended Grayson College and graduated with honors. She taught at the Whitwright School for two years but poor health brought her home. She lived in the home of her brother, C.R. Devall (publisher of the Optic-Herald starting in 1909) and taught music lessons. Modern medicine might have granted her a longer life. She died January 30, 1908, shortly after attaining her 30th year.
Then I looked up the 1880 census and found Macie, at the age of two when enumerated. She was living in the household of her grandparents, Robert Jefferson Holbrook and Mary E. Rutherford Holbrook. That house would have stood facing present-day Holbrook Street in the south part of Mt. Vernon. It may have been “up” on the hill though; a distance from the street; after all, the Holbrooks were people of substantial property. The house must have been large. The census-taker enumerated 18 people in one home.
In my childhood a beautiful two story Victorian stood just north of the Stringer House on Holbrook Street (the Annie Mae Stringer House). I would speculate that that home was the actual home occupied in 1880 by the Holbrook clan, but how could 18 people have lived in any relatively normal house?
Listed in the household: Robert J. Holbrook (age 73); wife, Mary E. (63); daughter Mary E. Hill (age 35); grandchildren: Beula, Harry, Guy, Susie, Mary and Birttie Hill (must be children of John Payne Hill, who marched off to War in 1861 from Mt. Vernon). And then the Deval family of Charles and Martha and children, Willie, Charles and Mary (Macie); and two servants, the child of a servant and a 24-year-old boarder. What connections you’d draw for all these family members. We have an oil painting by Birttie Hill hanging in the Parchman House; painted about 1895; a wistful young girl.
Charles and Martha Devall die young. Their son Charles will form a partnership with Robert L. Rountree in 1894 and publish the Optic; in 1906 they purchase the Herald and create the Optic-Herald. Rountree will die young in 1909; and Devall will succeed to ownership of the paper; Devall marries a Milam from Sulphur Springs. Charles R. Devall (born ca. 1907) will succeed to ownership of the paper until the early 1950’s when they sell in a chain of title leading to the present Reeves family ownership
Oh, yes, Charles Devall (born 1874) marries the daughter of Judge J.K. Milam and his wife, a Green. The Green woman is of Franklin County stock.
Another child of Judge Milam, Hal, will marry my grandfather’s sister, Mae. Uncle Hal is a friend to Rhema Odom of Cumby where they worked on newspaper together. Rhema Odom marries Rua Arthur of Saltillo. Rhema Arthur leaves $50,000 to our historical association in 1991 which allows our organization to commence restoration and adaption of the fire station into the present museum we operate.
So, I continue to scan obituaries and I see that my great-grandfather C.G. Hughes is a pall bearer for the funeral service of John L. Rutherford who is a nephew of Holbrook; ah, Macie is a cousin of John L. Rutherford. And John L.’s great-grandsons, Charles S. and John Rutherford, gave our organization the Rutherford Drug Store building which we sold for $30,000.00 to purchase our first office on Holbrook Street. Oh yes, and I had been seated next to a black Michael Rutherford and he had told me the Devalls were from Louisiana and, by George, here is Macie’s father listed as a native of Louisiana in that 1880 census.
And then a woman from the East Coast writes and she has found a Civil War journal (only covering the first few months of the War). C.W. Holbrook of Mt. Vernon writing of friends here. His journal ends up in some attic or trunk and is now discovered. She plans to bring the journal home (he’s the brother of Robert J. I’m sure). And the dead soldier mentions the Fanning family; and the Fanning Springs are that property just immediately south of the 1884 Holbrook Home which was remodeled in 1905 to look like the Bernard and Mattye B. Stringer home we all know.
The connections. Just a floating vaporous chain of connections. The people long gone who left records here. And those long gone, like Macie DeVall whose picture shows up on eBay in a hoard of photographs connected with Grayson College; and C.W. Holbrook who marched off to war and was not able to return home, until perhaps his journal comes back to rest this year.
The theme of the Texas Historical Commission is Real People Telling Real Stories. We do have the stories and the people.
