Mary F. Newland and John Graves

One of the frustrating things about publishing a genealogy book, especially one the size of Metes & Bounds II: David Crews, Ancestors & Descendants, is the fact that new information is being discovered all the time, and cousins are always around the next corner. These new cousins almost always know something I don't. I will likely never get to doing a 3^rd edition of the Crews book, but I will be posting information on this blog that “updates” the Crews family.

Graves of John E. Graves and Mary F. (Newland) Graves
Donnelton Cemetery, Hunt Co., TX
courtesy of Mary La Rue, El Paso, TX 2015

I received an email this week from Mary La Rue of El Paso, Texas. Mary is a descendant of David Crews and Annie Magee through their daughter Mary Crews Newland. She informed me that Mary F. Newland, daughter of William W. Newland and Arthusa Bascom Randall, married John E. Graves. On page 179 of my 2^nd edition, I indicate the last name of Mary’s husband to be “Graves,” but I had no record regarding his first name. Mary F. Newland was the great-great-great granddaughter of David Crews & Annie Magee.

William and Arthusa (Randall) came to Texas not in 1848, as I stated in my 2^nd edition, but sometime between 1850 and 1860. In 1850, they are in the Jessamine County, Kentucky, census, but by 1860 they were in the Kaufman County, Texas census. 

Grave of Sarah Elizabeth "Lizzie" Newland - Smith
courtesy of Mary L Rue 2015

Mary F. Newland was born in 1843 while the family was still in Kentucky. She would have been a little girl when her parents moved from Kentucky to Texas. She died in 1924. John was born in 1833 in Georgia and died in 1901. They are both buried in the Donnelton Cemetery in Hunt County, Texas. John and Mary were married on August 9, 1859 in Henderson County, Texas. 

John and Mary (Newland) Graves’ daughter, Sarah Elizabeth “Lizzie” Graves, was the maternal great-grandmother of Mary La Rue. Mrs. La Rue is also a descendant of William Hoy and Sarah Callaway, early settlers of Boonesborough, Kentucky, and contemporaries of both the Crews and McQueen families. In fact, Hoy’s Station was 400 yards southwest of David Crews Station on the dividing line between Otter and Tates Creeks in Madison County.

Lizzie was born in 1866, at the very end of the Civil War, and died in 1901. She married John R. Smith. John was born in 1862 and died in 1942. Lizzie and J.R. married on April 10, 1882 in Hunt County, Texas. The picture below is of Lizzie and J.R. and their family and Mrs. La Rue believes it was taken in or near Brownwood, Texas around 1897, not long before Lizzie's death. 

Family of John R. "J. R." and Sarah Elizabeth "Lizzie" (Graves) Smith about 1897.
Children pictured are Lula, Behula, Thomas, William, and Legal  who is on Lizzie's lap.
(Legal was Mary La Rue's grandmother.) 

NOTE: All information and pictures used with permission of Mary La Rue in an email dated to blog owner February 2015.