Cruse Cemetery, Tyler County, Texas, Part 1

One of the neat things about getting the book on David Crews into a second edition is the finding of new cousins. Michael Harris, a descendant of David Crews through his son Elijah and grandson Squire recently contacted me. He is the only descendant thus far from this line that I have been in contact with. He has been doing research on this family and last year took a trip to the Cruse and Segriest Cemeteries in Tyler County. It will take me several postings to relay the pictures Mr. Harris has so graciously allowed me to post here. 

According to Mr. Harris, both cemeteries are maintained. I had lamented in my 2nd edition that that last time I was at the Cruse Cemetery nearly twenty years ago the path to it was not being maintained, nor was the cemetery. It is nice to hear someone is taking care of it. 

Squire Cruse was the son of Elijah Crews and Susannah Dozier and the grandson of David Milton Crews and Annie Magee. Squire married Piety Pruitt, daughter of Matthias Pruitt and Polly Hoover. He was one of the first settlers to acquire a land grant within the present limits of Tyler County, Texas. Five of his children drowned on the Mississppi River while en route to Texas. I have an extensive chapter on him in Metes & Bounds II: David Milton Crews, Ancestors & Descendants, and will not relay that information here. 

Acceess Point from the Road

Wide shot of Cruse / Methodist Cemetery in Tyler County, Texas

Original Headstone of Squire Cruse

Original Headstone of Piety Pruitt Cruse

Squire Cruse footstone erected by the State of Texas 1962

Newer Headstone

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. 

It's the Little Things!

It’s the little things that count!

I have this morning ritual. I eat egg burritos, hopefully have a clementine or something similar, and drink my coffee. (A perfect ritual involves coconut oil in the coffee, but right now it’s not perfect. Sigh . . . ) I eat, then crack open the laptop and check all my accounts.

Needless to say, this morning was super sweet because I have been in the hospital the past week with my son. We went to the ER exactly a week ago today with what turned out to be appendicitis. He had surgery Tuesday afternoon, but since it had turned gangrenous he had to have a drain and also IV antibiotics.

Needless to say, we were both glad to finally come home yesterday. After all, the hospital doesn’t serve egg burritos, and coffee in a styrofoam cup in a hard hospital chair just isn’t the same.

The little things. 

I did manage, with so much time sitting, to finish the 2nd edition of Metes & Bounds II: David Crews, Ancestors & Descendants.

I also pulled the first chapters on John Crews and Sarah Gatley, and on his son David Crew and wives Mary Stanley and Mary Ladd-Magee, as well as the chapter on the Stanleys, to create another book. This book will be just for individuals who descend from Crew/Gatley and Crew/Stanley. Anyone descending from them through David Milton Crews (1740-1821) need not purchase the smaller edition as the chapters are in the larger work about his life and descendants.

I also debuted the trailer for Metes & Bounds II last night. 

I should have both books available the week of Thanksgiving. I will post here, on my Facebook page, as well as several other places when they are available. will ask, though, that if you purchase please go through my website which takes you to the publisher Createspace. Amazon literally takes 1/2 my profits.

Purchasing through Createspace is a little thing, yes, but it is the little things that count!

Changes to Metes & Bounds II

In my last post I said I would detail some of the changes to the 2nd edition of Metes & Bounds II: David Crews, Ancestors & Descendants.

One of the major differences will be the listing of descendants. I will only detail five generations past David. First, I am concerned about the amount of information available and the risk of identity theft. This cutoff effectively eliminates anyone still alive. I also don't want to have to find everyone and get them to sign a disclaimer stating they are alright with having their information in the book. Twenty years ago those things weren't necessary. Today, unfortunately, they are.

Also, twenty more years is a lot to add to a book that is already almost 300 pages long. I am adding more information on the Stanleys (they now have their own chapter), rounding out David Crew's chapter (the father of David Milton), and adding quite a bit more on David Milton himself, including some more information on his Bedford County years, his Washington County years, his early years in Boonesborough, and his service in Forbes Expedition in 1758. That takes up space as well.

The information on the early Quaker families has been expanded, too. When I wrote the first book, I threw this stuff in at the last minute because I had just found it. I want to include it in a broader more readable context.

I will have more maps (Bedford County, Forbes Expedition movements, etc.), more pictures (which as of now are in color), a new numbering system (Microsoft Word makes it impossible to do an outline system like I did before), a new cover (see my previous post), and I will be producing a trailer which should be available in the next month for viewing.

In addition to all that, I am updating as much misinformation or adding to missing information as possible. I appreciate any and all help in that regard, and as always I will credit information to individuals even if it is in a footnote at the bottom of the page. I still believe in sourcing this information. (It's one reason I'm so frustrated with the Stanleys and early Crews families at the moment.)

More to come real soon! Keep checking back, or better yet, sign up to follow my page through email and you'll be notified of updates as they occur.

Good Intentions

This is, of course, my first posting to my blog. My primary intention here (although it may not be my only intention) is to begin posting much of the family history that I have collected the past thirty years. It's hard to believe it's been that long since my grandfather, Woodrow McQueen, let me take a file of family history on the McQueens home to look at. (Much of this information came from the early research efforts of Rosemary Hill and Jackie Barclay Barnes who had contacted my grandfather inquiring what he knew and remembered about the McQueen and Barclays of Tyler County, Texas.)  I devoured the information and very quickly, on three sheets of posterboard, detailed from myself back nine generations to Dugal McQueen.


James Polk McQueen Cabin
Birthplace of Woodrow McQueen, b. 1915
Tyler Co., TX
picture taken 1986

Since then I have published two books on my family history which are still in publication through Gregath Publishing Company. The first was Metes & Bounds:  Dugal McQueen and Some Descendants.  The second was Metes & Bounds:  David Crews, Ancestors and Descendants.  I have an unpublished history on the Hechlers (my Dad's side of the family) and I have files and files of scattered pieces of information on my family as well as other families which intertwine my own.  I have traced back both officially and unofficially lines farther back than nine generations on several branches. Much of this information is too scant to be put into a book as I did the McQueens.  However, I want this information to be available to my family as well as others researching those lines.

Family, both past and present is very important. In the olden times, families sat around in the evenings and retold stories about the family. In the intervening years, it was done by books such as I have written. Now, I am using the internet to keep these stories alive.

Feel free to spread the word to other family members as I get going on my blog!