The People Who Lived Here

 

 Hood County, Texas has a very rich and interesting history. There are many historical

places, including buildings, markers, cemeteries and museums that exist today.  I am going to tell about some of the people who lived this history. They are the ones who

first built, lived, and worked in the houses and buildings. They are mentioned in the markers, and are buried in the cemeteries that we still see here today.

 Dillon MartinActon Middle School

Texas History – Mrs. Sims 2002 

Wright-Henderson-Duncan House 1873

 

Photo by Wayne Moyers

The Aston and Landers Saloon George Landers and Andy Aston owned and operated the A&L Saloon on the north side of the Granbury Town Square.  

Texas Historical MarkerAston-Landers BuildingPhoto by Dillon Martin

  

Aston & Landers Building  

Aston & Landers Building as it appears today.

 Photo by Dillon Martin

January 2002

A&L Saloon Scrip Note Dated March 30, 1889. Explanation at bottom of picture.  

Inside the A&L Saloon Andy Aston (pictured below) owned the Aston-Landers Saloon on the north side of the Granbury Town Square along with George Landers.

 

George W. Landers 

Born – March 26, 1861 in Hood County, TexasDied – May 25, 1924 in Farwell, TexasBuried in Granbury Cemetery Genealogy : George Landers father was Henry Landers. Henry was a son of Abel Landers, first Hood County Judge and an early settler of Johnson County, which became Hood County in 1866. Henry was killed in the Battle of Mansfield, Louisiana during the Civil War. His mother was Susan Nutt. She was a sister of the blind brothers, Jesse and Jake Nutt who had a store on the square. Susan’s mother was Sallie Ann Landers Nutt, who was a sister of Abel Landers. So George Landers mother and father were first cousins. George had one full sister, Belinda, who married a man named John Glenn. Background : George Landers father was killed in the Civil War when he was three years old. His mother remarried a man named Wray Hopping and they had two sons, Jake and Coke and a daughter named Flora Hopping. They were George’s half brothers and sisters. When George’s mother died in 1881, he went to live with his uncle Jake Nutt, his grandmother Sallie Ann Nutt, his brothers and sisters, and some other orphan cousins on a ranch at Paluxy in Hood County. George married Mary Elizabeth (Mollie) Sellars in 1899. They had two children Sara Sue and George Jake. Mollie died in 1908 and George went to work for the railroad. Sara Sue and George Jake were raised by friends of George’s in Dublin, TX.  Mollie Sellars first husband was Jake Wright, he was a son of A.J. Wright, the first sheriff of Hood County. Jake Wright died and Mollie remarried George Landers. Mollie’s father was W.T. Sellars.   

 George Landers and the Pie.

Paraphrased by Dillon Martin From the Book “ A Sheriff-Ranger in Chuckwagon Days”

By R.C. Hopping Copyright 1952, Pagent Press

  In 1889 there was a church gathering at Rock Church near Paluxy in Hood County, Texas. A girl named Lelia Jones and a boy named Coke Hopping, who was George Landers half-brother, liked each other. George and Coke both lived with their Uncle Jake Nutt. They were having an auction of pies. Lelia Jones had baked a pie, and if a man bought it, it was like saying he liked who made it. So Coke obviously wanted to buy Lelia’s pie, but every time he bid on it a boy named Dale Rierdon would just bid more right back. So finally Coke started bidding more money than he had with him. Coke and Dale were starting to get mad at each other. At last, someone said, “I bid ten dollars for Lelia’s pie” and that was more than anyone else bid. It was George Landers who won the pie. He picked it up, and gave it to Coke Hopping, and told him that he (George) could not eat it because he had a toothache.

That is how George Landers helped out his half-brother Coke Hopping. 

Who’s Who on The Granbury Town Square    During the late 1800’s Granbury was a growing and fairly prosperous town for it’s time, but it was still a very small town. This meant that almost everyone was related to other people in the town, either by blood relation, or by marriage. Here is how just some of the people on the Granbury Town Square were connected:  George Landers, one of the owners of the Aston-Landers Saloon was the son of Henry Landers and Susan Nutt. Susan was the sister of Jesse and Jake Nutt who operated the Nutt Grocery, making George their nephew. He was married to Mary Elizabeth “Mollie” Sellars, whose father, W.T. Sellars, operated a general merchandise business in the Glenn Brothers Building, this made him W.T.’s son-in-law. Mollie’s first husband was Jake Wright (who died at a young age), who was the son of A.J. Wright, the first sheriff of Hood County. A.J. Wright’s first wife (who also died at a young age) was Elizabeth Nutt, the sister of George’s mother, making her his aunt. George’s sister, Belinda Landers, was married to John Glenn, one of the Glenn Brothers. This made George and John brothers-in-law.  There were many other family connections between the early settlers and their children for generations. This was not unusual in small communities on the “frontier”, since travel was dangerous and difficult, the settlers tended to marry people within a fairly small geographic area, and it was also fairly common to see marriage between “cousins” and other relations. In addition, because of the harsh living conditions and lack of medical care, people often died at a fairly young age, and their former spouses often remarried within the same family.

The Glenn Brothers Building Marker W.T. Sellers operated a general merchandise business in the Glenn Brothers Building. His name is on the brass threshold marker in the entryway. It is now the Downtown Store.  

Texas Historical MarkerGlenn Brothers BuildingPhoto by Dillon Martin

The Glenn Brothers Building 

The Glenn Brothers BuildingAs it appears today

 Photo by Dillon Martin

January 2002  

W.T. Sellars

 Born - April 9, 1841Died – May 16, 1905 W.T “Pappy” Sellars fought in the Civil War in Missouri. He owned a business on the Granbury town square where the Downtown Store is now. His name is on the brass plate in the doorway. He was the father of Mollie Sellars, George Landers wife.  .

Hood County Texas Genealogical Society

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

WILLIAM THOMAS SELLARS1841 - 1905

Missouri Cavalry CSAFrom "Family History – Morris/Sellars/Morgan/Cooper"

by Thomas Earl Morris, Grandson 

When Carrell Sellars moved his family to Benton County, Arkansas, his son William Thomas was 17 years of age. In early 1861, when William Thomas was 19 and Sarah Leticia Ingle was 15 years of age, they met and fell in love; but the war clouds were gathering. The Civil War broke out in the spring and, like most young men his age, William Thomas shouldered a rifle, and upon departing kissed Sarah Leticia, the one and only time prior to their marriage.The war touched practically all families in the South. William Thomas and his brother Fayette Sellars fought side by side from the beginning of the war to the end. They were with General Price in his raid on Missouri through Warsaw (140 miles north of Benton County, Arkansas), when they whipped the northern forces; on through Sedalia, Missouri, where they won again and to a spot near Kansas City, where they suffered reverses at the hands of the Federals and had to retreat 180 miles south and into Arkansas. Thomas Ingle, brother of Sarah Leticia, also fought side by side with William Thomas Sellars.At the time the Confederates captured Warsaw, Missouri, the Federals were stabling their horses in the Christian Church, a building which earlier had served the Federals as a hospital until smallpox broke out among the patients. Then the patients were removed and horses were stabled in the building. It was at this time that William Thomas Sellars and Thomas Ingle were making raids on Federal property and were leading Federal horses one night from this same Christian Church, when a Yankee officer sleeping on the porch awakened and discovered what was going on. Sellars was leading the horse and Ingle was behind him with his hands on the animal’s hips trying to ease him along silently. The awakened Federal was about to shoot Ingle in the back when Sellars beat him to the draw and shot the officer just to the left of the middle of the forehead, stunning him but not killing him.Years later this officer (in 1879) took dinner with the William Thomas Sellars family in Bloomfield, Arkansas, and at which time the shooting was a lively but friendly topic of conversation.Contributed by the written permission of W. Cody Martin, great-great-great-great-grandson of William Thomas Sellars, to the Hood County

Genealogical Society on August 15, 1999. A copy of "Family History – Morris/Sellars/Morgan/Cooper" by Thomas Earl Morris is located in the Hood County Library.

                                                                                                                                         

                                                                                                                            Web Page by Virginia Hale

The Colony Settlement Former slaves settled and lived at a community known as The Colony. It is located between Granbury and Tolar in Hood County, Texas.  

The Colony Cemetery Marker 

Photo by Dillon MartinJanuary 2002

  

Reuben “Rube” Hightower Former slaves and their relatives who lived at The Colony frequently worked on area farms and ranches. They also helped build many of the buildings on the Granbury Square. This photo (probably taken about 1910) is of Reuben Hightower. He was a nephew of Simon Hightower, one of the former slaves who originally settled at The Colony.