Long family roots dig into Mt. Vernon history

From East Texas Journal, June 1994

By Jean Pamplin

 

MT. VERNON, TEXAS – 1875, a battle waged in newly formed Franklin County. James Long and his son-in-law Joseph D. Templeton were right in the big middle.

“It was a hard-fought battle for county seat,” said Fauna Long Hill. Fauna presently lives in California but keeps close tabs on family in Franklin County.

“I consider the Long homeplace to be the home of my heart,” she said.

Especially fascinated with the James and Mary Ann Thomas Long family, Fauna’s precise memory is a treasure store of information concerning the couple’s nine children-lawyers, banker, teacher, merchant and postmaster among them.

The Long family will very soon celebrate 150 years on some of the same land grant property originally settled by James, his wife and firstborn in 1845. They were part of a living stream of settlers that poured into Texas when it was annexed into the United States.

At that time East Texas for all its howling wilderness was the land of plenty. Minus the prevalent undergrowth of today, it was noted that one could see a mile into the green carpeted depths of the woods.

Razorback hogs and wild Longhorns ranged the area ready for a fight. When man overcame beast, it was said the beef carcass could be hung from a tree and the meat would cure to a fine flavor without salt.

The prairie turf was hard to break so many settlers denuded the pristine woods by the acre. Backbreaking labor, but these were determined ax-yielding men. It was reported that East Texans burned enough saw log timber to build a city.

The county road bisecting Long land, however, is still lined with woods. The winds whisper through them leaving quiet listeners with a hint of Texas as James Long and family knew it,

M.P., or Maurice Penn as cousin Fauna calls him, is a tall slender man who still automatically shucks his hat when entering a building. There is a purpose about him and a country friendly. Retired from his job as postmaster in 1977, and a former fire chief, M.P. (in the Long tradition) hasn’t let any grass grow under his feet.

“My theory is if you quit and sit down you may never get up,” M.P. said.

MP established his own house of Long when he married Nolene Rutledge in December of 1941. He remembers walking bare foot up to the Majors Store, scared but determined to ask her for a date.

“She was so good looking I didn’t figure I had a chance,” said M.P.

“Majors was broke out with pretty girls,” recalls another down the way relative Pat Hamilton. Her mother and Fauna’s were sisters.

“That’s why everybody congregated at the store,” she laughs.

“The Rutledges had pretty black haired black-eyed girls and Dee Loveless who ran the store had some pretty black haired blackeyed girls. Tom Jones across the way had some traffic stoppers too, except they were blue-eyed with light brown hair,” she said.

Besides the store, Majors had a school and several churches.

In recent years, M.P. and his family restored the Silas Long home where he had lived as a child and from where he took Nolene on their first date along with his parents to see the Buley Chuck Wagon Gang in Saltillo.

In 1914, Silas wrote a cousin in Allen, Oklahoma, that he had one of the prettiest houses in the country side.

He had built a white frame with six pillars and a decorative dormer window on the Long farm seven miles south of Mt. Vernon to replace his home and previously his parent’s, which had been destroyed by fire.

“I was working in the field opposite the house one day when a fellow came along and hollered, ‘Hey Pops! Want me to restore that old house?’ Well, my grandkids call me Pops but I didn’t take kindly to this fellow doing it,” recalls M.P.

M.P. doesn’t know why he hired the seedy character but the fellow turned out to be a master carpenter who M.P. later discovered was also a bit shy of the law. The man left prematurely after M.P. paid him for a paint job he never completed.

M.P. smiles remembering the ribbing he got around town concerning his hired help, especially when one of the men he got to help finish the paint job also turned out to be of interest to law officials.

Minus the dormer window, and despite square posts instead of pillars the house Silas Long was so proud of looks remarkably like it did 80 plus years ago. The trees shade the yard giving it a homey look and the path to the house is still lined with petrified wood.

“There were two other lined paths at one time. Fauna’s mother drug them up from the pasture on horseback with a sled devise, sometimes just a piece of tin,” M.P. said.

Paralee Long was the last one to permanently live in the house. Now the family gathers there on holidays and for any other excuse.

It’s rumored that Casey Parke Long, M.P.’s grandson, was even known to have picnicked (red checked cloth and all) on the premises with a favorite girlfriend.

Casey is one of many to be named after his great-great-uncle, Parke Custis Long.

Parke helped raise Casey’s grandfather MP. and stayed with his family many years. MP. has fond boyhood memories of his uncle and remembers especially the habit of Parke seating the children on his lap after supper and telling them stories.

“Uncle Parke loved this place. He took care of the garden and flat hoed this whole yard. Flower beds were everywhere but he didn’t like that grass,” MP. said pointing at the area in front of the house. “And he hated bitterweeds. Many a time I seen him on his knees pulling them up by the acre.”

Parke measured tall in the family’s eyes. He started off with an illustrious career in law, then married a lovely schoolteacher named Mary Bacon from Virginia who was teaching at Cooper,” Fauna said, stating also that Parke had been Delta County Attorney.

Numbered among Parke’s friends at that time was his early law practice partner in Cooper, John Nance Garner who later became Vice President of the United States. Since a Uvalde minister signed Parke and May’s marriage license, family has considered the possibility that the license, though issued in Cooper, may have actually been performed in John Nance Garner’s hometown.

Sadly, May died in the sixth month of her first pregnancy. Parke gave up his law practice and returned to Franklin County never taking another wife.

“He wasn’t a recluse but he stayed very close to the homeplace,” remembers Fauna.

And even though he gave up law, man of his friends came to him with special problems. As a young lawyer, Tom Wilkinson Jr. once told Fauna he often consulted with Parke on matters of law.

It is believed that Parke’s first and middle name relate back to Martha Washington whose first husband was a Custis. George and Martha reared her son’s two children, Parke and Nellie Custis on their Mt. Vernon estate. When Robert E. Lee married Parke Custis’ daughter, they eventually took up residency in his aging father-in-law’s mansion and the Custis home became known as Custis-Lee’s Mansion.

There is a tenuous theory that James Long knew of the Custis family, perhaps only through his interest in history, or perhaps because of Robert E. Lee’s connection since James had fought for the confederacy in the Civil War. But, whatever the influence it was enough for him to name his youngest son Parke Custis, a name that had never been used in the family before the boy’s birth in 1869. The renaming of Lone Star to Mt. Vernon six years later may have also come out of this influence.

According to The History of Franklin County 1874-1974 prepared by the Key Club, when Titus County was divided into Morris, Titus and Franklin in 1875 there were three places in the race for county seat: Lone Star, the 14-mile post on the old Jefferson Road and the 15 mile post just east of the old crossroads.

One of the posts was the Arrington Place which was bought from Widow Prestige in 1881. The 14-mile post offered “land and some small consideration” to entice voters.

The 15-mile post which was in the old Grayrock area offered “a bale of cotton.”

Lone Star offered $3,501, but part of this was in real estate.”

About 70 percent of the voting strength was in the southern part of the county. According to recorded Mt. Vernon history this gave the Lone Star supporters cause for” worry so they gave all their support and backing to Joe Templeton. Of course, that put James Long on their side, as the Templeton-Long families came from Tennessee together and Joe was also his son-in-law.

A few days before the election, however, another obstacle got in Lone Star’s way. Heavy rains swelled the creeks and supporters began to fear the loss of voters between the creeks, so they built a boat to help haul them over. Silas Bryarly was put in charge.

The voters either ferried or swam their horses over.

“The chief attraction besides the election was racing. Races were held at a track one-half mile northwest of town. There were no fights,” according to the Key Club history. “The saloons were closed on that occasion but the gambling spirit was manifested by the general exchange of pocketknives as money was scarce.”

Originally named Keith and then Lone Star the new seat of government in Franklin County was officially renamed Mt Vernon in September of that election year.

Since James Long was involved, perhaps his interest in the historic Custis family and their relation to Martha Washington influenced him to suggest Mt. Vernon. Fauna admits there is no real documentation of this but she and daughter Diane are constantly on the lookout for material that might confirm or deny it.

The March 7, 1874 copy of the Sulphur Springs Gazette affirms there was still a great deal of interest in the Washington family at that time. It picked up on an article in a Kentucky paper boasting they had a man in their area “who really saw George Washington.” The Gazette goes on to report there were two men in Galveston who had also seen “The Father of this country.”

Locally, another supporter for the Mt. Vernon name may have been Colonel Henry Thurston (pronounced Tooston), also known as “the Texas Giant” due to his extreme height of seven feet seven and one-half inches. The Thurstons came to Texas in 1871.

The Colonel’s grandfather, also a seven-footer, served as an aide on General Washington’s staff during the Revolutionary War, and was present at the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown.

Regardless of the how of it, the “Long” or “tall” of it is that Lone Star was voted the Franklin County Seat in 1875 and shortly thereafter was renamed Mt. Vernon to honor the Father of our country and his wife, Martha Washington.

James Long family’s influence continues impact in East Texas

Long family descendants continue to influence East Texas. Listed below are the nine children of James and Mary Ann Thomas Long who first settled south of Franklin County in 1845. Sarah, the oldest remained unmarried and died at the age of forty-four.

Virgina Ann (Jennie) married Joseph D. Templeton the first sheriff of Franklin County. Sheriff Templeton died while in office. He contracted pneumonia on the train while going to see his brother in Austin.

William Warren became a merchant and the Postmaster at Purley which was a hub of activity at that time. He married three times.

Robert Blake married Annie Dupree and served as Precinct 6 Judge helping bring law and order to the Commerce area before there was a Commerce. He was a major civic leader and for many years a banker. Professor W.L. Mayo, founder of East Texas Normal said Robert was one of three men he gave credit for the success of his school.

Silas McDonald married Laura Caudle. The McDaniel middle name reverts back to the family’s Scotch-Irish descent. Silas read law and was admitted to the bar in 1883. He also served as County attorney of Franklin County.

Thomas, the child born after Silas, was killed at the age of eleven in a grist mill accident when the mill wheel came off the grist mill was located on a stream to the east. To the west of the house James Long followed in the same tradition as another, earlier Tennessean, Andrew Jackson, and built a horse racetrack.

Ella Dorcus, better known as Dollie married Benjamin Rountree. She taught school in West Texas and for many years in Mt. Vernon. Lula Blanch, called Lulie, married John J. Nance and settled in West Texas.

The baby of the family was Parke Custis. Parke graduated from Peabody College in Nashville then went to the University of Texas and received his law degree in 1893. Fifty years later, his niece Fauna received her degree in Journalism from the same school. MP. remembers him riding horseback to take a Peabody entrance exam at Paris.

Each October since M.P. completed the Silas Long home restoration, the Longs have hosted a reunion for fourth through seventh generation descendants of James and Mary Ann Thomas Long who settled the homeplace when they came from McNairy County, Tennessee to Texas in 1845.

According to Fauna, three branches of the James Long family were represented at the last reunion. The fourth generation included: Virginia and Joseph D. Templeton’s granddaughter, Roberta Templeton Hawkes and great-granddaughter Pamela Templeton both of California; Robert and Annie Dupree Long’s granddaughter Mary Jane Long Presnall of Commerce; and 10 of the 12 surviving grandchildren of Silas and Laura Caudle Long which were Edward Long Seay, Jean Long Hope, Jim Long, Dan Long, Constable Bill Long and reunion host M.P. Long of Mt. Vernon, Jo Pullen Houchin of Lubbock, Robert W. Pullen of Richardson, Frances Seay Richardson of Winnsboro, and herself, Fauna Long Hill of California.

“There are so many memories,” says MP.

“My roots are definitely here,” says his granddaughter Tammy Dickerson, “I just couldn’t leave Franklin County. I was born in the old hospital and never left.”

“We always come back twice a year,” says Fauna of she and her daughter Diane. “We’ll never let go.”