DAVID PAINTER
Great grandfather, David
Painter came from Scotland to the United
States in the year 1840.
He first came to Tennessee, then married and came to
Coryell County. They lived
for a while at old Fort Gates, near Gatesville, TX,
then bought a farm later
on the Leon River about two miles from Gatesville.
They had four children.
The oldest was Mary Elizabeth, then Emily, George and
Robert Davis. George was
named for his uncle, who was a Presbyterian minister
in Scotland. Robert Davis
was named for Robert E. Lee, as he was born during
the Civil War. David Painter
had a good education for his day. He went to fight
in the Civil War, but the
second year, in 1862, he took a fever, probably malaria,
but Texas doctors knew little
of medicine and less about surgery. They called
it brain fever, and operated
on his head, removing a round piece of skull to let
the fever out. He died and
was buried on his farm. Grandmother couldn't finish
paying for the farm, so
moved to Straw's Mill. Mary Elizabeth, the oldest child,
was then ten (10). One day
she took a bucket to the river for water, her small
brother George went along.
They were leading a horse to turn into another
pasture. When they got to
the river she told George to stay there until she had
let the horse loose, and
when she returned her brother was gone. She went
home thinking he had gone
and when she returned without him her mother
knew what had happened.
His body was recovered the next day, drowned in the
Leon River. The youngest
boy, Robert, had a disease that caused him to be
lame in one leg. He lived
to be seventy-five years old and owned two farms
located between Gatesville
and Turnersville. Mary Elizabeth married Uriah Deloy
Williams in 1870. They bought
a farm six miles north of Gatesville and reared four
sons and four daughters,
Clara, Elizabeth, Emma, Robert, Willis and Walter
(twins), Bert and Lannie.
Through the encouragement of Mary Elizabeth, Uriah
solicited money from friends
and neighbors in the community to build the first
school building. It was
built at the site of the cemetary on Coryell Creek and was
called the Coffey School.
Mary Elizabeth died in 1892. She was 38 years old
and died of blood poisoning
after childbirth. Uriah then married Nancy Coskrey,
who also preceded him in
death. She died of cancer. He passed away in 1929,
all are buried in the cemetary
on Coryell Creek east of the home place. The
oldest child Clara died
in 1894 at the age of nineteen. She left a husband,
named Shipman and a daughter,
"Little Clara". She married a man named Burl
Teague. They had one son,
Orvis and then moved to California.
By Linda Sue Reasor