Hilliard Judge Shands was the son of Abraham Shands and Mary (Polly) Wilson, born October 14, 1814 in Spartanburg District of SC.  The Shands and the Wilson families had both come from Virginia in the late 1700's.  Hilliard's father, Abraham, died when Hilliard was two years of age and his mother then remarried a Mr. Toal, whom Hilliard disliked.

     At age ten Hilliard and his brother, Almeran, ran away from home and went to live with relatives due to the treatment of Mr. Toal.  Hilliard was ambitious and studious.  As a young man he became interested in Medicine and studied under the infamous Dr. Ira L. Foster.  By the time of the Seminole War in Florida, 1835, Hilliard was serving as a Surgeon in the Army.  In 1843 he settled in Summerville, Mississippi and married Melissa Boydstun Penry there on December 14, 1847.   On September 1, 1848 he patented a land grant in Columbus, Winston Co., Mississippi and made plans on raising his family there.

     Like many other Americans "Gold Fever" struck Hilliard and he traveled to California in 1849 with his brother-in-law Newton Penry.  After a year, he returned home.  He must have been somewhat prosperous there, or liked the place, because he named his next baby, a daughter, Coloma California after the town where gold was first struck.

     There is no record that Hilliard served either army during the Civil War, however there is documentation that he tended the wounded after the Battle of Shiloh and many of the soldiers who were ill with disease during that time.  The war left Hilliard broke and unhappy so he and his in-laws, the Penry family, moved in 1865 to Texas.  They were in Kaufman County by 1868, and settled in Forney, Texas in 1875.

     Hilliard was a respected physician in Forney, serving as a Mason.  He died there January 28, 1894 and is buried in the Hillcrest Cemetery.

Hilliard and Melissa had 5 children, all born in Mississippi:

1. Ninus Eugene Shands married Julia Cox Douglass
2. Erasmus Percival Shands married An Elizabeth Self
3. Coloma California Shands married James Elliott Douglass
4. Newton Brown Shands married Lucy Stephenson
5. Lillie Bell Shands married John Walker

• Kaufman County's Medical History