| John R Daugherty was born in Morgan Co TN 10 Feb 1829 to Rev. William Henry Daugherty & Sarah Cecil. By 1830 his family had moved to Pulaski Co AR & they were in Van Buren Co AR by 1840. That is where his Mother died in 1842.
When John was 16 his father brought him to Nacogdoches Territory in the newly formed State of Texas. They came with several of his uncles, his grandmother - Sallie Bunch Daugherty, and his brothers & sisters. In 1846 the area where they were living was made Cherokee County & by 1850 John, his father, his uncles & brothers had applied for land through Jon Fenton Mercer's Colony. He received 320 acres of land in Kaufman County - headright to original Survey #A-137, which was located near the Trinity River in a place called Union Hill. He was one of the first persons to live in that area & for many years he was referred to as "Mr. Union Hill" & served as the community's first Postmaster. When the Civil War erupted John was mustered into a Confederate Home Guard unit as 1st Lieutenant. The unit was called the Mustang Rangers No. 1 & was organized 08 Jul 1861, but they never saw action, although some of John's brothers did enlist into active Confederate units during the war. From "The Confederate Veteran", Vol 5, No. 3 - March 1897. John R Daugherty, who was Justice of the Peace in Forney Texas at the time, and a Confederate Veteran, wrote the following to the publication. It concerns to the very last battle of the Civil War, which was fought at Palmetto Ranch, Texas, on the Gulf of Mexico, at the mouth of the Rio Grande. Daugherty was there.  On 03 May 1866 John married Parmelia C "Amelia" Sanders (1847-1923), daughter of Stephen N Sanders & Telethia Hightower. Amelia's sister, Mary, had married John's brother, Sam, & her brother, Richard, married Louisa McPeters, the sister of his older brother Nathan's wife - Zilphy McPeters. John & Amelia did not have any children. John served as Sheriff of Kaufman County from 1867-1869. In 1874, after the railroad by-passed Union Hill & it became a ghost town, John moved to Forney. He built another store in the block next to the Shand's Block. He was elected Justice of the Peace in 1875 and served six terms in that office until 1900, as well as being Forney City Alderman in 1884 & Forney Marshall in 1887. John was known as "Nelson" to his family and was fondly called "Uncle Nelse" by the citizens of Kaufman County. He lived in Forney the remainder of his life, dying 22 jan 1907. He is buried at Hillcrest Cemetery in Forney TX. |