Submitted by
Terry Jenkins
Columbus B. and Amanda L. (Pattillo) Gray
Columbus B. “Lum” Gray was born on 01 November 1828 in Meriwether County, Georgia. He was the oldest of six children born to Samuel Gray Jr. and Mahala McBurnett. The family moved to Tallapoosa County, Alabama around 1835.
On 08 September 1852 in Tallapoosa County, he married Amanda Lucy Pattillo. Amanda Lucy Pattillo was born on 21 January 1833 in Georgia, the daughter of John Robert Pattillo and Emily Payne. The Pattillo family moved to Tallapoosa County, Alabama before 1840. Her father died in 1849 and the family was enumerated on the 1850 census without him.
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Columbus joined Company B, 47th Alabama Infantry Regiment and fought four years in the Civil War. He participated in many major battles and his regiment surrendered at Appomattox in 1865. The major battles that the regiment participated in were: Second Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Chickamauga, Wilderness, and Cold Harbor. In all, the regiment participated in more that fourty-five various engagements during its career. |
The Columbus Gray family lived in Tallapoosa County until 1884. At that time, they loaded their possessions and migrated to Texas and finally settled in the Runnels - Coleman County area. They were early settlers in the area.
Columbus had been riding horses with one of his granddaughters on Christmas Eve 1900 when he got down to open a gate. He stuck his finger with a barb from the fence. He tried to suck the blood out but it wouldn’t bleed. He died the next day, Christmas, of blood poisoning. He was buried in the Midway Cemetery in northwestern Coleman County. In the same plot as Columbus and his wife, lies his brother, Johnathan.
Amanda lived fourteen more years. In early 1914, she applied and was accepted for Confederate Pension from the State of Texas. She died on 02 September 1914 and was buried in the Midway Cemetery in northwestern Coleman County beside her husband.
Children:
William Melvin and Sallie (Stout) Gray
William Melvin Gray was born in Tallapoosa County, Alabama. He was born 04 July 1872, the youngest of eight children of Columbus Gray and Amanda Pattillo.
William Melvin Gray was brought to Texas by his parents about 1884. They may have lived for a time in south Texas, possibly Llano County, before settling in Runnels County by 1886.
William married Sallie Sarah Stout on 27 October 1892, which was registered in Coleman County, Texas. Sallie Sarah Stout was born 29 July 1870, probably in Kaufmann County, Texas. Her mother was Martha Hurd Stout. On the 1880 census, it lists Martha and daughter, Sarah age 3, living with Martha’s mother, Viana Sewell Hurd in Kaufmann County. Martha is listed as a widow. They reported that Sallie’s father was born in Pennsylvania. This is the extent of the knowledge of him.
They lived on the Coleman - Runnels County line and raised six children. Their oldest child died at birth. Their original marriage record was found in the Coleman County courthouse in 1988. According to Runnels Is My County, by Charlsie Poe, William Melvin “added a room to their house that served as an early day courthouse in the area. It was located four miles northeast of Crews on the old Chisholm Trail. Uncle Bill” as he was known, “hauled lumber from Austin in ox wagons to build the room where court was held for the purpose of establishing claims to the land as the people moved westward. Committees were appointed to take care of claims that were established." Mrs. Lister Jenkins of Coleman, my grandmother, “said that measurements were in leagues, nine sections to a league. One hundred and sixty acres were set aside for a school and the same amount constituted a homestead. To make their claims valid, the people lived on them for a designated length of time and paid for the papers, or legal work.”
William Melvin Gray died on 06 February 1927 and Sallie died on 27 May 1944. They are buried in the Midway Cemetery in northwestern Coleman County, Texas.Also in the same cemetery is William’s parents, Columbus and Amanda Gray, and uncle, Johnathan Gray. Uncle John Gray married William’s mother-in-law, Martha Hurd Stout.
William Melvin and Sallie Gray’s descendants still get together for a family reunion at Hords Creek Lake in western Coleman County in June annually.
Children: