Coryell County Texas Archives Biographies.....Grimes, Thomas F & Henry A 1848 - 1869 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/tx/txfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Virginia Crilley http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00003.html#0000642 November 5, 2007, 12:49 pm Author: Samuel Grimes Tom and Henry or, "The Grimes Boys" from information given to Fred Acree 19. Feb., 1929 by Sam Grimes, who was, at the time of the tragedy, in Navarro Co. (edited 1979 "by Virginia Stevens) : My brother Tom and I were in the Confederate artillery together at Galveston in the Civil War Blockade runners brought in powder, gun shot, and so on, from England. The union ships fired at the forts at times, but there was not really much action. At the close of the war, I (Sam) went to Navarro County. Our brother Henry joined Tom in Galveston and the two of them drove some cattle north to Waco to sell them, but not to the Union army. (There is an unaccounted; gap in time here——the tragic day was not until 18 Oct., 1869.) They sold the cattle and Tom bought a black broadcloth wedding suit and a gold wedding band. He was soon to marry Mollie Dean of Navarro County, where he had been just before he left to join the Confederate forces in Galveston. [F.M. Grimes gave land in Navarro County June 27, 1868 to his sons, T.F. (Thomas Farley); S.W. (Samuel) and Frederick) The land was part of a state patent 8-24-46 then Robertson County] At the close of the war, about one hundred union soldiers were stationed in Waco, where they remained about a year, to quell incidents betweens the whites and the carpetbaggers and negroes. There was some friction between the civilians and the soldiers when the soldiers and carpetbaggers stirred up the negroes against the whites. But the negroes and carpetbaggers were whipped and even killed if they became too aggressive or used violence toward the Texans. Groups of Texans quietly banded together to protect themselves, That day in Waco, October 18, 1865 (it was really 1869). Capt. Lovejoy heard that the two Grimes boys were being boisterous in town. Capt. Lovejoy took a group of mounted men and went after Tom and Henry. Nobody knows what the real trouble was. They overtook Tom and Henry on the edge of town in front of a house in which a Texas woman witnessed the following and reported it later. When the men rode up, Tom said he had fought Yankees for four years and would not surrender to them. He was on his horse called Bob. Henry was on his horse, Ranger, a roan- red-and-white horse. In the gunfight, Tom was shot in the arm and his horse shot in the shoulder, so that it plunged badly and threw him off. Henry's horse ran toward the house nearby, where the woman inside begged Henry to escape through the house. But he refused. Tom was shot through the heart and killed. Henry went back to help him and took Tom's pistol and fired it at a Union soldier, but the gun was empty. The Union soldier shot Henry through the head at close range, burning his face and killing him, with a revolver. The woman later told everything she saw. Friends of the Grimes family sent a runner, Will Hannah, to the Grimes homeplace on the Bell-Coryell County line. When Will Hannah arrived there about midnight that night, the family thought it might be robbers coming, and Mother, ruehed to hide the wooden chest containing the iron money trunk about 8'x10'x15'. Father was in bed with pneumonia, but he got up to answer the door. Will Hannah drove Mother and the girls, Sallie, Bettie, Mina, and Annie, to Bob Dean's beyond Bosque Crossing. Bob was a relation of Mollie Dean. Mollie later stayed a month with our family after her mother died. After Tom and Henry were killed, their bodies were thrown onto a load of shucked corn like hogs, according to the woman witness. They were carried to the courthouse in Waco. There the next day Mother found their bodies in their underwear. One member of the deputation, Fry or Fly, opened his saddlebags and gave Mother some Hosteller's bitters. Then he walked up and down between the bodies and said he would rather shoot southern men in the heart than kill a fly. Mother demanded Tom and Henry's suit and horses and money back, and her demand was granted, except for the money. Two southern men, one a Mr. Curtis and the other a Jew named Mr. Rice, helped her make funeral arrangements. She bought nice caskets for them both and a burial suit for Henry. Tom was buried in the ready-made, black broadcloth suit he had just bought for his coming wedding. She found it in his saddlebags. She saved the wedding ring he had bought. Tom and Henry were buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Waco, later called Hebrew and Oakwood (now First St. Cem.) The family later put up a tall stone marker for them. The southern side of the stone says. Henry A. Grimes born Mar. 25, 1848 died Oct. 18, 1869. The north side reads, Thomas F. Grimes born Nov. 14, 1845 died Oct. 18, 1869. The traditional verse on the stone shaft reads: Hark! Stranger as you pass by. As you are now; so once was I, As I am now, you soon will be. Prepare for death and follow me, A group of about thirty to thirty-five men went to the Grimes home to see Father after the boys were killed. They declared they would lynch Capt. Lovejoy. But Father counseled peace and said there had been enough bloodshed in the past Civil War years, Capt. Lovejoy, who had been very harsh with the Texans and was much hated, escaped to &atesville and later left the state. Major West was in Waco at the time of the murders and told of the crime. (He later wrote a book called Texan in Search of a Fight. He said that the Union soldiers protected the negroes in their insults and injuries of the whites. No mention of this incident is made is the book, however.) NOTES: Sam's daughter Adelaide Lulu said Sam was in Cooks Regt, at Galveston Island, CO. A, under Gen. John B. Magruder. She said he entered the service before his 18th birthday and served until he was mustered out there at the end of the war, but she said that he never got a pension. She said he was in (2nd) Co. A, 1st Heavy Artillery. Texas State Archives show that Thomas Grimes enlisted as Pvt. in 4une, 1861, in Capt. Wm. W. NcGinnis' Tarrant Co. 2oth Brigade, Texas Militia. See muster rolls. State Archives also show that Henry Grimes enlisted as Pvt. on March 19, 1862 at Rusk, Texas, for 12 months in Co. K, Roberts' Regt., Tex. Volunteer Infantry, CSA. See muster rolls, (is this the same Henry?) On Jan. 1, 1865 Galveston was recaptured by Confederate forces under Gen, Magruder, and they held the island through to the end of the war. Nannie Day, "Mina," was five years old at the end of the war and remembered later hiding under the bed when her older brothers arrived home from the war; they'd been gone so long she'd forgotten them. When I (Virginia, her great- grandaughter) was a young girl, she gave me the ring Tom had bought, but she didn't tell the story of her brother. I later got this account above from Anna Byrd Acree, widow of Fred Acree. Capt. Lovejoy was James T. Lovejoy, Waco city marshal. See appended letter from Mrs. Kathryn C. Hill, 1964. Lovejoy left Waco after 1870. . : : ., In Oct 1964, Mrs. Kathryn E. Hill was asked to locate the brother's graves and as a strange coicidence, had recently done some research for a California man looking for information on his great-grandfather, James T. Lovejoy who as the City Marsahl here in 1870....and killed a man in the line of duty. Capt. Lovejoy was from Sidney, Maine his full name was James Thatcher Lovejoy; he was born in Maine on June 23, 1818 and died June 9, 1912 in Mephis, Tenn. He was probably just called Capt in his capacity as City Marshal. He operated a livery stable before the war in New Bedford, Mass. He bought and sold cotton under the Union Gvot at New Orleans during the war, then came here after 1865, but by 1867 & worked as a carpenter at $1.00 per day (as per his family from a newspaper clipping) He left Waco after the killing [after 1870 census], later settling in Graham, Texas and then Memphis, where he died. Lulu Grimes Hoffman and Ernest Day said Tom and Henry had been drinking before the shooting. Baylor Texas Archives: receipt: $86.10 Waco, Tex. Oct. 20th, 1869, Rec'd of Mr. E.S. Grimes Eighty Six 10/100 Dollars in full of Burial Expenses of her Sons. T.L. & W.A. Grimes, (signed) W. Morris, Sheriff of McLennan Co. NOTE: Initials should have been T.F. & H.A. so perhaps the handwriting was misread. Additional Comments: Sons of Frederick Miller Grimes and Elmira Susan Farley Grimes Early Settlers of Texas living first in Austin/Washington Couny and among the very first settlers in Coryell County moving there around 1851 and building a log cabin on the Leon River. Henry Archer Grimes Mar 23, 1848 - Oct 18, 1869 Thomas Farley Grimes Nov 14, 1843 - Oct 18, 1869 File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/tx/coryell/bios/grimes38gbs.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/txfiles/ File size: 9.3 Kb