Gregg Co., TX - History - "Statement by J. T. Butts, Year 1933" *********************************************** This file was contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by: East Texas Genealogical Society P. O. Box 6967, Tyler, TX 75711 Typed by Betty Sue Darby Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm *********************************************** Gregg County, TX - "Statement by J. T. Butts, Kilgore, Gregg County, Texas - Year 1933" Contributed ty Colonel Roy E. Daniel, San Antonio, Texas John B. Howard Bible Records and Other Family History East Texas Family Records - Vol. 14, No. 3, Fall 1990 Submitted with the permission of the East Texas Genealogical Society, P O Box 6967, Tyler, TX 75711 *********************************************** This statement of competency by J. T. Butts was made to G. B. Ellard at his home in Kilgore, Texas, on March 24, 1933. Colonel Daniel's son found it among papers he was working on for a Dallas oil company, and thought his father would enjoy reading it. Colonel Daniel shares it with ETGS readers because it tells such a moving story of early settlers in East Texas, made at the height of the great East Texas oil boom. I am 86 years old. I was born in Hancock County, Georgia, on February 8, 1847. My father's name was George Washington Butts and my mother's name was Charlotte Butts. On Christmas Eve day 1859 my father and mother arrived at what is now known as the Danville settlement about 3 and 1/2 miles north- east of Kilgore. Calvin Brown and a sister of mine by the name of Lizzie and myself accompanied my father on this trip from Georgia to Texas. There were about five white families that joined my father on this trip and it took eight weeks for us to come thru from Georgia. All those families settled in and around what is now known as Kilgore. The Bass, Wilcoxon, McGilvary, and Edmund Butts family were the other white families that came thru in the wagon train with my father. My father brought several negro slaves with him to Texas. The Indians had just moved out of this part of Texas when we came here. Shreveport is where we carried our cotton to market and did our trading. This was a timber country then and there was very little open land without timber. Plenty of deer, squirrels, wild turkey and other kinds of game. Calvin Brown's father and mother were light-colored negroes, and what we would call mulatto negroes. My father raised Calvin Brown's mother and at the time Calvin Brown was born, his father and mother were both slaves belonging to my father. My father told me that Calvin Brown was about two years than I was. All the white folks and negroes that came from Georgia with my father are now dead except Calvin Brown and myself, so far as I know. My father and Mr. Bass sent a Mr. Morand and some negroes to Texas in 1858 and rented a farm the first year, known as the Pegues place. After the negroes were freed, Calvin's father and mother took the name of Brown and nived out and started farming for themselves. Calvin's father was named Juber Brown and his mother, Mary Brown. I have not seen Calvin Brown very much for the past year, but before that I saw him quite often; on second thought, I have not seen Calvin since the oil boom started. Calvin Brown has always been a hard-working negro and was about the ony farmer in this country, white or black, that raised most everything that he needed at home. Calvin used to barbecue a shoat and bring it in to Kilgore and sell it around and it was fine eating. So far as I know, Calvin Brown has always talked like a sensible person and has never acted to me like a man of unsound mind. I have lived in this community ever since I arrived here in 1859 and have known Calvin Brown all lf my life. In my opinion Calvin Brown has always been of sound mind and I have never noticed any- thing about him from his acts or conversations that would indicate to me that he was of unsound mind. Calvin has never talked to me about his sales of Oil Leases or Minerals (signed) J. T. Butts