HENDERSON CO. TX - Newspaper / History Athens Daily Review May 1941 This file was contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by: Bunny Shumate Freeman Fourls1223@aol.com ********************************************* Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm ********************************************* Athens Daily Review Athens, Texas, Historical and Home-Coming Edition May 1941 A Classic Pilgrimage From Rome to Athens By Dan Browning Superintendent of Center Point Public School Ancient lore tells us that emigrants form Athens or nearby settled Rome, but that order was reversed in America. At least one caravan of covered wagons with a score or more of westwardbound souls, counting both white and black, reversed the ancient order and moved from Rome, Georgia, to Athens, Texas, in the fall of 1856. It came about this way. In the beginning of the last half of the nineteenth century. John Davis Reynolds and his wife, Katie, were living on a typical Southern plantation near Rome, Georgia. One daughter who had married Charley Finley soon came to Henderson county and settled somewhere near Athens. An unmarried son, Jim visited this sister and family, returning to Georgia in 1856 with flowing tales of the opportunities in Texas. Having recently suffered financial reverses as most planters on the South Atlantic Seaboard did about this time, John Davis and Katie Reynolds decided to come to Texas and bring as many of their seven rambling children as they could. Eliza, who had married Jessie Forester, and Ann, who had married Marion Otts, did not come with them, but did come in a few years and were on farms in the New York community when the war between the States began in the fall of 1861. In this "classic" caravan, besides John Davis and Katie and two or three families of negro slaves, were the following children and grandchildren: Jim, who lead the way, having been to Texas before; Julia, who later married Ambrose Coleman; Puss, who married Wick Middleton and died early; John, a boy of 13, who later was county treasurer of Henderson county and died in the New York community in 1902 and leaving a host of descendants, and William, the oldest child, and his family of six children besides his wife as follows: Davis, who died in 1920, the father of Turner, who lives near Athens; Lou, who married John Cook and died early; John, better known as Johnnie, the father of West. Jim Hogg and Mrs. Fannie Forester, who still live in Henderson county; the twin girls, Della, who died in the early twenties, and Keely, the mother of Della Richardson, now living with her brother, Dr. Will, in Athens and Nammie* (photo says Nannie) the mother of the writer and the only living member of that caravan unless some of the colored members are living. This only living member, now eighty-five was about a year old at that time and had learned to walk, but had to learn over after the long trip, as she did not have much time to practice on the way. I have heard her and Uncle Davis, who was eleven at that time, tell of this long trek. Uncle Davis drove the slave wagon. All slaves not able to walk rode. On the way near a little stream called Tippecanoe, a girl baby was born to Aunt Til, one of the slaves. she was named for the stream and called "Tip." On account of the hardships caused by the war and reconstruction, most of this caravan died at a very early age. The only exceptions I know of are Uncle Davis Reynolds, the father of Turner, who lived to be seventy-five; Aunt Keel Richardson, who died in 1932 at the age of seventy-nine, and the only living survivor, Mrs. Nannie Browning, the writer's mother, now eighty-five. The head of this family named the little community of New York. he said he wanted it to grow to its name. his family all settled there and most of them died there, and the Reynolds stamp has been placed on the community for a long time. I venture to say there will never be a time when no descendant of John Davis and Katie Reynolds lives near the old spring that had a gum in it for ten years when the family first saw it in 1856. Uncle Sam Hines, who died near Chandler about thirty-five years ago, told the writer just before he died that he placed the gum there in 1846. IN 1901 this gum was still where Uncle Sam placed it fifty-five years before.\No doubt it is still therein a good state of preservation. Let me suggest to the people of New York that the annual homecoming in that community be held in 1946 at the old spring. I would like to see the old gum again that furnished pure Adams Ale to so many pioneers. Let us go back there and pause for a while to honor the ones we owe so much. Some day I hope to write a history of this Reynolds family. The descendants of John Davis and Katy are as the sand of the sea. All Forester, Otts and Reynolds families in Henderson county are descendants with the exception of the Reynolds family of Malard Prairie. Of course there may be some new families that are not but I do not know of them. In the meantime let us not forget the Centennial Celebration at the old spring at New York in 1846.