Palo Pinto Co., TX - Bios: Francis Marion (Franty) Watson
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This file was contributed for use in the USGenWeb by:
Bobbie Ross <bwross@htcomp.net>
September 25, 2002

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                     Francis Marion  (Franty) Watson
    Born 1849 in Jackson Parish Louisiana of parents, Nathan and Margaret
Quinn Watson , from Georgia on their way to Texas.  Family arrived in 
Parker county about 1854, coming with Oliver Loving as he returned home 
from a cattle drive into central LA.  Nathan received headright grant to 
land on the Clear Fork of the Trinity River and reared his family, and 
horses,  there. The family was together on the 1860 census, but the 
country faced a real upheavel during the next 10 years.  The war helped 
split a lot of families. One son was killed in the war, the mother died, 
most of the girls married and moved away. One son was killed was killed, 
as family oral history says, when kicked in the head by a mule.  Francis 
Marion was the only boy to grow to adulthood in this family.
    About 1875 Francis Marion took a string of horses to Louisiana to sell.
When he returned he was accompanied by a new bride, Ruth Ann Smith.  Francis
Marion owned a grocery store in Aledo for a time, trading it for a herd of
cattle which he and friends drove to Colorado.  While gone his father,
Nathan died, and F.M. had to return home and settle up his father's affairs.  
By 1895 he had settled most things and he bought land in Palo Pinto county.  
F.M. and Ruth had children:
  1. Lena, born 1877, who married William Reagan
  2. John Walter, (Buck), born 1880, married Dollie Taylor. 
  3. Floyd francis born 1884, married Etta Abernathy
  4. Clara born 1888, never married.
  5. Monte born 1891 married George Cone.
  6. William Nathan (Neb) born 1894 married Helen Mayfield 
Ruth died  in 1894 and in 1897 F.M. married Kate Green Varner, a widow who 
had 3 children and they had 2 sons, Francis Marion Jr. in 1900 and William 
Thomas in 1903. They moved to Palo Pinto county and lived on the ranch that 
F. M. had bought there.
  There was also a house in Mineral Wells for the kids to go to school.  In
January of 1924 F. M. died and was buried in the Willow Springs cemetery,
beside his wife, Ruth.

By Bobbie Watson Ross, great granddaughter of F.M. Watson.
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