LYBRAND PIONEERS IN SMITH COUNTY, TEXAS ***************************************************************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm Submitted by Mary Love Berryman - marylove@tyler.net Director of the Computer Interest Group, ETGS 25 April 2002 ***************************************************************** Originally published in the East Texas Family Records, Volume 3, Number 4, Winter 1979, by East Texas Genealogical Society. LYBRAND PIONEERS IN SMITH COUNTY, TEXAS By Doris Lybrand Brittain My great grandfather, David Delano Lybrand, was born 24 October 1817 in Lexington County, South Carolina. He was a descendant of Hen­drick Lybrand, a German immigrant to South Carolina in 1753. David's first wife, Anna Elizabeth Stingly Lybrand, died after giving birth to their son, John Jacob 20 September 1839. David and his son moved to Attala County, Mississippi ca 1844, where David met and married his second wife, Mary Elizabeth Jeffress, ca 1846. Two sons were born to them in Mississippi, William B., and George Washing­ton. The family moved to Smith County (Texas) ca 1851 and settled in Mt. Sylvan. My grandfather, Thomas Jefferson Lybrand, was the third son born in Smith County. He followed James and Franklin P. There were twelve children in all. The Smith County 1860 Census has David and family in the post office area of Garden Valley. Thomas grew up in that area, and attended school, church, and learned from his father how to be a farmer. When he was a young man, he met a lovely young lady named Lamantha Orange Beckham, the daughter of Thomas Jefferson Beckham, M.D., and Lamantha Orange Peddy Beckham. Dr. Beckham was a country doctor, serving the Mt. Sylvan and Garden Valley area, from 1870 until his death in 1875. BECHHAM Ancestors and Descendants of THOMAS JEFFERSON BECKHAM, M.D., By Brainard S. Ferrell, is my source of information about Dr. Beckham's function in the community. Thomas and Lamantha were married on a very significant day, 4 July 1876, in Mechanicsville. The Rev. John S. Bledsoe officiated. I am not certain just when Thomas moved his family to Pruitt, in Van Zandt County, but they had fourteen children. My father, Bron, was a twin, and the fifth child to be born to Thomas and Lamantha. Thomas was not only a farmer and family man, he had other interests. He liked to keep his mind busy and he must have been a humanitarian at heart, and hoped to promote industry, when he built his model of a perpetual motion motor. He proudly showed it to me the first time I met him, in the spring of 1934. I was only five years old at the time, but I was very impressed. I felt that my grandfather Lybrand had to be one of the most intelligent men in the whole world, (With the exception of my father, Bron, of course,) for he explained patient­ly and enthusiastically the function of the motor, how many RPM's per second it was capable of turning, in great detail. It sounded like Greek to me at the time, but I was totally fascinated, and I will never forget it. Grandmother Lamantha was a very gentle, kind, loving person. I shall never forget the way she told me sweetly one evening, "Honey, that is only a katydid." When I asked her who was making the noise outside. Another wonderful memory of her is the delicacy she fixed for dinner one evening. Golden brown fried squirrel, biscuits that would melt in your mouth, and all the trimmings, all cooked on, or in the oven of a wood stove. Grandfather and Grandmother Lybrand were good, loving people. They treated others as they wanted to be treated. The moral, loving upbringing of their children was made manifest through their children, down to their grandchildren. They were proud, yet humble people. They shared fifty-eight years together. Grandmother died in the fall of 1934, seventy-five years old. Grandfather died in January 1958 at the age of one hundred and two years. Both are buried in the Owley Cem­etery, close to Mt. Ida, Arkansas where they moved to from Van Zandt County in 1911. It might be of interest to mention that Thomas' half brother John Jacob, was married to Miss S. R. M. (Salley) Hardin with Justice of the Peace, Willis Jones officiating, 14 September 1860. (Smith County Marriages Vol. B Page 154). Another brother, older than Thomas, Franklin P., served as Justice of the Peace in the community known as Owlet Green, in Van Zandt County, 1884-1886. (Colfax by Jack Geddie.) Thomas and Lamantha Lybrand have two surviving children, Eula Ly­brand Cox of Everton, Missouri, and Daisy Lybrand Roberts of La Selva Beach, California. My great grandparents, David D. and Mary E., are buried close to Van, Texas in the Marvin Chaoel Cemetery. My father, Bronner Lybrand, was born and raised at Pruitt, Texas in Van Zandt County. After he was grown, he was farming around Mem­phis, Texas in Hall County, where he met Frankie Lee Hancock, from Bridgeport, Texas in Wise County. They were married 22 December 1912. In 1916 Bron and Frankie moved to Floyd County, close to Floydada, Texas. They first lived in the Campbell community, and later, in the Liberty community. Between 1920 and 1929, Bron and Prankie had four daughters: Waltha Juanita, Alma Frances, Olita Mozelle, and Doris. In that order, three years apart. Bronner Lybrand sold the farm in Texas and moved to Bentonville, Arkansas, in Benton County in 1939, where he died 8 April 1958, a retired farmer. Frankie died eleven years later in Springfield, Mo. They are buried in the Memorial Gardens Cemetery near Bentonville.