THE B. F. GREER FAMILY AND GREER RELATIVES
Benjamin Franklin Greer (1815-1865) married Sarah Ann Ellis (1832-1910)
in Mississippi in 1847, and this family crossed the Mississippi River in 1857 n
route to Texas where they settled briefly near Beaumont and then moved to
Carolina area of Falls County near present-day Chilton. Three children had been
born in Mississippi and the others in Texas. Ben left for he Civil War in 1863
but died in May 1865 from typhoid fever as he was returning through Tyler.
After Ben's death, Sarah began the task of
farming the 313 acres which they had acquired north of Deer Creek in 1860 and
1861 and continued to rear heir children as best she could with the help of
neighbors and relatives. In 1866, John Wilburn Greer purchased from the estate
his cousin Ben's half interest in he farm, selling it back to the heirs in 1868
for $100. in the 1870s, Sarah married John W. Cranford, a widower 22 years her
senior, but the union did not last beyond 1880. After the marriage of her
youngest daughter Mittie Matilda to James Franklin Hackett in 1881, she made her
with the young couple until her death.
Sarah completed the rearing and education of her six children who were
Fannie Ellen (1850-1902), Lou D’Aubra (1853-1937), Mattie Jane (1855-1905),
Henry Franklin (1858-1911), John Crawford (1860- 1955), and Mittie Matilda
(1863-1949). All six children married and raised their own families in Falls
County. In early 1962, an incomplete survey of Ben and Sarah's descendants
disclosed 233 individuals. Today many of
these people's heirs live in the Marlin and Chilton areas, except for Mit's. The
J. F. Hackett family review appears elsewhere.
Fannie married Luther S. Strother, Lou united with Elijah H. Hailey,
Mattie exchanged vows with Nilliam D. Relf, Henry married Blanche Adams, John
married Gennie Shook, and Mit united with Frank Hackett. Two couples are buried
at Chilton, two in the Union Cemetery, and one couple each in the Carolina and
Marlin Cemeteries.
Why did the Greer family move to Falls County? Aside from economic
conditions, it appears that the earlier westward movement of both Ben's and
Sarah's kinfolk contributed. Ben's older brother Asel Jr. had moved to Leon
County prior to 1850, and various cousins had migrated from Mississippi to the
Brazos Valley and elsewhere in Texas prior to the Civil War. Sarah's sister Lou
and husband James Loftin had settled near Mooreville in 1854, and three of her
brothers in the next few years gravitated from Mississippi to San Saba, St.
Marys on Copano Bay, and Beeville. In addition, some of Ben's cousins had
acquired land in Falls County.
Second cousins John Wilburn Greer, William Crawford Greer, and David
Dixon Greer were at Cedar Springs, Pond Creek, and Navasota. Crawford at his
death owned 3,333 acres of land in the W. L. Hannum League in Falls County south
of present-day Rosebud which at one time had been known as Greer's Horse Lot.
These people were descendants of Henry Greer who helped to found Columbus,
Mississippi prior to 1820 and near whom Ben lived as a small boy with his father
Edmund's family. Henry was both Edmund's first cousin and uncle. Another of
Henry's descendants was Elkanhah Greer in Marshall who became a Confederate
General, and other cousins lived in Milam County. Later, Charles W. Rush came to
Falls County, he too being one of Henry's lineage through a granddaughter. About
1870, Ben's younger brother Edmund Pettus Greer moved from Mississippi to Lavaca
County.
Ben had been born in Tennessee as his parents Edmund and Frances Greer
were moving from Clarke County in Georgia to Columbus in then southern Mon- roe
County, Mississippi. Here Ben met Sarah whose parents Alfred and Elizabeth
Sutton Ellis had relocated from Lenoir and Duplin Counties: in North Carolina in
1842. Following their marriage in 1847, Ben and Sarah moved with his parents to
the families plantations in Carroll and Attala Counties. We do not know about
their educations, but Sarah's precise and legible handwriting suggests that she
had been an observing student. Further, her father was a Primitive Baptist
minister. Ben is said to have been a physician and a farmer, perhaps serving the
plantation population and the Confederate forces.
The Greers emigrated from England in the late 1600s to the Gunpowder
River in Maryland north of Baltimore and thence into Virginia, Georgia, and
Mississippi. They had married with off springs of Henry Haynes (born 1701) in
Virginia and Benjamin Hodnett (1761-1820) in Georgia. Edmund Greer (1788 -
1852 and Frances Hodnett (1791-1859) were married in 1810. Various generations
of these three families - Greer, Haynes, and Hodnett -
had similar migration patterns, moving westward with the frontier and locating
in Texas along the Brazos River between the late 1840s and 1860. Others arrived
after the Civil War.
Ben's descendants experienced almost every difficulty possible in a
fatherless during part of the Civil War and in reconstruction, discord
between their mother and step-father, early deaths, and contagious disease which
claimed Sarah three weeks after the demise of a Hackett grandson and a year
before death of a Hackett granddaughter, all from the same malady. Despite
poverty and heartaches, Ben and Sarah's descendants had strong personalities,
determination to improve their lots in life, and an ability to make
contributions to early-day Falls County while gaining additional respect within
their communities.
Charles W. Hackett, Jr.
Copyright Permission granted to Theresa Carhart for printing the biographies of
these Falls County Families to this Web page.
"Families of Falls County", Compiled and Edited by the Falls County Historical
Commission, page 200 column 1 and 2 and page 201 column 1.
Member of Falls County Historical Commission.