Grayson County TXGenWeb

William B. Grant was born in 1809 in Union District, Spartanburg, South Carolina to Rev. Humphrey Grant and Elizabeth Bryant Grant. As a young man he moved with his parents to Hall County, Georgia. On May 2, 1837 in Hall County, Georgia he was married to Elizabeth Smith by Justice of the Peace John H. Hanson. Grant family records state that William's father the Reverend Humphrey Grant is buried on the old Grant farm, off Grant Ford Road, in Hall County, Georgia.
A few months before his marriage to Elizabeth, on February 16, 1837, William B. Grant purchased land from Amos Robinson. This land is in Northwestern Hall County near the Chestatee River in what is now the Cool Springs Community. It was there that William B. Grant and his wife Elizabeth raised their nine children. The land on which they lived is still in the Grant family. Because the property was so near the river, much of the land was flooded when Lake Sidney Lanier was built in the 1950's.
William B. and Elizabeth's oldest son, William Sidney Grant fought in the Civil War. He was captured and spent part of the war in a prison on the shores of Lake Michigan. After the war he came home and married Julia Ann Campbell in 1865.
The South suffered greatly during and after the war. The economy was bad and the land had been farmed out. Many families were large and there was not enough acreage to support the generations to come. Some people chose to leave and head West and Texas was thought of as the "Promised Land". Land was there for the asking. Many people left during the post war era and marked the letters "GTT" on their doors. Everyone around here knew that meant "Gone To Texas".
That is exactly what two of William B. Grant's children did. William Sidney Grant, his wife, baby and his mother-in-law left for Texas in the fall of 1866. Also going with them was William and Elizabeth's daughter Amanda "Mandy" Grant and her husband Lewis Keith. The Keiths stayed in Texas for several years but then returned to Georgia.
William and Julia Grant settled in the northern part of Grayson County, Texas. They began farming and found this to be a good place to live.
By 1871, things had not improved much in North Georgia. William B. Grant would be considered an old man at age sixty-five in those days. But he still dreamed of going to Texas. He decided to go and check things out for himself. If he liked the country he and his wife would move there. He traveled by wagon to Gainesville, Georgia, then by train to Savannah. From Savannah he took a boat around Florida into the Gulf of Mexico. After entering Texas around Galveston, he traveled up through East Texas to Grayson County to visit his son and daughter and their families.
The trip was long and tiring. Somewhere along the way he contracted yellow fever. By the time he reached Texas he was very ill. He hoped he would recover once he arrived at his daughter's home. But he only weakened. Finally he was taken to the home of his son, William Sidney Grant, near the little town of Pottsboro. They had a spring there and hopefully the cool spring water would be just what he needed. But he continued to decline and on April 24, 1871 he died. It would have been virtually impossible to bring his body back to Georgia for burial, so he is buried in the Georgetown Cemetery near Pottsboro in Grayson County, Texas.
His wife Elizabeth lived for seven more years in Georgia and is buried at the Liberty Baptist Church Cemetery in Dawson County, near the grave of her daughter Millie Taylor.
written by Joe Pierce

Family tree