The Confederate Veteran Magazine
vol. XXI, March, 1913
p. 133

Charles S. Durning was born in Cape Girardeau County, Mo., March 10, 1830; and passed from this life on January 10, 1913, at his residence in Van Alstyne in the eighty-third year of his life. He went to Texas in 1853 and located in Grayson County, where he lived, except while in the Confederate army, until his death.

At the close of the war he returned to Grayson County and at once took charge of Captain Bowen's mill on Sister Grove Creek, where as manager he was universally popular with the customers and made the mill a success. He accumulated means to buy a fine tract of black land on the waters of the East Fork of the Trinity River.

On November 19, 1868, he was married to Miss Hester George, who survives him. Comrade Durning was a member of the Masonic fraternity and also of the Missionary Baptist Church.