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Kilgore Family Also Read about the Kilgore Family Home The
Kilgores were in the news many times in the last
three decades of the 19th century, and it was
not always for making bricks or building houses.
In late November of 1876, S. C. Kilgore was assaulted by a "negro," who was convicted a few months later and sentenced to two years in the penitentiary. [Denison Daily Cresset, Saturday, April 7, 1877, pg. 4] Subsequent news stories about S. C. and his two sons raise the question of whether the assault may have been provoked. In July 1888 the older son, Thomas E. "Ed" Kilgore (1866-1897), killed a man in Ladonia, a little town southeast of Bonham in Fannin County.  In the
spring of 1889 Ed was convicted of manslaughter
and sentenced to two years in
the penitentiary. In October of that year his younger brother, Wert B.
Kilgore (1868-1919), was fined $14.25 for aggravated assault in
Denison. Two months later Ed Kilgore was
pardoned by the governor, after
serving six months of his two-year sentence, based on the
governor's opinion that the eveidence in the
case was conflicting and even "untrue" thus it
was "a proper case for executive clemency."
 A few
months after the troublesome affairs with his
sons, the barn on the Kilgore's property
accidentally burned.
 Ed had
been engaged to Fannie Jackson, daughter of a
prominent family in Ladonia. Fannie had lobbied
hard for Ed's early release from prison. But by the time he arrived back
in Ladonia to marry her, she had changed her mind about marrying him.
Ed's reaction to her rejection was to spend the next several years
impugning the chastity of Fannie and her younger sister to anyone around
town who would listen. After simmering for seven years, Fannie decided she
had endured enough. She went gunning for Ed. She hit him with five out
of six shots from her revolver. Her brothers added four or five more,
and Ed expired from the aggregate effects of the bullet holes. As she fired
the last shot into his prone body, Fannie was heard to exclaim, "You
coward, you have slandered me long enough!" Public sentiment
around Ladonia was that Ed's killing was long overdue, and no one
was ever convicted of it. The story of the shooting was a sensation in
newspapers across the country.
 A week later, Miss
Jackson along with her brothers were placed
under a bond of $1,500 each, which was quickly
paid. On August 30, Fannin County
Attorney A.J. Nichols sent a letter to Addie
Kilgore informing her that Miss Jackson and
her four brothers had been indicted on first
degree murder charges for the murder of her
son, Ed. [The Sunday
Gazetteer, September 5, 1897, pg. 4] Just
over a month later the jury in the case of
Texas vs, Miss Fannie Jackson, father and
brothers was discharged on account of a hung
jury; ten of the jury members had been in
favor of convicting Miss Jackson although all
were voted to discharge the father and
brothers. [The
Sunday Gazetteer, October 10, 1897,
pg. 1] Miss Fannie Jackson did later
marry and died in 1925.
 In 1898, a year
after the Jackson family killed Ed, his father
and surviving brother were involved in a "row"
in Durant, Indian Territory. Fines of
$20 and $10 were levied against S.C., age 60,
and Wert, age 30, respectively. [The Sunday
Gazetteer, August 24, 1898, pg.
3] The following year Wert was fined
again for assault and robbery of a young
farm boy who had ridden the train with him
into Denison from the west, amongst other
incidences of violence and lawlessness.
  1899
was also the year that S. C. Kilgore was
stricken with paralysis, unable to
"articulate." He applied for a Confederate
veteran's pension. The application was denied, because he owned too much
property to qualify as an indigent. After his death in 1902, he was
praised in his obituary as a pioneer citizen, responsible for building
"many of the substantial business and resident houses of
Denison" with "brick supplied from his own yards."
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