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James Hardin Vaden
(William Jr. > William > Henry . Henry Jr.)  James
Hardin Vaden was born September 25, 1808 in Smith Co., Tennessee. His
death was on December 10, 1870 in Grayson Co., Texas.
On December 20, 1831, James Hardin Vaden and Elizabeth Rusk Jackson were married in Tennessee. Elizabeth was the daughter of William Jackson and Frances Rusk of Rome, Tennessee. Her family eventually moved to East Texas. All the children of James and Elizabeth remember hearing their parents saying they were related to General Andrew Jackson of North Carolina and Tennessee. James and his wife, Elizabeth, had six children when they moved from Smith Co., Tennessee to the Republic of Texas in 1843. They first stopped in Red River County. In 1845, they moved west to Grayson County, where they stayed for some time with their cousins, the Dugans. Eventually, James bought land from Texas at $2.00 per acre northwest of the present site of Sherman, where they lived the remainder of their lives.  Like
most people, the Vadens had slaves: Mary, Elva, Abe, Willis. As Henry
L. Vaden remembers, Willis died at the age of 55 and was buried in the
family plot on the farm.
During the Civil War, James took his wife and youngest son, Frank, to visit her family in East Texas. They stayed several months because Frank, their son, became very ill with malaria. During this time one of Elizabeth Jackson Vaden's family members passed away and left her several slaves. On the first night of their return trip, the negroes ran away. With four sons in the Confederate Army, James Hardin Vaden and his wife, Betsy, were left at home with three children: Kate, Henry and Frank and the darkies. As they were sitting before a fire one night, a negro woman belonging to Mr. Frohman who owned the adjacent place, came running in through the back way. She was ashy pale with fright but managed to tell the Vadens Quantrell's men were torturing her master in order to make him tell where $80 worth of gold was which he had received that day in town for a span of mules. She also said that she overheard these men say they were going to the Vadens' place next. The Vaden family hustled out the back way across fields, creeks and pastures. Betsy was on horseback and James was leading the horses. They were headed toward their friends, the Sacras', who lived about 1 1/2 miles northeast. It was a brilliant moonlight night and as they stopped under the shade of trees to rest, they could hear the screams of Mr. Frohman. After torturing him, Quantrell's men killed him. The Vadens never knew whether Quantrell's men carried out their threat which the negro woman overheard. They visited with the Sacras' for about a week. James
Hardin Vaden helped survey the new town of Sherman when it was laid out
east of the old site. As payment for his labor, he received a lot on
the northeast corner of the square, subsequently occupied by the
Commercial Band and Skillern's Drug Store. He traded the lot for an
Indian pony which he sold for $25. The deed of sale hung in the
Commercial Bank for many years.
"Genealogy of the Vaden and Related Families" Of their fourteen children, the following names are known:
By Tennie E.Vaden Winn, 1969  Biography Index Susan Hawkins © 2024 If you find any of Grayson County TXGenWeb links inoperable, please send me a message. |