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Research Help and Special Notes
My interest in our family genealogy began as a teenager living in Dallas, Texas. When I was about 13, in 1953, my mother took me to visit my paternal grandfather, Monroe Wilson Murray, and my relatives at his Gatesville, Texas residence. From that one weekend visit, an interest in my heritage began. This interest created a period in the late 1950s where I spent many hours in the Dallas Public Library, researching old books and microfiche for my long lost and distant ancestors. Although I never met, nor talked to, my natural father, my interest in our family never changed. My own daughter renewed this recently, when she wanted to know about our family medical history for her own children’s benefit. So after a period of almost 40 years, my pictures and records that had gathered dust in the closet were opened. Fortunately someone else in our Murray family, Nina Kendrick, was industrious and persistent during that time. The research required to produce a historic family record requires a great deal of time and effort. If that enterprise is taken lightly, the end product will never come to fruition. One such effort was that begun by my step-aunt Nina Alice (Murray) Kendrick, over twenty years ago. Her goal was to provide a record of the Murray family of Gatesville, Texas, for her three boys. She has certainly done that. Without her research and meticulous notes with references, done over those twenty years, this document would not have been possible. I wish to greatly thank Aunt Nina for allowing me to liberally use her notes and research, and her collaboration in our effort to put the data into a document. After all, it was her idea. After beginning with Aunt Nina, I found and contacted many other relatives. Norma (Ewing) Young helped beyond belief. Her research is immense, and led us to our ancestor who came to America on the “Mayflower”. Some of these kinfolk had begun, like me, many years ago, a genealogical record of their particular branch of ancestors. Kay (West) Fast my second cousin who lives in Memphis, Tennessee has an enormous file on the West Family. Her research and help in the production of that portion cannot be minimized. Her continuing work gave me most of the documentation needed to put the West portion into this document. The research into the Mullins genealogy has been the most challenging. Because Bud Mullins, our oldest known ancestor, left very little in the way of a trail to his parentage, quite a bit of research has been undertaken. Forrest Mullins, who lives in east Texas, has been my most helpful supporter and critic. Debating issues regarding the Mullins Clan has been one of the most rewarding experiences in this research. To him, my sincere gratitude. Compiling genealogical research information into a somewhat readable form can be unwieldy and unmanageable. I hope the form chosen for this document, a chronology by location, to be of a readable form. We also know that some documentation of this type is often boring. I have tried to minimize that effect, while presenting the history, and preserving the flavor and character of the writing of the various periods. There were several choices made to help in the presentation of the information. With regard to our ancestors, when each is first mentioned, an attempt was made to place each name in bold type. This choice was made to help the reader more easily locate family names that are of interest. In the genealogy areas, last names are all shown in capitals, unless the last name is not known, i.e., wives whose maiden names have not been learned. Instead of using Senior (Sr.) and Junior (Jr.) to differentiate between father and son, we chose the Roman numeral usage (I) and (II). This standard is not as easy to read, but where multiple generations can have the same name, Senior and Junior could become quite confusing. No standard format for dates was chosen. Most historic documents use the old, or European, day/month/year format, and that was retained where used in the old records. All other areas carry the more contemporary month/day/year format. England, and its colonies did not use January 1 (they used March 25) as the beginning of the New Year until 1752. Thus anyone that was born prior to 1752, and between January 1, and March 25 have the dual designation for the year, i.e. 1712/13. Nina, Norma, Forrest, and I, hope that this document is never finished. Someone will take our place and most likely do a much better job. William L. Pearson (AKA Billy Foy Murray) February 21, 2000 |