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JAMES GRANVILL HAYESJAMES GRANVILL HAYES. The constant observer is sever astonished at the rapidity and suddenness which men, in Texas, have passed from poverty to independence and is puzzled for a solution of the apparently ever-deepening mystery. Whatever the answer to the question, the condition prevails and is amply illustrated by the life of this another gentlemen enriching, to posterity, the pages of this work. Thirty years ago our subject was a beardless boy about to assume his humble station in life, with no preparation for its responsibilities. Twenty-five years ago he was striking his first licks as the head of a family with a team and fifty dollars as his only assts between the newly married couple and zero. In the five preceding years he had acquired much of value from experience and this asset together with his abundant industry may account for his sure and quick passage from “poverty to independence.” In 1875 Mr. Hayes accompanied a sister to Collin county, Texas. He was then a lad of sixteen, had been reared an orphan with some of the disadvantages which that condition too often entails and having few privileges for the intellectual training of the young and tender youth. He had a strong body, full of labor, and this he was prepared to sell at the top price of the market. In the course of his career he came to know Charley Robinson, a stockman of Collin county who had a ranch in Montague, and the latter sent him hither, in 1878, to take a position on said ranch. With this employer he continued until his marriage when his career as an independent farmer commenced. Granvill Hayes was born in Decatur county, Tennessee, May 22, 1859, a son of Elisha and Dolly (Tubbs) Hayes. His father was a native Tennesseean and was killed, probably at Cedar Mountain, in the Confederate service. Of his early life we have no account, save that he grew up with his brother James and had become farmer when he enlisted in the army. He also had other brothers, Samuel and Asa, and sisters, Polly, Betsy and Telitha, the former marrying a Woods and the last-named a Blunt, and passed her life in Arkansas. Mrs. Dolly Tubbs Hayes was a daughter of Lemuel Tubbs and departed life in1867, leaving children, namely: Perry, who left a family at this death in Tennessee; Telitha, of Collin county, wife of John Box; Marion B., of Tennessee; Mary, wife of Joe Evans, of Taylor county, Texas, and James Granvill, our subject. The common schools had little part of lot in making Granvill Hayes what he is today. Had they formed an important link in his bringing-up it might have added to his appreciation of the tings of lie but it wouldn’t have pushed the crooks out of his furrows or have produced more bushels to the acre of corn. When he had earned the means to defray the expense he spent five months in school in Farmersville, Collin county, and these were the best months of his school career. As appears the universal condition then, for a time after his marriage he cultivated land as a tenant. He then pre-empted an eighty-acre tract on the Bowie-Selma road which formed the nucleus of his present homestead. When corn and cotton raising had made it impossible, he added seventy-nine acres to this body and on the first of January, 1904, he purchased one hundred and forty-five acres on Sandy, on the Howard Valley road. This gives him three hundred and twenty-four acres and represents his substantial accumulations since the fourth day of September, 1880. On the date above mentioned Mr. Hayes married Miss Eva Pipkin, a daughter of Philip and Jane (Norman) Pipkin, to Texas from Illinois. Mrs. Hays bore her husband seven children and passed away January 24, 1901. Of this family of children Mary died at thirteen years; Etta is nineteen; Maggie, seventeen, Lula, fourteen, Frank, ten, Dolly, eight, and Dan, four; all units of the family circle. Granvill Hayes has been an integral part in the makeup of his community and a positive force in its development. His efforts, in connection with those of his neighbors, have added value to the real estate of the locality and given the latter the air of progress and civilization which it exhibits. His industrious habits have been inherited by his numerous daughters now taking their stations as young women and their attachment to home in an encouragement and strong support to their worthy father. B. B. Paddock, History and Biographical Record of North and West Texas (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1906), Vol. II, pp. 668-669. |
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