BAYLUS CLAYTON ALLGOOD. September 6, 1843, Baylus C. Allgood was born in Blount county, Alabama. DeForest Allgood, his father, was born in Pickens county, South Carolina, in 1819, and died in Blount county, Alabama, where he migrate soon after his marriage. The latter was prominent in his locality in which he passed his long life, for he was a Baptist preacher and was engaged in ministerial work for sixty-three years. He brought up his children in the country upon his modest farm and gave them such educational advantages as were accessible to people of limited means. He was a son of an Englishman, Barnett Allgood, who married and died in South Carolina. He owned slave labor and worked it upon his plantation, and for his wife he chose a Miss Dean. Their issue consisted of sons and daughters as follows: Bannister, DeForest, Alvin, Jennie, who married Ellis Murphy; Nancy, wife of Jerry Ellis; Fannie became the wife of George Miller and Patsy married Stephen Ellis. Rev. Allgood married Temperance, a daughter of Stephen Clayton, of Pickens county, South Carolina. Death carried away this wife in 1843, and in time he married Arena Tidwell. The issue of his first marriage was: Miles, who died in the Confederate army, leaving a family in Alabama; Rev. S. C. of Blount county, Alabama, and now county treasurer; Elvira, who died as Mrs. Cassandra Moody; Barnett, a physician of Chepultepec, Alabama, and Baylus C., of this review. By his second wife Rev. Allgood’s children were: Francis, deceased; Jane, wife of James Burnham, of Blount county; John B., of Abilene, Texas, and Rufus A., of Birmingham, Alabama.
The farm, as above indicated, felt the impress of Baylus C. Allgood’s infantile hand and his father’s home was his until his entry into the service of the Confederacy in 1861. He joined Company K, Nineteenth Alabama, and belonged to Wheeler’s Infantry, Army of the Tennessee. In the fight at Shiloh he was seriously wounded in the thigh and after his recovery he was wounded in the left leg in the engagement at Chickamauga, retiring him again from the ranks for some time. He was with his command, however, when the war ended and was at Jackson, Mississippi, when the breakup finally came. The first thing to claim Mr. Allgood after the war was a ten months’ term in school, after which he taught two years himself. He then took up farming, beginning modestly, as was necessary the character of his layout and the exigencies of the situation, and he continued this vocation in his native heath until 1869 when he gathered together his few effects and immigrated to Texas.
Coming to the Lone Star state he stopped in Bosque county and passed eight years near the Hamilton and Bosque line. He took a preemption then in the former county and was occupied with its improvement and cultivation, when he exchanged it for a Wise county tract, the nucleus of his present extensive agricultural estate. Stock-raising and farming have proven profitable to him and from time to time his domain has suffered expansion, other lands being acquired by purchase and added until a thousand acres, with nearly three thousand under plow, tell the story briefly of the effects of his Texas toil. Horse and mule raising has added its material portion to his gradually increasing wealth and an ever-wise management of finances has placed him upon an independent plane today.
July 31, 1866, Mr. Allgood married Mrs. Sarah Tidwell, a daughter of William Montgomery, of Blount county, Alabama. Mr. Montgomery was born in the state of South Carolina, and married Miss Elizabeth Crawford, born in Tennessee, who bore him ten children. Mrs. Allgood was born in Alabama in 1837, and married, first, Yaggil Tidwell. Her and Mr. Allgood’s children are: Elizabeth, wife of F. Eirring, of Hale county, Texas; James DeForest, of Fort Worth; Miles P. and Baylus C., of Wise county, and Sarah J., wife of Newton Johnston, of Whitt, Texas, the two last named being twins.
In his relation to the county as a citizen Mr. Allgood has won and maintained a business standing of the first order and he has not been without interest in its political affairs. Without assumption of personal importance or without essaying leadership Democrats know him as a man who does his own thinking and one who seldom thinks wrong, and his aid of a candidate aspiring to office gives him an admitted prestige in the race. While he was brought up in the faith and taught that baptism is essential in the life of properly trained families, he does not feel that ardency for the cause which his worthy ancestor did, and claims no allegiance to the church.
Source: B. B. Paddock, History and Biographical Record of North and West Texas (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1906), Vol. II, pp. 325-326.