Joseph Clark Stewart, who has spent three score and ten years in Texas, has a range of memories and recollections that represent practically every stage of progress and development in the northern and western part of the state. Mr. Stewart has his home four miles south of Cresson, and is a fine type of the stalwart citizenship of old Hood County.

He was born in Kentucky, January 1, 1855, being only two years of age when his parents, Isaac Anderson and Catherine Jane (Cox) Stewart, came out to Texas, traveling in wagons drawn by horses, and first locating in Grayson County. The Stewarts were of Irish ancestry. Isaac Anderson Stewart was born in Kentucky February 17, 1817, and spent his active life as a farmer. From Grayson County he moved to that portion of Johnson County now Hood County, locating five miles south of Cresson. There he bought land and undertook its development as a farm and stock ranch. He owned just one slave. A short time before the Civil war broke out he joined a party that went after some Indians, and in the fight that ensued on Deer Creek, Brown County, he was killed. His wife was born May 20, 1824, at Morristown, Tennessee, near the line of Tennessee and Kentucky, and she survived her husband a quarter of a century, passing away at Godley in Johnson County in 1895. Her children comprised six sons and four daughters, and a brief account of eight of them is as follows: Eliza F., born July 23, 1843, lives in Grayson County, widow of E.E. Wallace, who was a blacksmith and who left two children; William Thomas, born October 2, 1845, was a Confederate soldier through the war and shortly afterward moved out to Oregon and has never been heard from since; Sarah, born September 13, 1847, became the wife of Charles Newhouse, a farmer, who died at Graham, Texas, in 1913, leaving one child; James Owen, born January 31, 1850, a retired farmer at Fort Worth, married Molly Bosson and had two children; Henry Clayton, born August 23, 1852, a retired farmer at Weatherford, married Emma Tipton and had six children; Joseph Clark; Robert S., born in Grayson County April 7, 1860, a farmer and stock man in Hood County, married Rachel Green and has five children; and Isaac Anderson, born April 5, 1865, a farmer and merchant in Cresson, and now has an orange orchard in Orange County, California, first married Cassie Raeburn, by whom he had two sons, and his second wife was Annie Clark, who was the mother of one child by a former marriage.

Joseph Clark Stewart was on the home farm with his mother in Hood County until he was twenty-eight years of age. His advantages were supplied by the common schools, and his success has been due to an application of industry and sound common sense to his business as a farmer and a stock man. After his marriage he bought a farm five miles from Cresson, and later bought his home place four miles from that town. These have been the scene of his active career as a farmer and stock raiser except for three years while he was in the hardware and lumber business at Weatherford. He has enjoyed well-earned distinction among the progressive and successful men of the county. At the present time his holdings comprise 550 acres, the bulk of his landed property having been distributed among his children. Mr. Stewart has for twenty-five years been a director of the City National Bank of Granbury. In all his career he has never resorted to borrowing money for either his business or personal use, and has kept his large enterprises as a farmer and stock man going without the necessity of credit. He has always taken an active part in church work, being a deacon in the Baptist Church, and is a straight Democrat in political affiliations.

Mr. Stewart married in Hood County, October 3, 1884, Miss Eppie M. Terrell. Her father, Captain Terrell, was born in South Carolina and was a captain in the Confederate army. After the war he came to Texas and came to be known as one of the best farmers in Hood County. Mrs. Stewart was born in South Carolina January 8, 1861. She died in 1924. Her children were two in number. Albert Curtis, born March 20, 1890, a farmer and stock man of Hood County, first married Anna Peterson, and after her death, Willie Hiner. By the second wife there are three children. Alter Stewart, the second child, was born June 20, 1892, and has one child by her marriage to Grady Adams, a farmer and stock dealer at Godley in Johnson County. 

Texas Under Many Flags, Volume III. Clarence R. Wharton, Author and Editor. 1930: The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York.

Note: Clarence R. Wharton also authored The Republic of Texas, Life of General Santa Anna; Member of Southwestern Historical Association; Member of Law Firm of Baker, Botts, Parker and Garwood of Houston, Texas. 

2000 HOOD COUNTY TEXAS GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY