JAMES M. HEFLEYJAMES M. HEFLEY. During the closing year of the Civil war decade the subject of this review, then under twenty years of age, first became identified with Jack county. He entered the employ of the government at Fort Richardson, and the months which he labored for “Uncle Sam” were passed largely in putting up hay and taking care of forage for the stock upon the military reservation. While connected thus with the Fort and, later, while freighting across the country from the east, he gained a knowledge of the untamed and untaken lands of the creek valley where, when he was ready to establish himself in a permanent location, he purchased land and inaugurated his substantial career in Jack county. It was in 1876 that Mr. Hefley settled one mile north of Vineyard and bough the Judge Charson settlement, which he cultivated, and upon which he resided for nineteen years. He was limitedly financed when he came hither, having a few hundred dollars, the savings of several years at various occupations, beginning with his experience at Fort Richardson, but he paid for his farm and undertook its cultivation with his team and the few implements which he could gather together. Selling this tract he purchased four hundred and twenty acres on the Kirkendall and Eubank’s Surveys, three and one-half miles west of Vineyard, and here we find him located today. Farming in Jack county has brought to our subject the material prosperity he enjoys. When we say “farming” we include the possession of the few cattle and horses necessary to every intelligently and successfully managed place, but the cultivation of the soil has been depended upon for substantial return and its yield has sufficed to bring a position of financial independence to its owner. Prior to his advent to Jack county to settle Mr. Heffley had spent a few years as freighter from the pine mills of East Texas, hauling lumber, with his ox team, to Palo Pinto, Weatherford, Springtown and Jacksboro. He crossed and re-crossed this region until every portion of it was so familiar to him as his own door-yard, as he devoted the first part of this manhood to gaining the first rung of the ladder in his long climb toward a condition of independence. Prior to attaining his majority he made a trip to Kansas and remained on the range and farm with his employer between the Verdigris river and Big Caney in the Cherokee Nation and when his freighting career closed he was asked to join a cow drive to the market at Abilene; he accepted, and again threaded the untamed country of the red man and passed by and over the unclaimed “Sunflower” frontier, destined to be a veritable garden spot in less than ten years from that date. He remained with Mr. Chadle, of Parker county, on this drive for a year, and returned to the south along the rich valleys of the Neosho, visiting the old towns of Kansas and acquainting himself with the true geography of the now famous gas and oil fields of the United States. James M. Hefley was born in Tippah county, Mississippi, May 31, 1850, and was a son of John Hefley, who brought his young family to Parker county, Texas, in 1855, and settled among the wild conditions of that frontier locality. In that early day the red man had almost unlimited and undisputed sway over Northwest Texas, and among the innumerable killings credited to them was an uncle of our subject, John Montgomery, one of the pioneers of Parker county. Mr. Heffley, Sr., was in the Ranger service for a number of years, his command being Ward’s company and Berry’s regiment of Texas troops. John Hefley left Parker county after a residence of fifteen years, and moved into Wise county, where he passed away in 1870, at sixty-two years of age. His birth occurred in Tennessee, and he was married twice in Mississippi, his first wife having been Atlanta Caraway, who died leaving three children, viz: James M., William, and Mary, wife of George Walker, of Wise county, Texas. For his second wife John Hefley married Jane Cuthbert, who bore him: Josephine, wife of Isaac Wendley, of Wise county; Sarah E., deceased wife of Joseph Ferguson; Elizabeth; Nancy A.; Alice, who married Daniel Hinred, of Panhandle, Texas; Ella, widow of Payton Hunt, of Oklahoma; Georgian, who married John Payne and died in Wise county; Isabel, wife of James Payne, of the Chickasaw Nation, and John, also of the Chickasaw country, and Columbus, of Texas. James M. Hefley came to maturity where there were no schools and as a consequence acquired little mental training during his boyhood days. In some manner he learned to read and write, and to do something toward mathematical computations, but actual contact with business men and affairs in the course of his life has given him his chief and practical knowledge of things. He has been busy all his life and has manifested little interest in things beyond his own bailiwick. While he entertains political views and believes strongly that political parties wield a power for good or for evil in our land, he has taken no active interest in their workings beyond the expression of an opinion and the casting of his ballot. For years he was a Democrat, but the administration of Mr. Cleveland from 1892 to 1896 surfeited him with Democracy and he joined issues with the Populists, and in 1904 case his ballot for Mr. Watson. He believes in the Sacred Book and ascribes to it all the good and all the wisdom of the world, yet he is unconverted. While he enjoys social intercourse and the company of friends, and confesses the incompleteness of a home without a woman he has never married, and is passing his evening of life in solitude. B. B. Paddock, History and Biographical Record of North and West (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1906), Vol. I (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1906), pp. 525-526. |
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