[J[1].Bankhead.GED]

William Christel Bankhead, was undoubtedly born in Shelby County, Tennessee, where the family lived for those years before beginning their migration to the Texas frontier.
William Christel grew to young manhood in Walker County, Texas, truly a TEXAS PIONEER.

Prior to July 1845, we find William with his brother, Richard,and their father, George W. Bankhead, conducting a search for land through several yet-to-be formed counties of Texas,going as far north as present day Palo Pinto County, where their names are recorded by Thomas William Ward in the Peter's Colony Venture. However, no patents were issued here for their certificates, for Limestone County would seem to have been the choice of all three men, as we find Richard and George Bankhead on the tax rolls there as early as 1847. William's application for a Third Class Grant (640 acres for a family man) from the Republic of Texas is patented to him upon June 4,1850, Mercer's Colony, Limestone County, and is sold to J.N. Claypool, June 12th of the same year.

William had become a married man in 1848, having taken as a wife Elizabeth Jane"Mahalia" as she was called" Blevins, who was half Cherokee Indian, and to them had been born a son, whom they named after his brother Richard Marion.

By 1851,William had acquired 124 acres in the adjacent county of Freestone, upon which he rendered the unbelievable state tax of 19 cents, while his county tax came to34 cents.

In 1854, William Bankhead moved his family to their permanent location in Coxville Precinct,Hill County, where the last two of his sons by Elizabeth were to be born, and Elizabeth was to die,probably during 1858.

Mustered in as private, September 15,1863,at Stephenville,Erath County,Texas, by Captain M.B.Lloyd, William C. Bankhead served during the Civil War as a teamster in Company E, Mounted, Frontier Regiment, under the command of Colonel J.E. McCord. His Federal designation at Washington D.C., is Company A, Frontier Battalion, Texas Calvary.



October 1879, William sustained a fall while cleaning out a well,which broke his back,and the injuries thus obtained caused his death shortly thereafter.

Rebecca, a widow at 38, and probably in delicate health herself, for she was dead within two years, took refuge in marriage to her minister W.A.Tarrant, himself a recent widower with two small children. In April 1880, Rev. Tarrant's three year old daughter died of Scarlet Fever,and in May his one year old son,"choked" (Diphtheria) to death.

The only daughter at home during these trying events was Louise Frances Bankhead, who must have borne the burden as bravely as had her forebears.
In 1883, however, she was to marry Frank Weaver Moore, the brother of Sophia (Molly) Moore, wife of her elder half- brother John Taylor Bankhead.