Green Weaver
1795-1863

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Brief Sketch On The Life Of Green Weaver

Green Weaver, deceased, moved with his family into Hopkins County in the year 1845 and located in the vicinity of where Greenview Church is now situated.

He is the father of two sets of children, having been twice married. His first set of children were notorious for the brilliancy of their intellect. They are all dead now. Mrs. Mary J. Moseley is the eldest child of the second marriage, Sam Houston Weaver, who is a well-known, respected and esteemed citizen of the county, is his second child, and lives at this time on his father’s head-right. Sam is a highly respected citizen, having raised a large and useful family in the county. Dave W. lives in Eastland County. Granville lives in Lebanon, Indian Territory. Walton is now living in Oklahoma Territory. Joe Weaver lives at his father’s old home. These children are all good, useful citizens, honest and just men, and go to make much of the history of Hopkins County.

They too have suffered, in common with other pioneers, the trials, hardships, disappointments and self-sacrifices attendant upon pioneer life in the county. They are an honor and credit to the state as well as to the county, having been born and raised in the county.

SOURCE: Early History of Hopkins County Texas - E. B. Fleming, Publisher 1902 Pp. 106 - 107, Transcribed by Pat Howard,

http://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/tx/hopkins/bios/weavers.txt

A Letter From John G. Weaver To Claude Weaver

Taken from a letter from John G. Weaver written to Claude Weaver. Claude was collecting memoirs of the Weaver family. The letter was retyped by Sharon Weaver in November 1988.

"If I only had the power to write all that come to my memory in the past four hours of the old Weaver home, its builders and the ones that made its memory dear, I would write a book, well worth your reading.

The old house was built on 640 acre tract of land. The patent to this land, dated soon after the year 1840, was signed by Sam Houston when he was president of the Republic of Texas. The patent was recorded at Clarksville, Texas which was the county seat of the Red River District. The house was a typical old Texas home of that time. There were two big rooms built of hewed logs, wide hall between, a huge fireplace in each room, a wide gallery in front and side rooms on the back. The house fronted south and all round it were huge post oak trees that sent their shade far and wide.

In the front yard were trees, planted by your father, W.T.G. Weaver, when he was a boy. This was his home from the time when he was about eight years old until he left it to seek his fortune by his own unaided efforts.

Your father was a great lover of flowers, vines, trees and of the trees he planted, some of which grew to immense size. I remember a catalpa tree, a wild cherry tree, a boisd'arc and a cedar tree. The cedar tree grew to giant size and from its seed fifty years later, there is a cedar forest growing on the farm. Im my childhood I spent many happy hours in the shade of these trees.

The wild cherry tree was planted in the corner of the field near the road -- the old wagon trail from Shreveport by Jefferson and McKinney to Jacksboro. Under the shade of this cherry tree, when I was a child, I have watched the great teams of oxen heave and pull the huge old tar pole wagons, loaded to the guards with buffalo hides, packed on a huge frame -- from two to six yokes of oxen to each wagon -- coming from the West Texas buffalo country bound for Jefferson or Shreveport. In three or four months, the same wagons with their ox teams would return to the West loaded with lumber, groceries and whiskey.

From this old Weaver Home no stranger went away hungry, no traveler was ever turned out into the cold. Its hospitable doors were always open.

Sam Houston stayed all night there in his last race for governor. Emory Raines, the father of the Texas Homestead Law, was a frequent visitor to our grandfather there. Cole and Bob Younger, members of the Quantrell band and companions of Frank and Jesse James, were guests for a night in this old home, entertained as strangers. More than forty years ago, Cole Younger told me that he remembered this place where he was entertained by my grandmother, Aunt Nancy Weaver. By this name she was know far and wide.

Of my grandfather, Green Weaver, I know nothing except what I have heard. He died in 1863, three years before I was born. He was a native of Chatham County, North Carolina, born there November 17, 1795; married there to Nellie Record January 14, 1821; moved to Tennessee, then to Illinois, then to Iowa where his first wife died, leaving four motherless children -- all boys: Tinnsley N. Weaver, John Calvin Weaver, Shadrach S. Weaver and your father William Thomas Green Weaver, the youngest.

In the fall of 1839, he left Iowa, Texas bound, arriving in Texas, first stopping in Clarksville in spring of 1840.

Soon after he came to Texas, he married his second wife, Nancy McCorkle and to this union were born eight children, five sons and three daughters: Sam Houston Weaver, who was my father, Mary J. Weaver, David S. Weaver, J. Granville Weaver, Walter Scott Weaver, Joe C. Weaver, Margaret E. Weaver and one girl who died in early childhood, who name I have forgotten.

Of these childrens all are dead. The last survivor was Walter S. Weaver, who died in Tillman County, OK in the early part of the year 1934 at the age of 80 years, a plain farmer, honest, industrious, successful, benevolent, public-spirited and universally beloved.

Our grandfather, Green Weaver, was a farmer, and he was a Christian preacher, too, one of the first to preach in Hopkins County. He believed that the duty for which he was ordained to marry the young folks, to visit the sick, to help bury the dead, and to preach when there was nothing better to do.

One of the first couples he married were Aunt Becky and Uncle Wash Barker. They have two sons living yet: Willie W. Barber and James W. Barker, the latter of Linden, TX. To wed this couple, our grandfather drove in an ox wagon over the prairies more than twenty miles. That was the chief way to travel in that time -- that way and on horseback.

I have heard our Uncle Shadrach S. Weaver tell how he rode a horse over thirty miles to Uncle Eli Lindley's to borrow meal and when he got there, they were out of meal. My grandmother used to tell of how they dug up the dirt in the smoke house where the meat had been salted, and boiled the dirt to get the salt out.

It was a long way to market in that day and time and slow travel with wretched roads, made by the ox wagons.

But the old pioneers never gave up but always found a way.

In August of 1876 when your father paid his last visit to the old home, I was ten years of age. He had been down to Smith County to visit his sister, Mary J. Moseley, and his two aunts, Betsy Weaver and Anna Green Weaver, his father's sisters.

He boasted how quick he made this trip. Leaving Troupe in the morning he went to Mineola on the train, thence to Sulphur Springs on the stage. Uncle Granville met him at Sulphur Springs with a horse and they arrived at the old home before sundown. And was that old grandmother of mine glad to see him. He was her step-son, but from the fond embrace and the hearty welcome she gave him, you would have never dreamed that his was not her own boy.

The next day we planned to go to the bottom to view some of his boyhood hunting and fishing haunts. But old Captain Buford at Sulphur Springs had heard that Billy Weaver had gone out to the old home and as quick as he could ride the twelve miles, he was there, the next morning. He stayed and they talked until the last rays of the setting sun were shining through the tree tops. But next morning my Uncle Will, your father, the gifted W.T.G. Weaver, hied away to Garrettsville Creek bottoms. This was a red letter day in my life. I was ten years old and fifty-nine years since that memorable day, but it is still fresh in my memory still. I was, of course, just a child, unschooled, and I marveled that one person could know so much as your father knew.

I will never forget how he looked that day. His face had a boyish look. He was in his shirt sleeves, his flowing light beard and his brown wavy hair showing beneath his broad brimmed hat. I can still see his dreamy blue eyes and hear his soft musical voice.

In glowing language he told me of his many hunting and fishing adventures by this stream and these bottoms in the days of his boyhood. He pointed to places where he had shot turkeys and wild deer and he located a black haw tree where, hidden,, he watched a catamount leap from a tree upon a deer. He told me how the deer struggled to shake the big gray cat from its body, but in vain, and how he killed the big cat in his turn after the cat had killed the deer. Your father said he had never enjoyed a day more than this one, revisiting these old places.

We boys were delighted with the stories that he told and the glowing descriptions he gave of the days gone by. But there were great changes along the stream: there was only switch cane and when he had hunted there that cane was 15-20 feet high, and the tangled wildwood was a wilderness, haunted by wild life. Civilization had already commenced to make its inroads upon God's great out-of-doors, the heritage of the pioneers.

When I told him good-bye at the end of his visit, I little dreamed that I was to see him no more. In two short months, in the prime of his manhood, he was dead and gone from us forever.

As long as I live I shall cherish the memory of your father's visit to the old Weaver home and my boyish admiration for him and love for him that has grown through the years, the memory of the most lovable character, the greatest mind and the most picturesque of all the persons whom I have ever known.

Love to all the family,

Your uncle, John G. Weaver"

Source: http://www.gencircles.com/users/pab81552/1/data/5

Directions To The Grave of Green Weaver

From Dallas: Take I-30 to Cumby. At mile marker 440 take the exit to Miller Grove, Co. Rd. 275 south. Head south on Hwy 275 about 8 miles and turn left on County Rd. 1567. Go about 5 miles to the Greenview Community. Turn left on Hopkins County Road 1168. See little church and cemetery up on the left. Go to cemetery. Gates are left closed. You can open and drive into the cemetery. Go toward the rear of the cemetery and look toward the middle (on your right) to locate the old Weaver plot.

From Texarkana: Take I-30 to Sulfur Springs, Texas. Get off at Exit #122. Turn right (head south) on Hillcrest Dr. (Hwy. 19) Go 8 miles and turn left on County Rd. 1567. Go about 2 miles into the Greenview community. Turn right on Hopkins County Road 1168. See little church and cemetery up on the left. Go to cemetery. Gates are left closed. You can open and drive into the cemetery. Go toward the rear of the cemetery and look toward the middle (on your right) to locate the old Weaver plot.

GPS Coordinates
Acc to 14 ft.
N33º 01.551' x WO 95º 43.817'
Grave Faces East

Historical Marker: Greenview Community And Cemetery Directions: just north of FM 1567 about 2 mi. west of SH 19, 12 mi. SW of Sulphur Springs Marker #: 5223007312 Year Dedicated: 1979 Size, type: 27" x 42" In 1839 the Rev. Green Weaver (1795-1863), a prosperous merchant and slave holder from Illinois and Iowa, settled here with his four sons. A Christian church minister, the Rev. Weaver performed marriages and visited sick neighbors. He married Nancy McCorry and built a two-room log cabin. An old wagon trail from Shreveport crossed their plantation. The first burial in 1848 was that of the Weavers' five-month-old daughter Martha. The plot was placed near the home so her mother could walk to the grave. Only family members were interred here until 1878 when the burial ground was opened to the public. In 1884 the Rev. Weaver's son Joseph gave land for a church. The neighbors donated the lumber and constructed this community house. It served as a church building and school. That same year, "Weaver Neighborhood Cemetery" was renamed "Greenview" by Mary and Weaver Mosely. She chose "Green" in memory of her father and "View" for the sight from the old homestead. The Greenview School operated until 1914 when it was consolidated. This free public cemetery of more than 1200 graves is still in use. Memorial services are held here the first Sunday in July. Decimal degrees:  N 33.026710   W -95.730794 Degrees, minutes: N 33 01.603   W 095 43.848 UTM: Zone 15, Easting 244938, Northing 3657562 Source:http://www.9key.com/markers/marker_detail.asp?atlas_number=5223007312

 

 

 

Rev. Green
Weaver
Born
Nov. 17, 1795
Died
Oct. 2, 1863
He died as he lived
A Christian

Nancy Weaver
Born
May 2, 1823
Died
Sept. 27, 1884
She was a kind and
affectionate wife, a tender
mother and a friend to all.

Looking Back Toward The Entrance of The Cemetery From The Weaver Monument

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