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EARLY COUNTY JUDGES OF DALLAS COUNTY

The CEO (Chief Elected Official) of every county in the state of Texas is the County Judge. The Texas Constitution vests broad judicial and administrative powers in the position of county judge, who presides over a five-member commissioners court, which has budgetary and administrative authority over county government operations.

This summary covers brief notes, where information is available, about our early county judges and their marks left on the pages of Dallas County history.

JOHN THOMAS 1846 – 1848 Our first county judge was John S. Thomas. He was the son of Isaac Thomas, Indian fighter and scout for General John Sevier during the Indian Wars in Tennessee. Isaac Thomas was born in Virginia about 1735, and was a hero of the Battle of Watauga Settlement in 1776. He married Elizabeth Massengill and settled at Sevierville, Tennessee where they raised eight children to adulthood.

John S. "Jackie" Thomas was born in Sevierville, Tennessee, the fourth of eight children. He married Hannah Andes. They migrated to Missouri and from there were said to come to Dallas County about 1844 under the Peters Colony legislation. John Thomas was granted 640 acres of land as head of a family, and his son, Alexander A. Thomas, was granted 320 neighboring acres as a single man. The headright is in the vicinity of Preston Road and Walnut Hill Lane.

A Dallas Morning News article from 1902 mentions the fact that our earliest settlers faced tough times during the first few years before they began to raise wheat. Flour was a luxury but few could afford. The article goes on to mention that Judge John Thomas, the first judge of Dallas County, was about the only man in the county who could afford to have flour and sugar. "I went to a wedding at his house once and they had pound cake. When we went to entertainments in those days we generally spent the night. We lived too far apart usually, to go home in the dark," according to William H. Beeman.

John S. Thomas served from July 1846 until August 1848. Thomas Chapel was built in his honor in 1868 and served as a community church and school.

WILLIAM HORD 1848 – 1850
William Henry Hord was bon April 5, 1809 near the Staunton River in Charlotte County, Virginia. His family moved to Tennessee around 1832 where he married Mary Jane Crockett McKenzie on January 23, 1839. Her brother was John McClannahan Crockett, lieutenant governor of Texas and early Dallas mayor.

Hord first settled (1845) in an area that would later become known as Hord’s Ridge. This area is now known as the Oak Cliff section of Dallas. He also served as a brigadier general in the Texas Militia. His first visit to Texas was on Christmas Day of 1839 when he fought in an engagement on the Colorado River against the Indians.

It is also interesting to note that Hord served as a Dallas County justice of the peace prior to becoming county judge. In 1861 he participated in forming the Dallas Light Artillery Battery under Captain John J. Goode. He also served as director of the Dallas County Fair in 1862. In 1866, he along with four others from Dallas, signed resolutions approving a National Union convention for restoration of all states in their rights in the American Union. He presided over an 1868 meeting during the formation process of the Conservative party in Dallas, and was a founder and vice president of the Dallas County Pioneers Association in 1875.

William H. Hord would later serve a second stint as county judge in 1865 after James M. Patterson was removed by the military government, but prior to that it is of interest to note that he, along with Epps Knight and Uncle Billy Miller formed a “committee” to conduct an investigation into the origins of the fire that destroyed Dallas on July 10, 1860.

This account of the incident was taken from Memorial and Biographical History of Dallas County, Texas by Lewis Publishing in 1892: Uncle Billy Miller tells the reporter, “I am eighty-five years old, but those scenes and the startling revelations of an uprising among the Blacks created such an impression on my mind that I can never forget it. Crill Miller, now dead, who was a son of W. B. Miller took the part of detective and worked up the case. It is said that he had some Indian blood in his veins, and he kept his own counsel, saying but little, but he discovered the plot to burn, rob and murder.” Seems that there had been a lot of burning going on in the country, but no one seemed to know how the fires were being started.

“One day Crill was at his father’s house when a little Negro boy, whom he called Bruce came running in crying and saying: ‘O, Mr. Crill, three white men came and made me fetch them some water, and then they set fire to the barn and the house.’ Crill could see the smoke rising from his place, but he said nothing then. After he had worked on a few clues and put his plan together he took Bruce from the house and in the presence of a ‘committee’ of white men told him that he would have to tell them who had burned his house or else they would kill him and that if he died lying the devil would get him for sure. Bruce confessed that he himself had set the fire. This led to a plot, which included every Negro in the county except three”

When the scheme was fully disclosed, it was shown to have been instigated by two white preachers from Iowa. As soon as their connection with the scheme was known the committee approached one of the preachers who had stopped by a Negro’s house. After the preacher was shot at, began crying and pleading for his life. They let him go, but before he could get away, he was captured near Farmers’ Branch and brought into town and jailed. That night the other preacher was also captured and jailed. The two were released the next day and severely whipped.”

The same reporter then interviewed Judge Nat M. Burford. Judge Burford served from 1875 to 1876 and was the eleventh county judge. After he was reached at his home on Akard Street, he gives the following account of the events that transpired thirty-two years ago in Dallas:

“I was the district judge then,” he began, “and I was holding court in Waxahachie. I adjourned court there on Saturday, and headed for my home in Dallas, but I did not get here until Monday, the day after the town was burned. There were no railroads in those days, and travel was slow. I then lived on Main Street where the St. George Hotel now stands. When I got home I found a large portion of the town in smoking ruins. I remember that when I got to town everything was very quite. After dinner T. C. Hawpe, the sheriff, came to my house and told me that a meeting was being held in the courthouse. He was afraid they were going to hang all the Negroes in the county and so entail a great loss of property. He said that three were known to be guilty and he did not think that any more should hang. He ask me to go down and address the crowd and do what I could to hold violence in check. I encountered a doorkeeper. The guards were admitting only those whom they knew to be all right. The first man I talked to felt that three guilty Negroes should hang, but it would be too costly to hang the rest. I thought that was a good idea and afterward I was admitted and talked to the crowd for about three-quarters of an hour. Being a judiciary officer I then left the meeting and took no part in subsequent proceedings. The three Negroes were condemned to death by a jury of, I think, fifty-one men. ”

The fact that most of Dallas was destroyed by fire can not be disputed, but exactly what happen will never be known. If the three condemned men were involved their stories will never be told. They were all hung from a tree on a bluff near the present day Commerce Street bridge.

SMITH ELKINS 1850 – 1851 Smith Elkins was elected for a two-year term in 1850. According to John Henry Brown’s book, History of Dallas County Texas, “Elkins quit due to domestic concerns and then left the country.” James W. Latimer was elected June 30, 1851 to complete the term.

JAMES W. LATIMER 1851 – 1854
James Wellington Latimer was born in Tennessee on December 27, 1825. His parents were James L. and Jane Hamilton Latimer. The family settled near Clarksville, Texas in 1833. Two of his brothers were attorneys and James trained under both Albert H. and Henry R. Latimer. He passed the bar exam at age 19.

He married Lucy M. Jordan in Bowie County, Texas on February 22, 1847 and they had three children.

After serving in the Mexican War he established a law practice at Paris, Texas in 1848. The next year he and a partner bought the Texas Times in Paris. In the fall of that year, they moved the newspaper to Dallas.

Latimer, much like his predecessor, William Hord, had served as justice of the peace prior to serving as county judge. He was a staunch Democrat and in 1855 lost in his bid as the state printer. He died on April 6, 1859 and is buried in the Masonic Cemetery in Dallas.

JAMES M. PATTERSON 1854 – 1865
Judge James Martin Patterson, a pioneer merchant, was born on his father’s farm near Lexington, Kentucky on July 31, 1812. His father, Francis Patterson, emigrated when a mere boy, with some twenty other families from Pennsylvania to Kentucky about the year 1780, floating down the Alleghany and Ohio rivers in a boat of their own construction, carrying with them their horses, cattle and farming implements, and landing at the mouth of Bear Grass Creek, near present day Louisville.

Only five or six families were living on the Trinity River at Dallas when Judge Patterson came here in 1846. He and J. W. Smith embarked in the mercantile business, buying their goods at Shreveport and transporting them on wagons drawn by oxen to Dallas, a distance of 200 miles. James was married October 5, 1848, on Farmers’ Branch to Miss Sarah Elizabeth Self. They were the parents of eleven children.

Judge Patterson was elected county judge in 1854 and held that office until the close of the war in 1865. Having invested most of his means in personal property, all of which was swept from him by the results of the war, it became necessary for him to begin life anew. Returning to his first occupation, he purchased a steam saw and flouring mill on White Rock Creek and engaged in the milling business. Four years later he returned to Dallas and engaged in the mercantile business with his friend, Captain James Thomas.

He was a long time member of the Masonic fraternity and the Episcopal Church. In politics he was an old-line Whig, but after the dissolution of the party he voted with the Democrats. He spent his declining years on Patterson Street, which was described as one of the most beautiful streets in Dallas in 1892.

WILLIAM HORD 1865 – 1866
Judge William Hord was the second Dallas County judge. His first term was from 1848 thru 1850. His brief bio can be found in above story. It is important to know that James M. Patterson had served from 1854 to 1865, but at the close of the Civil War, all of the Democrats were removed from office by the military government. It appears that Judge Hord was then appointed to serve until Z. Ellis Coombes was appointed under the constitution of 1866.

Z. ELLIS COOMBES June 1866 – November 1867
Zachariah Ellis Coombes was the son of William and Ivy Green Coombes, and was born in Nelson County, Kentucky. The family moved to the Dallas area in 1843 as members of the Peters Colony. It is of interest to note that his son, Z. Ellis Coombes, Jr. was born in Johnson County on November 23, 1863, but was brought to Dallas County when an infant. His son received his primary education in Dallas, but then attend the Ad Ran College of Thorp’s Springs at Lancaster, Texas.

Judge Coombes married Rebecca Finch Bedford at Hallowed Chapel in Dallas County on December 28, 1865. She died in 1884 on their anniversary. Z. Ellis Coombes died in Dallas on November 20, 1895. They had seven children.

He was employed in June of 1858 by the Brazos Agency to conduct a school on the Brazos Indian Reservation in Young County. Coombes entered the Confederate Army in the spring of 1862 and served in Hawpe’s thirty-first regiment of the Texas Cavalry. He was promoted to lieutenant and in 1863 he served as captain of Company G.

Coombes was only33 years old when elected county judge in the June 1866 election. He would only serve one year. During presidential Reconstruction (Republic of Texas), he and the other Dallas County elected officials (all Democrats) were removed from office in November 1867 as “Impediments to Reconstruction” after repeated assertions by the local Freedman’s Bureau agent that they refused to protect Black lives and property.

A. BLEDSOE 1867 – 1870
Albert A. Bledsoe “Big A” came to Dallas County from Kentucky in 1847. He then bought land near Ten Mile Creek from Roderick Rawlins and laid out lots to form what would become known as Lancaster, which was named after his hometown in Kentucky. Roderick later became his son-in-law.

Big A, or Iron Clad, as he was sometimes called, was closely aligned with the Radical Republican faction. As a result, he was appointed county judge when Major General J. J. Reynolds (under Military Government) issued Order 195 on November 9, 1867. During his term as county judge, he was elected to represent Dallas County at the Constitutional Convention of 1868-69.

At the end of his term as county judge, he was appointed Comptroller of Public Accounts where he gained notoriety when he refused to allow $500,000 in state bonds to be transferred to the International Railroad Company. The end of Reconstruction brought an end to Bledsoe’s political career and he returned to Dallas. He died at his home on October 8, 1882.

JOHN M RAWLINS 1870
The only John M. Rawlins with a trace of recorded Dallas County history would be John Martin Rawlins, the son of William Martin Rawlins and Euphemia Martin. Euphemia was the daughter of John Martin and Isabella Scott.

John Martin Rawlins was born July 24, 1825 in Greene, Illinois. The Rawlins family was part of the earliest Dallas County pioneer settlers. Some family members arrived as early as 1844 and settled in the area now known as the city of Lancaster.

John Martin Rawlins was a blacksmith and a minister of the Gospel. He donated the land for the Cold Springs Church of Christ, which, is reported to be the oldest Church of Christ congregation still meeting in the state of Texas. The Cold Springs Community is located west of Lancaster on Belt Line Road He also wrote poetry.

John and Polly Minerva Parks were married September 21, 1848 at Dallas County, Texas in the home of her parents, Meredith and Melinda Sharpe Parks. Polly was born April 9, 1832 in Monroe, Indiana, and died November6, 1906 in Lancaster, Texas.

Records indicate that Polly was buried in the Rawlins Cemetery near Lancaster and John Martin Rawlins died April 19, 1886 and was buried at Thorp Springs near Hood, Texas. They had fourteen children.

JOHN D. KERFOOT 1870 – 1875 (PRESIDING JUSTICE)
John David Kerfoot was born in Clark County, Virginia on July 1, 1835. He was the son of Franklin James and Harriet E. Webb Kerfoot. He married Harriet E. Carr on April 30, 1865. They had eight Children.

He moved to Texas and set up a law practice in 1855. After the onset of the Civil War, he returned to Virginia and enlisted in the 6th Virginia Calvary at Camp Onward on August 24, 1861.

He returned to Dallas after the close of the war and was elected as Presiding Justice for Dallas County in 1869. He served two terms and was then elected Mayor of Dallas in 1876.

He later established the insurance firm of Kerfoot and Hereford. Then in 1882 he helped organize the Association of Fire Underwriters of Texas.

John D. Kerfoot spent his last years in Tom Green County, where he died on March 31, 1903. He was buried in the Oak Cliff Cemetery at Dallas.

Judge Nathaniel M. Burford 1875 – 1876 (PRESIDING JUSTICE)

Judge Nathaniel M. Burford was born in the State of Tennessee on June 24, 1824 and is the son of John H. and Nancy McAllister Burford, natives of North Carolina and Virginia respectively. The parents were pioneers of Tennessee, and were married in that State. The father was a farmer by occupation. He served as Captain in the war of 1812.

Nathaniel M. grew to maturity in his native State. After a careful preparation by private tutors he entered Irving College, and took the full course of that institution. He then read law, and was admitted to the bar in 1845.

In January, 1847, he removed to Texas, and settled in Jefferson, where he resided until October 8, 1848, at which tune he settled in Dallas, where he has been a prominent factor in the development and progress of the State. So rapidly did he grow in popularity and public esteem that in 1850he was elected District Attorney. He served the term with great satisfaction to his constituency, and was re-elected to the office in 1852. In 1856 lie was elected Judge of the Fourteenth Judicial District, which comprised a wide territory, He traversed the section under his jurisdiction in primitive style, and was always received with bounteous hospitality by the settlers. During his administration the State was passing through a transition period, and many cases of grave and serious importance arose.

In 1862 Judge Burford was made Colonel of the Nineteenth Texas Cavalry in the Confederate service, and held the position until 1864, when he was obliged to resign on at-count of ill health. He resumed his legal practice, and was soon elected a member of the Eleventh Assembly of Texas, and was Chosen Speaker of the House. In 1868 he endorsed the organization of a Conservative party of Dallas County that condemned "Negro supremacy" and supported President Andrew Johnson's pro-South policy. He was elected presiding justice of Dallas County in April 1875 and judge of the Eleventh District in February 1876, only to resign in April 1877 because of bad health. He was appointed United States commissioner in 1879 and served until 1881.

Judge Burford was united in marriage, in 1854, to Miss Mary Knight, a native of Tennessee. Eight children were born to them. Their father has been a student all his life, and is one of the most cultured gentlemen in Dallas County. He is a member of the Episcopal Church, and for many years has served as Vestryman. Both in public and private life he has lived above reproach, and Dallas County is proud to claim Nathaniel M. Burford as one of her representative citizens.

ROBERT H. WEST 1876 – 1878

Robert H. West was the second son of Robert J. and Mary Ann Ryland West. His parents were married in 1812 and were both native of Washington County, Tennessee. They moved to Texas in 1845 and settled on Farmer’s Branch where they raised their six children. Mr. West moved to Texas because of his health. He had lung trouble, and was in failing health, but recovered rapidly after reaching Texas.

Several members of the West family were prominent in the affairs of Dallas County in an early day. The elder Mr. West (Robert J.) was one of the first county commissioners. John West, Jr. was the county surveyor and Robert H. West served as treasurer for the city of Dallas in 1875 and then as county judge from 1876 thru 1878.

It should also be noted that Robert H. West filled other offices of honor and trust in the county. He departed this life on April 19, 1905.

By: Dallas County Judge Jim Foster
Jan. 1, 2007 thru Dec. 31, 2010

Pioneer Stories