SOURCES OF INFORMATION: Whiting and Fitzgerald Family Bibles; Obituaries for G.D.F. and Mollie (Fitzgerald) Whiting; Grayson County, TX, 1850, 1860, 1870, 1890 Census Records; Tombstone readings from Bells and VA Point, TX; Grayson Co., TX, Marriage Records; Grayson Co., TX, land deeds; History of Grayson County, TX, Vol. I by the Frontier Village, Inc (1979) PP 694-697; Vol. II (1981) PP 493-494; VA Point Methodist Church Historical article, 12 Aug 1979, Sherman Democrat, Section 1, p 2 (tells of G.D.F. Whiting's christening); Grayson County Deed records, Vol. 110, p 243 Compiled by: Lora B. Tindall 2806 Barrywood Wichita Falls, TX Phone: 940 692 6322 Email loratin@wf.quik.com ###4### (1846-1933) GEORGE DUGAN FREDERICK WHITING, an only child, was born near Old Warren, Grayson County, Texas, 13 March 1846, to Frederic Parker and Emily (Dugan) Whiting. His mother came to Texas in 1836 with her parents, Daniel and Catharine (Vaden) Dugan. His father was the son of John and Nancy (Lowell) Whiting of Union, Maine. Both the Whiting and Lowell families had lived in New England since the 1630s. Frederick Whiting was the first of his family to make his way to Texas where, by chance, met the Dugans. The Dugan sons, George and Henry, were sent to Houston, TX, to pick up a boat load of horses in 1844. There Frederick met the Dugan boys and agreed to help them drive the horses north across Texas. It did not take much time for him to decide to remain in north Texas after he met twenty-three year old Emily Dugan, sister to the Dugan boys. He and Emily were married 19 April 1845 and their son was born the following March. Both young parents died of lung fever the December following George's birth. His maternal grandparents, Daniel and Catharine (Vaden) Dugan, took him into their home. The Whitings in Maine were notified of George's birth and the death of the young parents. They sent a hand painted miniature portrait of Frederick along with the request that the child be named for his deceased father. By then George was about a year old, so the Dugans satisfied their request by adding Frederick as a third name. In later life, he was known as G.D.F. Whiting. George Whiting was the first child baptized at the Virginia Point Methodist Church, one of the oldest churches in Texas. This took place in the Dugan home when church was held at Dugan Chapel by the circuit rider minister. After a school was built at Warren, church was sometimes held there. Later on as other families (such as the Pritchett, Youree, Henry, Fitzgerald, Fleming, Chaffin, Montague, Bell, Kitching, Hunter, Johnson, Spotts, etc.) settled in the area, a building was erected. The church was called Virginia Point Methodist Church because so many of the members had come from Virginia. When George came into the Dugan home, there were three Dugan children living at home; George, 33; Catherine, 20; and Henry, 17. George and Catherine soon married and established new homes. Cynthia, the eldest daughter, had married and did not accompany them to Texas. Catherine Dugan, who married Barton Taylor, moved to Santa Cruz, California. From there Catherine (Dugan) Taylor later sent a small picture to George Whiting. On the back inscribed in her handwriting, it reads: "This is for George Whiting. Please reciprocate, little Georgy!!! Aunt Kate." George Cox Dugan married Harriet Jane Wall in 1849 and established a home in Sherman. Since he remained in the area, he had great influence on his young nephew and was his court appointed legal gaurdian. But it was Henry who was closest to George Whiting throughout their lives. They lived in the same home, or within a few miles of each other, their entire lives. Daniel Dugan, Emily's father, died when George was nineteen; Catherine (Vaden) Dugan, Emily's mother, died the year Henry married, 1866. But George remained with Henry and his wife, Ann Eliza, until 1870. On 11 March 1857, Daniel and Catharine (Vaden) Dugan deeded land to George Whiting, recorded Vol. H, p 403, Grayson County, Texas, because of the love and affection we have for George D.F. Whiting, our grandson, and only heir to his mother, Emily Whiting, our daughter, deceased. In 1870 George built a log cabin on this property to bring his bride. This cabin was located a few feet from the big well in the lane on the old Whiting homeplace. Later a large two-story house would replace the cabin. The ruins of the cabin were standing as late as 1930/40. Henry Dugan was left the Dugan family homestead, which was about a mile from George's home. In 1894, when Henry died, George Whiting was named his sole heir. Thus George became an extensive landowner in Grayson County. Catherine Montague, another grandchild of the Dugans, child of Daniel and Mary (Dugan) Montague, came to live with her Dugan grandparents at the same time as George. Both young mothers died of lung fever within the same week in December 1846. But Catherine Montague, who was born in 1845, died in 1851. The Dugans had eleven children. One daughter, Cynthia, had married Arnold Hutton in 1830 in Illinois and did not come to Texas with the Dugan family. Later Cynthia and Arnold Hutton and son, Daniel Hutton, appear on a California census. Two daughters had died before they left for Texas; one three-year- old son, James, was buried along the trail in 1836; one son, Daniel Vaden Dugan, was killed and scalped by Indians not far from the Dugan homestead in 1841; one son, William Burks Dugan, nineteen, died of natural causes in 1843; and the two daughters Emily Whiting, twenty- four, and Mary Montague, twenty-seven, died in 1846 of lung fever. On the 1850 Grayson County, TX, Census, George Whiting, a four year old white male, and Catherine Montague, a three-year-old white female, are listed as residing in the Daniel Dugan household. One of Catherine (Dugan) Taylor's daughters recalled what her mother told her of the olden days in the Dugan home in the book "Indian Depredations in Texas" by Wilbarger in this way: "Fried chicken! Magical words, that carry me back through memory's halls to that same log kitchen, and I see that table bountifully spread and surrounded by loved ones now dead scattered--never to be united. I see a rosy cheeked little girl in "linsey woolsey dress, sitting at dear grandma's right hand, and Cousin George (Whiting) on the left, while between the two a jealous rivalry exists as to who will secure the greater number of drumsticks and wishbones, requiring great tact and diplomacy on the part of the white haired, white capped saint, to prevent a bloodless war, ready to be declared should she give one an extra drumstick more than the other." On the 1870 Grayson County, Texas, census, George Whiting is listed as D.F. Whiting, a twenty-four year old male, merchant, living in the home of W. P. Dugan, a forty-one year old merchant with a wife Annie E. aged twenty-four. Also in the same home was a male E.B. Spotts, aged twenty-seven years. This should have read H. P. Dugan and his wife Ann Eliza. The other person would be Ann's brother, Edward Spotts. They were children of Rev. Samuel and Julie [Pritchett] Spotts. On 19 December 1870, George Dugan Frederick Whiting married Mollie Inge Fitzgerald at the home of her father, George S. Fitzgerald, north of Bells. The Fitzgeralds had arrived in Texas by wagon train in 1857 from Pittsylvania Co., VA. Mollie, four years old at that time, recalled that her father said it took three months to complete the trip. George Whiting and Henry Dugan were merchants for a time. They had a general store near Old Warren (Ambrose), but for most of their lives they were farmers and ranchers. Horses were in great demand, as well as cattle, pigs, and other livestock. Cotton was the big cash crop, and it was necessary to plant corn, bale hay, and grow other feed crops for the livestock. At one time, George Whiting was a partner with Marvin Hunter in a livery stable and feedstore in Denison, Texas. Marvin's mother, Ellen (Pritchett) Hunter, was Mollie Whiting's aunt. In 1895, G. D. F. Whiting deeded land for the Dugan Chapel School, which remained in existence until the mid 1930s, when schools were consolidated and the children bused to Bells. George and Mollie (Fitzgerald) Whiting became the parents of eight children, six sons and two daughters. Their eldest son, George Frederick, married Pearl Riggs when he was twenty-two, but died about four months later. He had no children. George and Mollie sent Pearl to Kidd Key College, in Sherman, TX, a boarding school for young ladies, along with their daughters Lora and Byrd. Pearl later married Oscar Bivins and had two sons. But when Pearl died, she had George's love letters and family pictures tucked among her treasures. Henry Patrick, the second son, remained a bachelor, and died in 1930. He had a farm near Virginia Point Methodist Church. John Albert, the third son, married Harriet Boothman and they had four children. This family lived in Denison, Texas. Lora Lydia, called Sister, the older daughter and fourth child, married Dr. Harry A. McDaniel and lived in Bonham, TX. She had no children of her own, but she kept her two younger brothers, Willie and Claude, after they finished the schooling available at Hebron. Then when nieces and nephews needed care, Sister was there for them. She kept her brother Dugan's sons Edward Claude (Son) and Dugan Dale (Toots) for a time after their mother died. Her niece, Mary Byrd Taliaferro, lived with her several years. Marinan Whiting, Claude's oldest child, stayed there during her first year of school. And later after Claude Whiting died in 1933, all of his children, Marinan, Joe Henry, Lora Byrd, and Jeanne, lived in Bonham with her and her mother. Bird Whiting, the second daughter, married Dorsey B. Taliaferro and had four children. This family lived in Madill, OK, for a time, but later moved to Sherman, TX. Bird's children were Norborne, LoRene, George, and Mary Byrd. Another son, Daniel Dugan Whiting, lived in Madill also. Dugan married first, Lillian Dale Sacra, mother of his four children, Edward Claude, Dugan Dale, Lillian Byrd, and Noweeta. After Lillian's death, Dugan Whiting married Zelma Jagers. In 1905, while Willie and Claude were attending school in Bonham, Willie died of appendicitis. Because Claude missed Willie so much, he left his sister's home and enrolled at old Grayson County College, Whitewright, TX, a boarding school. Claude later served in France during World War I and came home to marry Audrey Nora Fox, daughter of Joshua Hale and Nancy (Fitzgerald) Fox. Audrey had been Willie's sweetheart when they attended grammar school at Hebron, a rural school near the Whiting home. The Fox family had moved to Caddo, OK. When Willie died, Claude wrote Audrey to tell her about Willie's death. This letter got them back in touch, and they were married some years later in 1920. George and Mollie Whiting were the parents of eight, grandparents of sixteen, and great grandparents of twenty-seven. When Claude married, they deeded him the homeplace and moved to Madill, OK, where their son Dugan lived. This was to be their retirement home, but George found it too far away from the farm he loved. In a few years, he and Mollie moved to Denison, TX. This put them nearer the farm north of Bells. Henry lived near Bells; John lived in Denison; Lora in Bonham; Bird in Sherman; and this seemed to be a good compromise. George drove a big car, but never really conquered the modern contraption. Every time he shifted gears, the car jerked and lurched forward. Nevertheless, he made the trip from Denison to the farm several times a week to confer with Claude and talk share crops and such. He and Mollie were often there for weeks at a time, because that was where they were happiest. Mollie enjoyed her youngest set of grandchildren while George, who firmly believed that children should be seen and not heard, only tolerated them. Claude and Audrey had many family dinners for his parents, inviting the entire Whiting clan. George always enjoyed the gatherings of his children and grandchildren. At Christmas time egg nog was served in the kitchen because George objected to the consumption of alcohol in any form. On cold winter nights, sitting before the fireplace, George would tell his grandchildren of the struggle with the Indians during the early days in Texas. His mother's family had lived during several Indian raids and many scares. His uncle, Daniel Vaden Dugan, was killed and scalped by Indians while felling trees for a cabin that he was building for his bride-to-be. William Kitching, brother of the bride-to-be, was killed along side Daniel. In retaliation, George's mother and his Aunt Kate Dugan killed an Indian soon afterwards. The Indian was sneaking up to the Dugan home, as the girls watched his approach. They fired through the portholes of the cabin and watched him fall. Dragging his body to the wood chopping block, they used an ax to chop off his head. The head was nailed to the gatepost in hopes of warning off other renegades. After it had cured for several years, it was moved into the house to adorn the top of the spinning wheel. That skull was upstairs in a trunk as George spoke and the place where Daniel was scalped was just over the way a few miles. Those stories were very scary to us children. George's uncle, Henry Dugan, escaped being killed by Indians when he was a boy of about twelve. A boy named Greene was staying with the Dugans and sharing a bed with Henry. Greene went to bed first and got on the outside where Henry usually slept. When Henry went to bed later, he had to crawl over Greene and sleep next to the wall. During the night, while all were sleeping, Indians dug the mortar from between the logs near the door. They forced the door part way open before being heard by the men sleeping in other beds in the room. The Indians fired two shots toward the beds. Henry awoke and began trying to awaken Greene, saying, "Wake up, the Indians are upon us!" After the older men forced the Indians out and secured the door, it was discovered that Greene was dead. Henry knew, then, that his place in bed saved his life that night. George made a trip to Dallas just after Christmas in 1932. He and Claude had gone to visit Lora, who was hospitalized there. They were caught in an ice storm on the return trip home. As defrosters and heaters were not available, Claude could only see the road through the peephole provided by his father's holding a candle to the windshield. They made it home, but were almost frozen. Soon afterwards, George came down with pneumonia and died the afternoon of January 6, 1933, at his old homeplace. Claude had been found dying in the loft of the barn that morning, where he had gone to throw down hay to feed the livestock. A double funeral was held and both were buried at the North Cemetery at Bells. Compiled by: Lora B. Tindall 2806 Barrywood Wichita Falls, TX Phone: 940 692 6322 Email loratin@wf.quik.com