The Munsons of Texas — an American Saga

Chapter Twenty-five

THE LIFE AND FAMILY OF JOSEPH WADDY MUNSON (I)
b. 1861 — d. 1917

SUMMARY
Joseph Waddy Munson was the fifth child and third son of Mordello and Sarah Munson. He was born on May 22, 1861, most likely at the Ridgely Plantation home. He graduated from the University of Texas Law School and was a lawyer and judge all his professional life. In 1888 he married Mary Corinne West of Columbus, Texas. They lived first in Columbus and then in Angleton, where they raised three children: Thurmond Armour, Mary Mordella, and Erma. From these have sprung the large Joseph Waddy branch of the Munsons of Texas.



Waddy Munson I

When Joseph Waddy Munson was born, his father was a member of the Texas Legislature, then heavily embroiled in the debates leading to secession and the Civil War. When Waddy, as he was always called, was one year old, his father left for the war and a four-year absence. Waddy was named for his mother’s uncle, Joseph Kimbrough Waddy, of Paris, Tennessee. “Uncle Jo” made several visits to the then far-away Brazoria County, Texas, home of his niece. He was a much loved uncle.

Waddy grew up on the plantation with his many brothers, sisters, and “adopted” cousins — fifteen in all. In later years he told his children many happy stories about chases on their horses in the evenings trying to catch Bailey’s Light (the ghost of Brit Bailey); about rowing up the San Bernard River on quiet evenings searching for the “mysterious music of the San Bernard;” and about the many “great” stories that were told at night when the children gathered in the “boys room” before bedtime.

His early education was conducted by his mother and by hired teachers who lived at the house and nearby. School was held in “the office,” originally Mordello’s law office at home. In 1877, at the age of 16, Waddy enrolled in the new Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas at College Station, then in its second year of operation. Conditions there are described in a letter home from his roommate, William R. Nash, of Columbia [1]:


College Station Oct 3/77

My Dear Mother

     You must not be surprised to see me at home any time. I am getting tired of this sort of business.
      They have got Waddy and myself in a room with nineteen boys, and some of them are the worst sort of ones. The President says that he will move us as soon as he possibly can he is having a new house built now. They have about two hundred and sixty students.
      I tell you what we have the worst sort of living we have for breakfast rools with a crust so hard that you can hardly bite them into, and beef sake half cooked, rice with flies all mixed in with it, and the blackest sort of molasses. For dinner we have beef stew, cornbread cut in pieces about an inch square, Irish potatoes, and rice. For supper rools like those at breakfast, with the worst sort of strong butter and sometimes stewed prunes with about half dirt.
      We have to rise at six oclock make up our bed, and be at rool call in ten minutes. Then in about a half hour the drum taps for prayers, then in a little while the drum beats for breakfast.
      And at half past eight the drum taps for study hours, and half past twelve for recess, and again at two for study hours.
      I wish you would send me an order to come home the next letter you write so that if things dont change I can come home and please send me a little money in case I come so that I can pay my way. I have not spent any thing except for necessary purposes.
      I must close Love to all.
                                                                                                                        Your Affectionate Son
                                                                                                                                  W. R. Nash

Waddy returned home due to illness in January of 1878, and again with pneumonia in April of 1879. He apparently did not return to A. & M. College because for several years he remained at home helping with the operation of the plantation. His father had a thriving law practice with offices in Houston, Galveston, and Brazoria, as well as at his home, and was often away from home. Brother George was recently married, Henry was at A. & M. College for military training, and Bascom and Stephen were in school at Georgetown. It seems that the boys took turns staying home to help their parents with the plantation, and Waddy and Armour were there during these years. It was here that Waddy decided that he wanted to become a lawyer like his father, and he studied law under his father’s tutelage when possible.

In 1886 Waddy joined his two younger brothers, Bascom and Stephen, at the University of Texas Law School in Austin. Soon after Waddy left home their mother died and their older sister, Emma, said that one of the most difficult things she ever had to do was to write the boys of their mother’s death. The brothers lived together and wrote of the gala opening of the new Texas State Capitol Building on May 16, 1888. The three Munson boys all received their law degrees at the end of the spring semester of 1888. Bascom went to Houston to practice law, and Stephen returned home, but Waddy had other business on his mind.

On his way home from Austin, Waddy stopped at Columbus and, on June 25, 1888, married Mary Corinne West of that city. Waddy was 27 years old — Mary West was but 18. Mary West had been known as “Woodie” from childhood, and she was always known as “Aunt Woodie” and “Cousin Woodie” by the Munsons. Old letters tell that Waddy had stopped in Columbus on his trips to and from Austin to visit “Woodie,” whom he had first met about eight or ten years before at Ridgely Plantation [see Inset 16). After the wedding, Waddy took his bride to his parents’ home at Bailey’s Prairie, and then to the beach house at Bryan Beach where they spent much of the summer. They then returned to Columbus to be with her parents, and Waddy entered the practice of law there in 1888.

Mary Corinne West’s father was John Stephenson West from New York City, and her mother was Mary Elizabeth Naille from Tennessee and Texas.


The Story of the West Family

John Stephenson West was born in New York City in about 1828. His father, John, and his mother, Mary, were both born in New York, and he had a sister Mary and a brother Nathaniel Hale West.

John Stephenson West’s father was a wealthy New Yorker and a friend of Cornelius Vanderbilt, and it is reported that be was descended from a member of the Green Mountain Boys of Vermont. In the earliest days of the American Revolution, the Green Mountain Boys, led by Ethan Allen, were famous as raiders against the British Army. Their most famous raid was at Ft. Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain on May 10, 1775. Because they operated as clandestine raiders (today known as revolutionaries), and were wanted by the British government forces, records of their membership were few. Among the listings on a roster of known Green Mountain Boys in the archives library in Montpelier, Vermont, there is the name of Wilkes West of Chester, New Hampshire. Further research on a possible relationship has not been done.

John Stephenson West appears to have been unsettled, adventuresome, and rebellious. In the late 1850s he joined General William Walker’s expeditionary forces which were sent to Nicaragua in the “banana war” to put down the local rebellion and to preserve the banana trade for Vanderbilt’s companies. His leg was broken and improperly set on this expedition, and he had trouble with it for the rest of his life.

John Stephenson West returned by way of New Orleans, where he contracted yellow fever and was detained during his recovery. On May 27, 1861, at the very beginning of the Civil War (the capture of Fort Sumpter was April 13, 1861), John West enrolled at New Orleans as captain in the Third Louisiana Infantry, and he spent the next four years in the Quartermaster Corps of the Army of the Confederate States. For this action his father disowned him. At the end of the war in 1865, he was assigned to the Confederate hospital in Columbus, Texas. There he met and, on February 27, 1866, married Mary Elizabeth Naille Robson, an attractive young widow with two sons. He was about 38 years old, and she was about 24.


The Story of the Naille Family

Mary Naille’s father, William Naille, had lived in Tennessee, where he married Jane Elizabeth Houston. There Jane and William Naille had a family, including daughter Mary Elizabeth Naille. In later generations the Wests referred to the Texas hero, General Sam Houston, as “our own real cousin”, but research to date has not located a relationship between Jane Elizabeth Houston and the General.

At some date in the middle 1800s, the Nailles moved to join Jane’s brother, Abner Houston (alias Ware), in Jackson County, Texas. This was near Edna, not far from Gonzales, and was at the time heavy Comanche country. Family tradition tells of frequent Comanche raids on the homestead, and a family heirloom is an old milk crock which is said to be the only item saved by William Naille from one such raid. The Nailles soon moved to Columbus to distance themselves from the Comanches.

In Columbus, Mary Naille, at a very young age, married John Robson. They had two sons, William and John, but Robson soon died. Then entered the dashing John Stephenson West — they were married and settled on a farm near Columbus, in which vicinity they spent the remainder of their lives.


The Family of John Stephenson West and Mary Naille

The youngest Robson son, John, died in October of 1867. John and Mary West had two children: Thurmond Bowers West, born February 21, 1868, and Mary Corinne “Woodie” West, born March 8, 1870.

The name Thurmond was taken, as was Bowers, from the family surname of close friends in Columbus. Several families of Thurmonds have been located in early Texas history. Alfred S. Thurmond (sometimes Thurmand) was a participant in the early struggles for Texas independence including the “Black Bean” episode of the Somervell Expedition (see Chapter 16). He lived for some years thereafter in Victoria, Texas, where he married Julia McGrew. His career so closely paralleled that of Mordello S. Munson — a member of the Somervell Expedition at an early age, a participant in the Civil War, a member of the Eleventh and Thirteenth Texas Legislatures, and a prospective resident of the American Colony at Tuxpan, Mexico — that they surely must have been close acquaintances. Columbus Lafayette Thurmond was also an early resident of Victoria County. There he married Maggie McGrew and they had four children [2].

Yet another Thurmond family was that of J. J. Thurmond, who first married Helen Kennedy, a sister to Walter Kennedy, and upon her death married another sister, Mary Kennedy. A son of one of these several Thurmonds appears to be a good candidate for the West family namesake, but the exact origin of the name in the West family is not known. The name Thurmond has persisted in the West and Munson families to the present time.

John West was deputy sheriff of Colorado County in 1874. The 1880 census of Colorado County lists the West family as follows:


John S. West aged 52  
Mary E. West 38  
Willie Robson 23  
Thurmon West (sic) 12  
Mary C. West 10  
Jane E. Naill (sic) 69


Thurmond B. West married Erma Zumwalt and they had four children: Stephen, Oscar, Dorothy, and Thurmond Balzar West.


Joseph Waddy Munson and Mary Corinne West


Woodie West Munson

Mary Corinne “Woodie” West was born on March 8, 1870, and was raised in or near Columbus. After her marriage to Joseph Waddy Munson in 1888, they lived with her parents in Columbus for the next twelve years. Waddy practiced law, first at Munson and Bittle and then at Munson and Wooten, and later he had his own practice. Nieces Lydia and Sarah Munson lived with them while attending school in Columbus.

Two children were born to Waddy and “Woodie” in Columbus: Thurmond Armour Munson on June 15, 1889, and Mary Mordella Munson on February 6, 1893.

Woodie’s mother, Mary Elizabeth Naille West, died on October 22, 1893, at the age of 51, and her father, John Stephenson West, in February of 1900, at about 72. He had been seriously ill for some weeks with pneumonia and at one time showed some improvement, but his son-in-law, Joseph Waddy Munson, wrote in a letter to his father, Mordello, that he did not think Major West could recover. He died at his daughter’s home in Columbus. An obituary announcement in the neighboring Weimar Mercury on February 24, 1900, reads:


     Our community was very sorry to hear of the death of Major J. S. West, which occurred last Tuesday morning at the residence of Mr. J. W. Munson, of pneumonia. The funeral took place at the city [of Columbus] cemetery, Bishop Kinsolving officiating.

In December of 1900 the family moved to Angleton, where Waddy joined his two brothers, Bascom and Stephen, in the new law firm of Munson, Munson & Munson. Waddy, “Woodie,” and their two children lived in the parlor of brother George and Hannah’s big, two-story home for almost two years while their attractive home on “Munson Row,” now 910 S. Walker Street, was being built. In their new home, on October 28, 1903, their third child, Erma Munson, was born.

Joseph Waddy Munson was county judge of Brazoria County from 1912 to 1916, the maximum term then allowed. In this capacity, he and Mrs. Munson were in the party that made the trip on Skylark from Freeport to Galveston for the opening ceremonies of the Intracoastal Canal on May 29, 1913. After Angleton suffered severe flooding following the hurricane of 1913, Judge Munson was a leader in the project to build the levees that have protected the city from the Brazos River ever since. A newspaper article at the time of his death included the following statement: “. . .due to J. W. Munson’s efforts, the Brazos Valley Flood Control Association came into existence and he devoted much time to making its work a success.” After his term as judge, he was a member of the law firm of Munson, Williams & Munson with brother M. S. Munson and W. T. Williams, and later Munson & Munson with his brother. During these years he was also an active cattleman and cotton farmer on his Bailey’s Prairie land.

Joseph Waddy Munson died in the back yard of his Angleton home of a massive heart attack on Sunday afternoon, March 18, 1917, at the age of 55. His wife, “Woodie”, continued to live in their home with their three children. By 1920, daughter Mary had married, Erma had gone away to college, and son Thurmond had gone to teach at Texas A. &. M. College. “Woodie” sold their Angleton home to her first cousin, Lydia Munson, who had recently married Ralph Johnson, and moved to live with Thurmond in Bryan, Texas. Erma joined them the next year and worked at the college, where she met her husband, Lucian Rich. When son Thurmond married “Minnie” Hardwick in 1929, “Woodie” moved to live with Erma and her family in Stephenville. There she died on July 12, 1939, also of a heart attack, at the age of 69. Both Waddy and “Woodie” are buried in the Munson plot in the Angleton Cemetery.


The Descendants of Joseph Waddy Munson and Mary C. West


Thurmond Munson, Sr.

The first child of Waddy and “Woodie” Munson was Thurmond Armour Munson, born June 15, 1889, in Columbus, Texas. After graduation from Angleton High School, he attended Texas A. & M. College where he received the degree in civil engineering in 1910. In 1925 he received a masters degree from Iowa State University. Upon graduating from Texas A. & M., he held several jobs of short duration. After the 1913 flood, he established an engineering consulting practice in Angleton on flood control, drainage projects, highway surveys, land surveys, and subdivisions. He lived with his parents and worked at this until he was appointed to a professorship in civil engineering at Texas A. & M. College in 1920. During his career at Texas A. & M., he became Head of the Hydraulic Engineering Department.

On December 21, 1929, at the age of 40, he married Mary Emma “Minnie” Hardwick. Mary Hardwick had been born in Tusgegee, Alabama, on July 12, 1897, and was working at the college. They had two children: Thurmond Armour Jr. and Mary Jane.

Having graduated from Texas A. & M. College as a member of the Corps of Cadets, Thurmond Sr. was a member of the U. S. Army Reserve. During the depression years of 1935-1936, he was called into active service as a captain and helped with the Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) in Lufkin, Texas, and briefly in San Antonio and Fort Worth.

During World War II, Thurmond Sr. was an officer in the United States Army, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel as Inspector General for Fort Sam Houston near San Antonio. In 1946 he accepted a position as Chief of the Civil Engineering Department at the Dow Chemical Company plant at Freeport, Texas. His major function was to assist in land and right-of-way acquisition in Brazoria County—the county that he knew so well. He built a lovely country home under the giant live oak trees on the family land at Bailey’s Prairie and lived there happily for the rest of his life. He died of a heart attack on October 6, 1958, at the age of 69. His wife, “Minnie,” then lived for many years in Angleton and later in College Station, where she died on February 5, 1987, at the age of 89. Both are buried in the Angleton Cemetery.

Their son, Thurmond Armour Munson Jr., obtained a degree in chemical engineering from Texas A. & M. College and has been employed by Dow Chemical Company in Freeport all of his adult life. He married Doris Marie Davidson of Houston and they have four children and three grandchildren. Their three Munson sons are among the dwindling number of male Munsons who can carry on the Munson name.

Mary Jane Munson married Teddy James Hirsch (named for Teddy Roosevelt and Jesse James). Teddy Hirsch is a professor of civil engineering at Texas A. & M. University, and Mary Jane is “the best math teacher” in the local high school, so her students say. They live in College Station, Texas, where they raised four children. They have nine grandchildren at the present time.



Mary Munson Williamson

The second child of Waddy and “Woodie” was Mary Mordella Munson, born on February 6, 1893, in Columbus. She did not attend college because of persistent illness that resulted in eye trouble. In 1911, at the age of 18, she fell in love with a traveling salesman from the midwest and asked her parents for permission to marry. They refused, and her sister Erma remembers Mary screaming and crying in distress in her room all of the next day. In 1919 she met Byron Williamson at a Sunday service at the Holy Comforter Episcopal Church in Angleton. Byron, ranch manager of nearby Rancho Isabella, had recently lost his wife, Frances, and their first child at childbirth. Byron and Mary were married on February 16, 1920. He was 30 years old and she was 27. They had three sons: Byron Jr., Thurmond Arthur, and Richard Munson Williamson, all born in the Rancho Isabella ranch house. Arthur was chosen because it was a favorite name of his father, and Richard for Mary’s sister, Erma Rich.

Mary and Byron’s later lives are described in a moving memorial written by Mary’s cousin-in-law, Frank K. Stevens, at the time of Mary’s death from a heart attack on August 24, 1944, at the age of 51. Byron Sr. died from tuberculosis on March 2, 1940, at the age of 50. Both are buried in the Munson Cemetery at Bailey’s Prairie.

Richard, always known as Dick, served in the U. S. Navy in World War II. Thereafter he received a mechanical engineering degree from Texas A. & M. College and practiced engineering in Dallas and Fort Worth. He never married and died in Fort Worth on October 13, 1972, at the age of 46. He is buried in the Munson Cemetery.

Byron and Thurmond received Ph.D. degrees in chemistry from Columbia University in New York City. Byron married Diana Gordon on August 12, 1944, and Thurmond married Ruth Elizabeth Miller on June 19, 1948, both in New York City. Thereafter both worked for the duPont Company in the East for a few years. In 1949 they formed an agricultural insecticide manufacturing company in Dallas, Texas, under the name Thuron Industries, Inc. In 1970, after twenty-one years of operations, they sold the company to Zoecon, Inc. of California, and retired a few years later. Byron died of a cerebral hemorrhage on December 31, 1983, at the age of 62, and is buried in the Munson Cemetery. Ruth Miller Williamson passed away June 11, 2003, in California, at age 82, and is buried in the Munson Cemetery at Bailey’s Prairie. The two families have between them six children, eleven grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren at this time (2007).



Erma Munson Rich

The third child of Waddy and “Woodie” was Erma Munson, born October 28, 1903, in Angleton. She was named for her mother’s sister-in-law, Erma Zumwalt, wife of Thurmond Bowers West of Columbus. Erma graduated from Angleton High School and attended the College of Industrial Arts (now Texas State College for Women), in Denton, Texas, for one year. She then took a job as secretary to the dean of Texas A. & M. College in College Station, where she lived with her mother and her brother. At Texas A. & M. Erma met a graduate student, Lucian Rich, and they were married on May 29, 1926.

Lucian Guy Rich was born in East Texas in 1890 and graduated from Texas A. & M. College with a degree in agronomy in 1914. He was a member of the U. S. Army, awaiting shipment to France in 1918, when the armistice was signed. He was one of the first county agricultural agents in Texas, and was an early worker on the development of a cotton-picking machine. At some date in the 1920s he became an instructor at John Tarleton State Agricultural College in Stephenville, Texas, where he taught for over forty years. During the summers he attended Texas A. & M. College to work toward his masters degree. There he met and married Erma Rich.

They built a home at 1055 W. Vanderbilt Street in Stephenville in which they lived for almost fifty years. Lucian served in the U. S. Air Force during World War II, and he and his family lived in many places in the States as he was moved from base to base. Lucian and Erma had two daughters, Mary and Erma Jo (Jo for Joseph Waddy, or “Uncle Jo”), both of whom graduated from the University of Texas at Austin. Mary married John Brownlee Wilson Jr. and they had five children—Jo married Thomas Hand and they had four. They now have between them nine children, fifteen grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. Lucian died in Stephenville in an automobile accident on November 30, 1971, at the age of 81.

After raising her five children, Mary spent over a decade in Carrizzo, New Mexico, working as editor of a newspaper, real estate broker, and in community affairs. She founded a school for mentally handicapped adults and a county dental service for the poor. Mary later married Charles Franklin Adams, an author and teacher, and lived in Riverdale, New York, where she worked as manager of a Manhattan commercial real estate firm. She and Charles did the saintly job of caring for her mother, Erma, who was suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s disease in 1987 at the age of 84. Erma died June 2, 1989, and Mary on August 3, 2005, at her home in Queensbury, New York.

After her divorce from Tom Hand, and while raising her four children, Erma Jo went to school in computer science and worked her way up to manager of a division of the computer department of the Arizona National Bank in Phoenix. She is now married to Hugh Watson and lives in retirement in Chandler (Phoenix), Arizona, enjoying her many children and grandchildren.

Erma Munson Rich was for years the official historian of the Munson Reunion Association. She diligently collected, studied, and transcribed all of the old Munson family records and did continual genealogical research for all of her active life. It is to her credit, with everlasting thanks, that the data and stories contained in this book are available to the Munsons of today and of future generations.

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