PIERCE FAMILY - Not very much is known about Mr. Pierce except that he and his wife were born in Tennessee around 1805. They were married, probably in Hardeman County Tennessee about 1825. He and Sabina had a daughter, whose name we do not know and at least two sons, Bird and Young Pierce. These three children were born in Tennessee and there could be other siblings. There is some evidence that Sabina Pierce and those three children were in East Texas before moving on to Coryell County Texas about 1852-1854. The Scoggins, Riggs, Elms, Gray and O'Neal to mention a few of the Sugar Loaf Texas families, were in Independence and Izard Counties Arkansas in 1840-50 having moved there from Tennessee, Alabama, and other southern states. Some were in Mississippi for a time before moving on to Arkansas as was David Gray where his daughter Armeilia was born. Armelia later married Young Pierce in Sugar Loaf. In the 1850s many of these families moved on to Coryell County travelling in groups for mutual support as that area opened for settlement. The Pierce familiy however, is not found in Arkansas during that period.
SABINA PIERCE - Sabina died October 2, 1888 (see funeral card) and is buried in the Sugar Loaf Cemetery which was moved to Killeen by the Army in 1942. A picture of Sabina's gravesite and the gravesite of her son Young Pierce taken in 1907 before the cemetery was moved is in the book titled "Chicosa Bill" which is a compilation of the diaries of William Carroll Riggs. Riggs parents died in the 1859 Comanche raid that also killed Young Pierce. The Riggs book mentions the Pierce family several times and referred to Sabina as "Grandma Pierce". Sabina is on the 1860 Coryell census living with the Bird Pierce family and she is on the 1880 Census for Johnson County living with granddaughter Mary Eldora age 23 and grandmother "Servina" age 75.
"SISTER" PIERCE - The oldest known child of Sabina, who we shall call "Sister" Pierce here, was born in Tennessee about 1823-1833. She married a Miller before 1850 and died in childbirth when her only known child, Julia Ann Miller was born. Julia Ann later told her children that her mother was living in "East Texas" at the time of her death. We have found no record of this death or burial.
JULIA ANN MILLER - Daughter of Sister Pierce and granddaughter of Sabina, Julia Ann was born 27 Feb 1850 and died in 1941. She is buried in the Gatesville Cemetary. She said that Grandma (Sabina) Pierce, now about age 45, brought her to Coryell County by horseback when she was just a small baby. She was told that she weighed only three pounds and that she was carried in a shoebox. She also was accommpanied by two uncles, presuambly Bird and Young. She said that when she was age eight (about 1859) she remembered that Young Pierce was killed by Comanche Indians. Bird Pierce is on the 1854 Coryell County tax records and he was married to Sarah Scoggin in 1855. Beyond this there is no record placing Julia Ann in Coryell County until the 1870 census where she is recorded living with husband George A. Williams in Gatesville.
BIRD PIERCE - Bird Pierce was born in Tennessee in 1836 and is listed in the first Coryell County Tax Roll of 1854. In September 1855 Bird Pierce married Sarah Scoggin, daughter of the well known methodist minister Jesse Scoggin. Three girls, Mary Eldora, Sabina and Frances were born to Bird and Sarah during the 1856-60 period. The Scoggins had moved from Arkansas to Sugar Loaf in 1852. In May 1862 Bird Pierce enlisted in Company D 17th Texas Volunteer Infantry. He died at Pine Bluff, Arkansas 3 March 1863 while in the service of the Confederate Army
YOUNG PIERCE Sr. - Young Pierce was born 19 July 1839 in Tennessee. He married Armelia Gray 4 February 1858 in Sugar Loaf. Armelia was 15 years old at the time, having been born in 1842 in Missisippi to David Gray and his first wife before David moved to Izard County Arkansas. In Izard County David Gray's second marriage in 1846 to Nancy Elms, was performed by Justice of Peace Harvey O'Neal. David and Nancy were among the first settlers at Sugar Loaf when they moved there in 1851. David was active in county politics and was elected to the County Commission in 1856, 1862 and again in 1865. Sadly Young Pierce died in a viscious Comanche Indian raid in the early morning hours of 16 March 1859, five months before his son Young Pierce Jr. was born. Young Pierce, and a neighbor's son, David Elms age 13, had driven a wagon to a nearby cedar brake to cut fence posts when they are attacked. David Elms escaped with his life but was badly beaten with horse whips. Neighbors John and Jane Riggs, parents of four young children, were also killed in this same Comanche raid. The Comanches abducted the two Riggs daughters who later managed to escape their captors and returned home.
YOUNG PIERCE JR. - Young Pierce Jr. never saw his father who was murdered by Comanches five months before his son was born. His mother Armelia moved back in with her father David Gray who after the death of Nancy Elms married her sister Terrissa Elms. This household still had the four children by David and Nancy plus six children Terrissa was raising after the death of her husband Harvey O'Neal. When Armelia moved back home with her new baby, Young Pierce Jr., there were now 12 children in this household of which Armelia at age 16 was the oldest.
Stephen "Pap" O'Neal
Armelia (Gray) O'Neal
ARMELIA MARRIES STEPHEN O'NEAL - In early 1861 Armelia married Stephen O'Neal, who was Harvey O'Neal's younger brother. Armelia later said she married Stephen to get out of David Gray's house of 12 children of which she was a primary caretaker. Stephen and Armelia raised Young Pierce Jr. to manhood as well as three children of their own. Stephen left for the Civil War just after their first child, David O'Neal was born. Armelia was again left alone until his return from the war in 1864. He served in Company F 6th Texas Volunteer Infantry as a teamster and saw action in Tennessee, Georgia and in the battle of Arkansas Post January 11, 1863 where most of Company F was killed or captured. Stephen O'Neal was one of the captured but was later returned in a rare prisoner of war exchange. At the end of the war he was paroled and returned home to Sugar Loaf. He and Armelia had two more children after the war.
Young Pierce Jr. Grew up in the Sugar Loaf community working the farms. In the fall he joined the threshing crews that moved through the farmlands doing contract work. It was on one of these jobs in Brown County that he met Roxie Brown whom he courted and then married in Brownwood 4 March 1883. They had four children born in Sugar Loaf before 1891. In the fall of 1892 Young and Roxie followed their dream to have an irrigated farm and loaded their four children, Amelia, Abia, Ethel, Lewis (see picture) and all their belongings in a wagon and headed for San Saba county. It was there that they began farming irrigated land on the banks of the San Saba River. Roxie was pregnant with their fifth child when they began their wagon journey and Ernest was born 31 January 1893 in San Saba. Five more children -- Nettie, Eugene, Earl, Dea, and Gladys were born in San Saba County.