Lafferty Family History & Genealogy

I have been doing lots of research on my Family and Ancestors. Doing a Family Tree ! I have accomplished alot and grateful for all the help I have received from others. I am looking for info on the Lafferty Family. Would appreciate any help I can recieve. Spriggs & Carter are my Father and Mothers birth names. The Lafferty is on my grandmothers side and related. Would like to add to my Family Tree Reserch. Thanks for any help anyone can give me. My email address is [contact link]. Thanks in advance to everyone ! Larry Spriggs of NC

This was reproduced from the Holdings of the Texas State Archives.
"History of Pioneer Days in Texas and Oklahoma". by John A. Hart and Others.
Page 165-171.
Chapter VIII. Written By John A. Lafferty (1838 AR-1911 NM) of Parker County, Texas. Methodist Minister.
I have a stiff arm and can't write to do any good. I was shot in my right arm during the war and afterwards mashed it with a wagon bed, so it is badly used up and makes it a little hard for me to start my chapter. I came to Parker County in the early days, it was unlike any part of my life. The Indians were on the reserve in Young County and at old Camp Cooper, but our trouble with redskins soon commenced. A lot of us in the spring of 1859, concluded we would move them further away but, lo and behold, when we got there uncle Sam was there with the United States troops, and we had to back down and out, but the government moved them that fall north of Red River, and then our troubles with them began in earnest and it continued until the buffalo hunters and McKinley got after them, in 1878 and 1879, that settled Mr. Indian.
To tell of the hard times and blood scenes during the war and afterwards, would take a mind that stored knowledge better than mine. The scalping knife and captured women and children, one incident I never saw in print is where the Indians on Rock Creek, in the west part of Parker
County, took a man's wife away from him and seventeen of them used her as they pleased, then shot an arrow in her heart and broke it off, then scalped her alive. She lived in this condition two days and nights, long enough to tell the horrible treatment she received while in their hands. I have hunted over the ground where this occurred.
The most of the men had been in the army or looking after the Indians so provisions were very scarce just after the war. A bunch of women made a raid on Phelp's Mill one day and took every thing in the way of bread stuff on hand. I have known women to go five miles to gather wild onions to make a meal on. The clabber cheese that was eaten for bread in those days would
make a man blush in our day of plenty.
To tell of the men that helped to restore order and bring peace and plenty to this part of the county would take volumes, however, I will name a few of them: the Tackitts, Caldwells, Woods, the Harts, Pickards, Criswells, John Squires, Milsap and Lorings. There are too numerous to
mention by name but were all men of the day that didn't flinch from the hardships, is the class of men that laid the foundation to make Parker County what it is today.
I had the pleasure of attending the Cox reunion, west of Weatherford, Texas in 1905, where I met a few of my old war comrades- Tom Pickard, I.C. Edwards, Allen Parker, and George Johnson--also the pleasure of visiting two sisters and their families I had not seen in nineteen years and our old company H of the second Texas cavalry,(Confederate) the first company that left Parker County held a reunion, July 1906, in Weatherford. There I met old comrades that I hadn't seen in thirty-five years and strange as it may seem. I knew them all but two as I met them, but as I have digressed from your time I will drop back to the district court at Weatherford, where Judge Seaward was trying to conduct court and Nathaniel Bramner, Edward Hopkins and the Brooks
boys, with the Sheriff, got on a hill northeast of Weatherford and would not let anyone come to them.
Religious matter were very scarce at the close of the war, but like Elijah, there was some that had not bowed the knee to Baal, if we did have to worship under brush arbors and in log school houses with dirt floors and split log benches. In these early days men had to go armed for the Redskins, so the preachers would walk to the pulpit, that was brave enough to come and lay off his brace of pistols and preach Christ and Him crucified and what meetings we would have, and the word of God grew and prospered until that country was crowded with churches and school houses-- so you see time don't go backwards but everything goes forward-- the country that was once the home of the Indian and buffalo, the same is the home of the Anglo-Saxon
race, and where the Indians roamed at will, the iron horse with the burden of live freight, goes dashing through the country from New York to San Francisco. Oh what changes do come; as we grow older we see that time waits for no man. As I went home one time from Weatherford, getting in about sundown, found my wife (Mary Hannah Lipsey Lafferty), baby and nephew leaving, I asked what was the trouble, my wife asked me if I didn't see some Indians just back on the hill, I told her I didn't, that she must be mistaken, she said she wasn't, she knew she saw them. I told her we would stay at home anyway. Presently our brother-in law come, and said he saw the Indians; so three families of us got our horses together and guarded them that night, and by doing so , saved our horses but the Redmen got horses all around us.
At another time,near the same place, at John Godfrey's, he and myself had been hauling rails and I drove my wagon up in the front door, locked one of my horses to the hind wheel, the other one wouldn't let anyone catch him but myself. The Carnett brother came about sun down with some good horses, tied them close to the house; just after dark awhile the dogs commenced
barking. I told them they had better look after their horses as the Indians were around, but they laughed at me and told me my dog was always finding Indians. I told them I knew the Indians were around but they paid no heed so after a while I went to the door my loose horse had come up so they got up to see about their horses, when lo and behold the Indians had slipped up and cut them loose and were gone with them while we were setting there talking. They were very much exited and one of them said if anybody would go with him he would go out, let the neighbors know and try to get his horses back. I said that I would go with him. The first house that we came to was Jim Baker's but he wouldn't come out. The Indians had captured him the year before and came near getting his scalp; he said the Indians were right there and he wasn't coming out. The next place was Henry Ward's; he went with us, just as we left his house we passed through a bunch of horses and struck a pony track ahead of us, the next place we aroused the folks and some went after their horses and went with us, another went to let a neighbor know and
the man and his son went to the bunch of horses we had passed, with a pack of hounds and the Indians had them rounded up when he and his hounds got there, but him and his hounds together scared the Red Skins off. He and his boy never stopped running til they got to where we started from but in the racket the Indians were scared away from the horses.
The pony track kept ahead of us on our round but we never got sight of it unless it was as we returned. We came near meeting an Indian on the road but he saw us in time to give us the dodge.
The writer of this imperfect chapter, has crossed every stream in Texas from the Canadian to the Rio Grande and crossed both of them,; spent part of 1861 and 1862 at Fort Clark.
(John Godfrey and Henry Ward were brother in law's to John Lafferty.)

from Austin Texas State Archives.
This is a story that my grandfather write for a History book about Parker
Co., TX. ---Mary Lafferty Wilson--