Richard Thomas Jenkins (1830-1903)

Names Detail

First Name

Richard

Middle Name

Thomas

Last Name

Jenkins

Birth and Death

Birth Date

October 25, 1830

Death Date

May 5, 1903

Age at Death

72 year(s), 6 month(s), 11 day(s)

Cemetery Location and Disposition

Cemetery Location

Row 06, Grave 07 | Map

Disposition Type

Burial

Relationships to Others at the Cemetery

External Links

Find A Grave

Notes

Richard was born in Granville County, North Carolina, on October 25, 1830. The 1850 census reports his family living in Dickson County, Tennessee, when he was nineteen years old. The family of seven was engaged in farming there. After moving to Lampasas County and likely living in the Payne Gap area, he married Martha Jane Payne on September 30, 1858, in Lampasas, Texas. By the 1860 census, Richard and Martha were living and farming in the Payne Gap area near her parents. At the time, Martha was twenty and Richard was twenty-nine, and they had no children. Their first child, Walter Arthur Jenkins (1860-1944), was born on October 10, 1860. By 1870, he and Martha, along with their children, which included Walter, Davis, Zachariah, and Eveline [sic], had moved to Georgetown, Texas, where Richard worked as a carpenter. Still living in Georgetown in 1880, his family of eight was farming and ranching in the area. His son Richard B. Jenkins was five years old at the time. Now living in the Payne Gap area, he was appointed as Payne Gap’s first postmaster on August 18, 1888, and served in that role until his death. He ran the post office and a general store at what was later the Ell and Jessie Duncan place when Payne Gap was located about a mile south of the current school and cemetery. When Payne Gap relocated to west of the Payne Gap cemetery after Richard died, Sam Higgins ran the store and post office, and Moline denizens got their mail and supplies through his operation (Walton, Leone Patterson, ed. The Four “F’s” of Moline, Texas: Facts, Folks, Fun, Failure, 1980, page 14). By the 1900 census, Richard and his wife shared a home with their son-in-law Silas A. Hunt (1878-1950) and their daughter Maggie Bell [Jenkins] Hunt (1884-1954) near the Chester Esterwood and Hiram D. Welleman families in the Payne Gap area. He died on October 25, 1903.