Hugh Riley Frazier    

HUGH RILEY FRAZIER. How Big Families Were Reared and Prospered. H. R. Frazier was born in Alabama, March 14, 1817, a son of George and Jane Frazier. He died at the home of his daughter, Mrs. L.A. Orme at Pawhuska, Okla., and was buried in Goshen, near Springtown, at the age of 92.

Mr. Frazier served in the Florida-Seminole War in 1835 while Andrew Jackson was President of the United States. He moved to Mississippi where he married Miley Harper, and to this union six children were born: Louisa married J. P. Wynn; Mary married Jim Sadler; Tabitha married Mack Davis; Joe P. Frazier; John M. Frazier; and Miley married George Williams. They, with this family of six youngsters, moved to Arkansas where Mr. Frazier had the misfortune of losing the mother of his children. Afterwards he married Sarah Ann Newberry, and six children were born to this union: George Frazier; Ellen married L. A. Orme; Lizzie married Hez Culwell; William F. Frazier; Callie married Jack Holland; and Jim Ned Frazier. Genareo Wynn, daughter of his oldest child, Louisa Frazier Wynn, married G. A. Holland, and his youngest child, Callie, married Jack Holland.

The Frazier family moved to Parker County, Texas, in 1861, and were neighbors of Joshua Culwell and his family who had come to Texas in 1856. Mr. Culwell died in February, 1867, leaving a widow, Lucinda Culwell and nine children. It was about this time that Mrs. Frazier died, leaving Mr. Frazier a widower with twelve children. Three of the older children of each of the families having married left nine of the Frazier children and six of the Culwell children at home.

In November, 1869, Hugh Frazier married Lucinda Culwell, bringing together the children of the two families, where they lived happily and peaceably in a three-room log cabin near Goshen. Counting the parents, there were seventeen in the family, and still there was room for the circuit rider on his monthly visit to the church.

It sounds strange to people in this day and time that such a large family could be comfortably accommodated in such small quarters. They had a plurality of beds in the rooms with trundle beds beneath for the smaller children. The hail and front porch were also used for sleeping purposes when the weather permitted. This happy family looked forward with pleasure to the end of the week when the in-laws came home for a visit. Step-kin was no bar to matrimonial alliances. Parker County was then a free-grass country. Cattle were fattened on the range the year ‘round, and afforded meat at any time it was needed. His large combination family was a very high-grade, God-fearing, church-going people, all members of the Goshen Methodist Church. They were especially noted in church and school activities. The annual camp-meetings were their vacations. In August of each year they converted old Goshen into a camp ground by setting up tents and brush arbors. When the Tacketts, the Gillilands, the Fraziers, the Culwells and others gathered it looked like a real village. It was there they had preaching, sang sacred hymns, such as “I Am Bound for The Promised Land,” and “Oh Come Angel Band,” carrying all parts of music. The Fraziers and Culwells were noted singers. If some of the in-laws strayed away from the regular pious flock they were soon rounded up and brought back into harness, and seemed to sing longer and shout louder than those who had not gone astray. It is remembered that Uncle Hugh Frazier,—as he was familiarly known—said of his in-laws when they became demonstrative, that it would be a good time to kill them before they back-slid again.

The old Goshen camp-meetings were happy occasions, — “but those good old days are gone forever.”

History of Parker County and the Double Log Cabin: being a brief symposium of the early history of Parker County, together with short biographical sketches of early settlers and their trials, Weatherford, Tex.: Herald Pub. Co., 1937, pages 147-148. View the image of this page online.  Search Hundreds of 1880s-1920s Texas History Books for biographies and historical information on your ancestors.  View the book page images on line and print them out for your genealogy file!  Try the family history collection for free for 14 days!