Some primary and secondary sources for
James Emory Hutto, Sr.
A History of James Emory Hutto
by Hugh Davenport, Hutto resident
The
man for whom the town of Hutto was named was born to John
Castleberry and Nancy Holliday Hutto in Greenville,
South Carol ina on May 8, 1824.
In 1830 the family moved to Huntsville,
Madison County, Alabama where his mother died in 1836, when James
Emory was 12 years old.
After a few years, he
joined a group of 25 persons immigrating to Texas
which arrived January 16, 1847 and settled at Webber's Prairie near Austin.
James Emory Hutto was a very capable and industrious person and
immediately became involved in development of the Central Texas
area as well as providing for himself and the family he and Margaret
Hughes of Alabama had begun after their marriage in Texas,
and this may indicate that she came to Texas
at the same time J. E. did. He had helped George Glasscock in
building the first grist mill in Georgetown and was present when the
town was staked off and the first election was held in 1848.
Mr. Hutto moved his
family to Williamson County in 1854 and, whether by foresight or
chance, selected land which provided the townsite for the town of
Hutto when the I.G.& N. Railroad passed through his property some
years later. He was immediately preceded in the immediate vicinity by
Adam Orgain, a freed slave of the Orgain family which owned land not
far removed. Also, soon after James E. Hutto settled in the area,
other settlers acquired land for cattle raising and farming cotton
and grains especially in the area to the southeast where the small
settlement of Shiloh was in existence. Early settlers in the area
near the to-be town who had considerable acreage were Hugh Goodwin
and W. H. Farley, Sr. and his bachelor brother F. F. Farley.
In 1876, when the
railroad came through the area, Mr. Hutto sold fifty acres of land to
the Texas
Land Co. of New York for a townsite reserving five acres of that
tract as a gift for the International and Great Northern Railroad
right of way through town.
Mr. Hutto was a very
successful operator and a respected civic leader in the community
where he was active in church and school activities; and when a post
office was established in 1877, he was appointed Postmaster.
He and his wife,
Margaret, had a family of six sons and three daughters, all of whom,
except the last child Mary,
reached adulthood in the Hutto Community. In May, 1881, his wife
Margaret, mother of all known descendants, died and was buried
alongside the youngest daughter Mary M. in the Shiloh Cemetery some
three miles southeast of the town of Hutto. After about two years,
Mr. Hutto, then 57 years of age, married Mrs. Nancy Jones and in 1885
he sold his holdings in cattle, land and home and moved to Waco,
where it was understood that the former Mrs. Jones had some relatives
and where he planned to go into the implement business.
It is not clear what
interest Mr. Hutto had for the next few years as the Waco City
Directory of 1890 listed him only as a resident at the corner of
North 18th and Barron Streets. The next two years a partnership of
sorts was listed with a Thomas
H. Killingsworth. Then
from 1892 through 1897, James W. Hutto, Sr. was listed as operating
an Agricultural Implement business including Carriages, Wagons, and
Buggies at 110 S. 8th St.
Mr. Hutto's second wife
died in 1892, at approximately the same time that he started his
implement business. In 1894, he married again; this time to Mrs.
Helen A Wilder who outlived him by some two months after his death on
April 29, 1914,
only nine days short of his ninetieth birthday. James E. Hutto, Sr.
and his second and third wives are buried on the same lot in Oakwood
Cemetery in Waco, Texas.
Upon his death, an
obituary from a Waco paper was lavish in its remarks regarding Mr.
Hutto's character and his activities in church and charities and the
caliber of his friends in the Waco area.
Biographical Content from the Shiloh McCutcheon Cemetery Association website.
James Emory
Hutto, Sr.
with son John
Riley Hutto
grandson William
Travis Hutto
and
great-grandson William Burnice Hutto
