Heritage!

 My interest in Texas history and folklore comes honestly.  It’s in my blood.   Ancestors on both sides of the family pioneered Texas and helped shape its destiny.  Oh, the stories to tell!

 Great great grandparents, Daniel and Saluda Killen immigrated to Bastrop county by wagon from Alabama in 1853.  They began simply, with a farm.  During the Civil War, Daniel served with the Confederate 22^nd Brigade of Fayette County, commanded by Capt. V. S. Rabb.  During their lives they raised eight children and lived variously in Bastrop, Lee and Fayette counties.  In their final years, they ran a hotel near Ledbetter where they are buried in the local cemetery

 Direct ancestry on the Fields’ (mother’s) side dates back even further, to Chief Richard Fields, Chief of the Texas Cherokees.  He and his Cherokee followers settled in East Texas in 1820 under a Spanish land grant after being pushed out of the Carolinas, Tennessee and Arkansas. Just a year later, in 1821, Mexico gained independence from Spain and revoked the land grant.  After exhausting all legal means of obtaining a Mexican title to his land, he joined John Dunn Hunter, Martin Palmer and Benjamin Edwards to instigate the Fredonian Rebellion of 1826.  The rebellion failed and shortly thereafter, Chief Fields was murdered by another band of Cherokees led by Chief Bowl. You can read more about Chief Richard Fields, Chief Bowl and the Fredonian Rebellion in the Handbook of Texas Online.