George Thomas McCarty, born October
21, 1855 in Miller County, Missouri, son of Campbell Alexander and Mary Woods
McCarty. He married Mattie Lou Crites,
born November 11, 1867 in Missouri
and died December 31, 1954. She was the
daughter of Sam Crites and Mary Ann Shelton.
George and Mattie Lou McCarty are buried in Bourland Cemetery.
The family moved to Texas about 1865. They had two slaves. The younger one, about fifteen, asked to be
freed before they left Missouri. The older one, Lou, about 20, came with them
and moved to Denton, Texas where he died in 1921.
The McCarty family first settled at
Bedford, where
one of the children, Mollie, was buried at the age of 7 years. She was crippled. They then moved to the Keller community. My father and some of the other children went
to school for a time at Mt.
Gilead. They owned what is now the Frank Wooley
place. I saw the old two story house
before it was torn down in the twenties.
Then about 1900, they bought or
built The Keller Hotel, which is now remodeled as the Y. Flemister home. Mrs. Flemister’s father, Jim Harrison, bought
the Hotel from my grandfather who died at the hotel in 1902. Jim Harrison also died at the hotel, maybe
about 1918 or so.
I have several of my Grandfather’s
old notes from Miller County, Missouri,
also Texas,
some of them over one hundred years old, where he loaned money before there
were any banks. The notes are written
out on a blank piece of paper. Miller County, Missouri
was named for my Father’s Uncle, Mulk Miller, who died at Denton, Texas
about 1925, in his nineties.
Source: Josie Mae McCarty Johnson
