William Taylor Howard is one of the highly esteemed citizens of Hood County, known among his many friends and neighbors as Uncle Billy. He lives two miles southeast of the Acton community.

He was born in Smith County, Texas, January 31, 1853. The Howard family came from Ireland and settled in Georgia in Colonial times. His father, Hartsford Howard, was born in Georgia in 1819, and in the fall of 1852 started overland for Texas with covered wagon and teams. For two years he lived in Smith County, and then moved out to what was the frontier of Northwest Texas, Parker County, where he spent several years farming and stock raising near Veal Station on Walnut Creek. From that old historic locality he moved to Hood County, settling two miles southwest of the Acton community, and remained there a sturdy type of the old time farmer and stock man until his death on February 4, 1892. He and his brother, Thomas A. Howard, were several times engaged in hunting Indians who had made depredations on their horses in Parker County. All the supplies in the early days had to be hauled from Dallas. Hartsford Howard married Caroline Niblack, daughter of William Niblack. She was born in Georgia in 1819 and died at the old home near the Acton community in September, 1878. Of her eight children William T. was the fifth, and three are now living. The daughter Sarah Ada, whose home is five miles south of the Acton community, is the widow of N. Barker, a farmer and school teacher, and of their six children five are living. The other son, Augustus Jefferson, is a farmer, and by his marriage to Dillie Huntey, now deceased, had five children, three of whom are living.

William Taylor Howard grew up in Parker County, and his educational opportunities were limited partly because the family were living out on the frontier and also due to Civil war conditions. Up to the age of twenty-one he assisted his father on the farm, and then bought a place of his own on Fall Creek in Hood County. Mr. Howard made that the scene of his farming and stock raising for thirty years. After selling out he moved on his present place two miles south of Acton, and since then has been farming and stock raising, but is now practically retired. He owns a third of the undivided estate of 300 acres left by his father and also has some lands out in West Texas. Mr. Howard has never married.

Texas Under Many Flags, Volume III. Clarence R. Wharton, Author and Editor. 1930: The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York.

Note: Clarence R. Wharton also authored The Republic of Texas, Life of General Santa Anna; Member of Southwestern Historical Association; Member of Law Firm of Baker, Botts, Parker and Garwood of Houston, Texas.

2000 HOOD COUNTY TEXAS GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY