A young attorney was gone too soon

William Booth home, built around 1856.  His son, Richard was raised there.

I'd like to feature my second great grandfather on my mother's tree...Richard R. Booth (1846-1879). He was an attorney like his father, His father, William Lewis Booth, outlived many of his children and their spouses, dying at age 76.

Richard R. Booth was born Indiana to the second wife of his father, Hannah Conn Booth. William's first wife, Mary Ann McManus Booth gave birth to three children and died at only 24 years of age. She died in July 1842 (as well as the 3rd child who was 5 months old.)  Hannah was married to William in Febrary 1843. Hannah Conn Booth gave birth to 8 children and lived to be 66, five of her children living to adulthood.

Hannah's son Richard was born on 23 Sept. 1846, her third child, while she had become stepmother for 2 others. At that time the Booths were living in Indiana, but by the next child's birth, the family had moved to Illinois along with William's brother Charles Booth's family. And by the 1850s the family moved to Hills County Texas. 

There are stories that William and Charles went to California for the gold rush with a nephew who stayed there. The older Booths returned to Texas.

Son Richard was happy to follow his father's education in becoming a lawyer. He is listed in several clippings about his involvement in Hillsboro's politics...with a brother and father, being delegates in the Republican Party. 

Father William was apparently a Colonel in the Confederacy, and regained his position in the community following the war. There's no record of Richard in the Confederate Army, but at 15 in 1861, he might well have, His older 3 brothers also must have taken part in the war. Very few able bodied men were excused, except the older ones who were considered "Home Guard." (Anyone in Texas who had not been in favor of the succession of the Confederacy either was killed or left town in a hurry. When the vote was taken in Austin, General Sam Houston may have been against succeeding, but he was able to hide it from those interested in war.)

Richard married Jemima Johnson in 1865, and they had one son in 1866. Then in 1868 Jemima died giving birth to their second son, who also died on that date. 

Richard married again in 1869, at age 22. Eugenia Almeta Whitty Booth was 17, having her first son in 1871.  They lived close to his father's family, and my great grandmother, Eugenia Almeta Booth Miller was born in Hillsboro TX in 1873. By 1875, mother Eugenia Almeta Whitty Booth gave birth to her third child, a girl, and they both died on July 13, 1875 in Hempstead, Waller County, Texas.  Richard apparently had moved there to work in the courts as well as his father. The children went back to Hillsboro where grandmother Hannah Booth lived still.

Richard Booth died in a gun fight at a tavern in the wee hours. Apparently he was shot by a deputy sherrif, who was a shady character with a lot of friends in town. He left town, and later was arrested for shooting some other people

You may have seen westerns portraying life in Reconstruction Texas following the Civil War...but I'm guessing they have all been pretty cleaned up for entertainment purposes. There were a lot of men who were strong believers in one side or another, and using guns to prove they were right. Law courts were busy with cases, and that's probably why William and Richard Booth moved with families to Hempstead, a growing metropolis of the times.

So his murderer only got 25 years in the penitentiary for murder of two other men. I am doubly sad that justice wasn't handed down, and R. T. Springfield probably lived a long life.

On a more positive note, I have a cousin who is a descendant of Richard's also, from a son of his first wife. Cheryl Richardson sent me a lot of good information about the Booth family.

Sharing this week with 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks over on FaceBook.