Compiled - Samuel M. Bayliss was a good example of the
fine, sturdy stock who came as pioneers in 1893 to establish a special
school at Keene. His uncle, a friend of Davy Crockett from
Tennessee days, died among the Texas heroes defending the Alamo,
and Sam Bayliss inherited part of the land given by the
state of Texas to the family of this brave hero.
It was several years and a Civil War in between before Sam Bayliss and
his young wife, Henrietta, came to Texas to claim his inheritance which
lay
east of the Brazos River in Johnson County.
They traveled by steamboat down the Cumberland and Mississippi Rivers to
the Red River and then up to Jefferson, the second-busiest port in Texas
at that time. With a new-bought team of horses and a wagon, they
traveled to their land in Johnson County.
But trouble with the Comanche Indians led him shortly to trade a hundred
acres for a farm two and one half miles north of the location later to
become
Keene in a community called Marystown.
Someone sent Adventist literature to this settlement and an
interest sprang
up. Sam Bayliss sat beside his wife’s bedside as she awaited the birth
of
her second daughter, Emma, and read to her a tract on “Saturday the true
Sabbath.” She said, “Sam, you know that is not so. You just wait ‘til
I am able and I will straighten that out from the Bible.” When up and
about
she did try, but her search only confirmed that the tract was right, and
that
Saturday, the seventh day of the week, was the true Sabbath of the
Scriptures.
Shortly, a Seventh-day Adventist preacher,
R.M. Kilgore, came to hold
meetings. Along with others, the Bayliss family accepted the message. Henrietta Bayliss, in later years, told her granddaughter, Edith, that
when
they accepted the message, “coffee, tea, tobacco and hog meat all went
out the
door at the same time and never returned.”
When Keene Academy was established in 1893, Sam and Henrietta Bayliss moved
with their five girls and one son to Keene, purchasing one of the first
ten acre
tracts sold, theirs comprising the area where now stands the firehouse
and city
hall, the Barron chapel, and the cafeteria, and here they built an
imposing two
story home of cypress lumber hauled in by wagons from Jefferson. Across
this
ten acres, Sam Bayliss gave the right of way for the street to go down
from the
school to the depot where the new Katy train, Old Betsy, would stop.
Two of the Bayliss daughters, Sudie and Dosia, were among the students
that
attended the first day of school in January of 1894.
The second of the Bayliss girls, Emma, and Joe Warren were married
December
24, 1893, the first marriage in the new town of Keene. Joe’s father had
purchased the adjoining ten acres of land south of the Bayliss tract and
the
investment paid off well.
This couple’s Lawrence, after spending fourteen years of schooling in
the
tall, white administration building at the academy, became president of
the
first junior college graduating class in 1917, other members of the
class being
Velma Fields Cook, Ethel Taylor Hindbaugh, and Janie Layland. Lawrence
Warren
went to Hawaii as a missionary teacher.
Edith, the daughter of this first couple to marry in Keene, graduated
from
the junior college and married another graduate, John Gepford. John
served as
farm manager at the school. On the farm was a poorly matched team of
horses,
one black and pretty, the other poor and scrawny. John thought them a
poor
representation for a fine school, and, at first chance traded the
scrawny one
for a fine black one and soon had trained the well-matched team of fine
horses.
Shortly came the payoff for with them he proudly plowed the furrow for
the
ground breaking for Penuel Hall, the new administration building after
fire
destroyed the old one.
Another Bayliss daughter, Alice, attended the Keene Academy, then
married
another graduate, J.G. Petty, and together they went as missionaries to
Jamaica.
Grandchildren of Sam and Henrietta Bayliss now living in Keene are:
Viola
Bayliss Owens, Spurgeon M. Bayliss, Edwinna Wallen Harrison, Clarence
Moody
Stoner and Alice Sue Stoner Carpenter.
Many a good well of water in Keene and Johnson County was drilled by Sam
and
Henrietta Bayliss’ family,
Louis J. Bayliss, the only son, and his son
Spurgeon, three of the sons-in-law, Ed Wallen, Chester Stoner and his
son, and
Joe Warren.
Lest We Forget, 1985 p.27
And additional notes from family interviews
