Abagus Winters was given 640 acres of land (military grant) in Palo Pinto County February 8, 1858, and he was the first Winters to live in this county.  During the Civil War he left and never returned here.  Ann winters, a widow, born in 1822 in Alabama, came here and bought land near Strawn, bringing with her her grandson, William Loving Winters, known as Bill winters, then a lad of 15.  He was the son of John Winters, who died in Azle in Parker county.  Bill's mother had died earlier and he was reared by his grandmother and also with Mrs. Ann Winters, were several girls, daughters of the widow.

Bill Winters rode horses and drove cattle and his grandmother drove the wagon on the move from Cherokee County (Jacksonville), where they had been living during the Civil War.

Of these daughters, Tennie Winters married Will York, an old-timer of this county; Ellen Winters married Mart Smith of Mingus; Phoebe Winters and Kinchlo Winters never married and Anice Winters married a man by the name of Hinote, when she was teaching school at Santo and she now lives at Rio Vista.  Bea Winters married Mr. Hagood, is living at Fort Worth and is now 90 years of age.  All these women were reared in Palo Pinto County.  Their father had died at Jacksonville and is buried there.  He fought in the Mexican War.

Both sides of the family, both Winters and Smith, fought in the civil War on the side of the Confederacy and Capt. Smith, father of Ann Winters, was at the Battle of Lookout Mountain.  He was wounded at Chickamauga and the bullet was never removed.  When he died in 1910 the bullet was still in his neck.

Bill Winters was a steer roper in the days when they roped the big ones.  He won the world championship in Oklahoma City in 1905, losing it the same year in San Antonio to Ellison Carroll who held it until it was ruled out of Texas.  Mr. Winters and his son John, now county tax collector, went to the World's Fair in St. Louis, after he was selected to represent Texas on that occasion to do exhibition roping.

Gus Pickett (Negro) was to throw the cattle with his teeth and Bugger Red Privitt was to ride broncos but Mr. Winters was arrested by the humane society, says John, for cruelty to the cattle and told to come home!

Winters married Zoe Ella Smith, who was born in Upshur County, near Gilmer, in 1875, but reared in Parker County.  They married in Weatherford in 1894.  Their children:  Fay Winters (deceased), Ita Winters Holloway of Kerrville; William Guy Winters (deceased); Lila Winters Smith of Shawnee, Oklahoma; John Richard Winters, Palo Pinto; Wilma Winters Gossett of Denver.