Tarrant County TXGenWeb - Isbell Family

Isbell Family

Contributed by
Frank B. Oudkirk, Roswell GA

On the left is George Rufus Isbell with my father, Charles Henry Oudkirk. On the right is George's wife Emma holding Lillian Childress who later married Mr. Beaumont Burgess. She was the daughter of Lillian Isbell Childress. Emma's father was Dr. M. L. Woods (buried Pioneers Rest Cemetery) and he brought the first piano to Fort Worth. The photos were taken in 1905 and 1913 respectively.

George, his brother Rueben Melville and their parents Jane Amanda and Paul Isbell, came to Fort Worth from Todd County KY in 1856 and settled where Carswell Air Force Base later stood. I believe Isbell Road off White Settlement Road used to lead to their farm.

According to the 1877 Fort Worth City Directory George operated a boarding house. The 1878-79 Directory shows that he was also a deputy sheriff.

Dr. Wood's piano is in the Fort Worth Children's Museum but they don't display it any longer.

The G. R. Isbell home was located at 14 E. Weatherford Steet. I never saw it but my father (who is buried in Pioneer Rest Cemetery next to my mother) told me it was on the south side of the street where the school admistration building sits. The photo was taken in 1897 or 1898.

The woman standing on the porch in the white dress is Leta Isbell (my grandmother who is also in Pioneer Rest), standing below her is Lillian Isbell her sister.

[The 1878-79 Fort Worth City Directory locates George residing on the north side of Weatherford Street between Jones and Grove Streets.]

George's mother Jane

I am not sure where Jane or her husband Paul are buried but family legend has it that they are in an overgrown plot off Roaring Springs road on the southeast corner betwween the abandoned RR tracks and 183. If I am ever back there when the vegetation and snakes are in remission in cold weather I plan to relocate the plot. I was there once as a child over 50 years ago with my father but it was so overgrown we couldn't determine what was there except that it was a cemetery.

Mrs. Paul Isbell and her husband
were among the first fifty families of
the old White Settlement area in the
1850's.

[The location discribed above reveals that this is the Thompson Family Cemetery.]

I notice on the back of this photo that it came from the Amon Carter Museum and is titled "Group of Confederate Veterans and Families".

The woman sitting third from left is Jane Isbell and George Rufus is to the left of the two young girls of the first row standing in a hat. I have no date for the photo but Jane Isbell died in 1880 when George was 30.

[The above photograph was much too large to scan in entirity.]

This page last modified on 25 Jul 2002