Fifty Years in Texas: The Diaries of Judge John A. Rutherford

John A. Rutherford came with his family to the Direct area from Tennessee in 1835, a few months before the Texas Revolution. When Lamar County was formed in 1842, he was elected its Chief Justice by the Republic of Texas Congress. He was a surveyor, a farmer, and the first schoolteacher in Honey Grove. Taking his land grant along Red River and east of Petty, he became a wealthy man for his time. Though he opposed secession, he lost two sons in the Civil War. After the conflict, he began writing a daily diary which he kept until his death. It paints a marvelous picture of farm life in post-war Northeast Texas. In it, he mentions over 500 people who lived in and passed through the Petty area, many of whom stayed at the inn he and his sons ran. Although proudly proclaiming himself an atheist, he was the most moral of men, and being one of its earliest settlers, he helped build Lamar County.