Harrison Genealogy Repository

Notes

Son of James Sampson Harp b 1751 and Sarah Tudor b 1751.

The Harps go back to the Earp family. ^[S1024]

Notes

Robert and Elizabeth (Cureton) Harrison probably lived on the Maud's Neck land of his father in the early days of their marriage, where Robert and Sally Harrison, the two eldest of the five children, were born, their births being recorded in the Cureton Bible. In 1760 Robert Harrison purchased the 600 acre plantation, with house and dependencies, orchards and gardens, on Tar Bay on the south side of the James River, from Benjamin Harrison.

"Recently the record of a suit was discovered, John Syme vs. Robert Harrison, for payment of a debt of some 700 pounds, with Robert's father and elder brother as security, resulting from complex transactions concerning mortgages on the land and slaves of Robert Harrison by John Syme. Robert died in 1770 and the case Harrison vs. Harrison was settled in the Court of Appeals of Virginia on Friday, Oct.18, 1799, after the Revolution, and recorded in Call's Virginia Reports, Vol. 1, p.419, conclusive evidence that Robert Harrison of the Prince George County family was not the son of Benjamin of the Charles City County Harrison family."

Will of Robert Harrison:

In the name of God, amen etc ... to my son Robert Harrison all the money that I lent him to pay for the plantation known as "Huntington" which is about 200 pounds current money.... to daughter Sally Mattox 200 pounds etc..... to daughter Mary Harrison 200 pounds etc. . . "as for my daughter Susanna who took up with that infamous fellow Jesse Binford I intend no benefit of my estate" the residue of the estate being divided between his other four children: Robert, Sally, Mary and Duke. (Note: No wife is named in the will.)

The will is dated Jan.15, 1787, son Robert Harrison and William Wilkins Sr. being named executors. Will proved in the Prince George Co. Court Feb.10, 1789.

On Aug. 25,1791, the negroes of the decd. Robert Harrison were divided among the five children (Acctg. and Division of Negroes, Va. ^{[S944] [S944] [S944]}

Notes

He and his wife had six children

Mary Knox Boles writes: "Family history told me as a child that William Henry and Robert Henry were cousins. My grandmother Knox who was this Robert Henry's daughter also spoke of Admiral Byrd as a cousin."

Handbook of Texas Online: HARRISON, ROBERT HENRY (1826-1905). Robert Henry Harrison, son of Jesse and Margaret (Hulce) Harrison, was born at Gainesville, Georgia, on November 13, 1826. The family moved to Tennessee in 1829. Harrison studied medicine in his father's infirmary, at a medical college in Cincinnati, Ohio, and at Mobile Medical College in Alabama. He practiced and taught medicine in Tennessee from 1846 to the mid-1850s. On May 5, 1855, he married Martha Virginia Towell at Covington, Tennessee. He moved to Shelby County, Tennessee, where he became a merchant and opened mills, which he operated until April 1861, when he organized an artillery company for the Confederate Army. During the Civil Warqv he was captured and imprisoned for twenty-one months before being exchanged and promoted to colonel. After discharge in June 1865 he found his mills destroyed and moved to Newton County, Tennessee. In 1869 Harrison settled on property near Columbus, Texas. He returned to Mobile, Alabama, for additional medical training in 1873 and then resumed the practice of medicine at Columbus. He was vice president of the Texas Medical Associationqv in 1875 and president in 1876-77. From 1880 to 1886 he was medical director and chief surgeon at the hospital operated by the Galveston, Harrisburg and San Antonio Railway (later Southern Pacific) at Columbus, which treated 800 patients a year from throughout southern Texas. At the time of the Galveston hurricane of 1900qv he set up a temporary hospital in the city hall to repay aid that Galveston had sent him during a yellow fever epidemic at Columbus in 1873. Harrison contributed professional articles to the Memphis Medical Journal and to the Transactions of the State Medical Association. His horse-raising enterprise at his Beacon Hill Blood Stock Farm near Columbus was one of the most productive businesses in the county. The 2,000-acre farm was equipped with some of the finest stables and training facilities in the state, including a 200-acre racetrack complex. He and his wife had six children, one of whom, Robert Henry, Jr., graduated from the Medical College of Cincinnati and practiced medicine in Texas. Harrison died at Columbus on October 7, 1905, and was buried there.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Colorado County Historical Commission, Colorado County Chronicles from the Beginning to 1923 (2 vols., Austin: Nortex, 1986). Mary Hinton, Weimar, Texas: First 100 Years, 1873-1973 (Austin: Von Boeckmann-Jones, 1973). Memorial and Genealogical Record of Southwest Texas (Chicago: Goodspeed, 1894; rpt., Easley, South Carolina: Southern Historical Press, 1978). George Plunkett [Mrs. S. C.] Red, The Medicine Man in Texas (Houston, 1930). ^{[S333] [S860] [S333]}