R.F. Spearman, who served as Alderman for the City of Greenville, County Attorney, and attorney for the Federal Land Bank in Houston in 1923.
Over the last 170 years, there have been some very interesting people who lived here in Greenville. The vast majority is unknown today, which is definitely a shame. One of the men who was well known throughout Texas and much of the United States was Robert F. Spearman, whom I wrote about last week.
Spearman was born in Grayson County in 1862. By the mid-1880s he relocated to Greenville where he pursued the legal profession. In November 1888 he married Miss Fannie Henslee. They were the parents of two daughters, Winnie and Marguerite.
Spearman served as Alderman for the City of Greenville, County Attorney, and attorney for the Federal Land Bank in Houston in 1923. In between these appointments, he practiced law here in Greenville. He was an ardent Prohibition Democrat who strongly supported Cone Johnson of Tyler and Texas Senator Joe W. Bailey.
Twice in his career he was appointed Special Counsel to the United States Court of Claims. The first time he heard Indian Depredation Claims and the second time he heard Confiscation of Cotton Claims, reported last week. Spearman reportedly told an interesting story he heard while serving on the Indian Depredation Claims Court. The incident occurred near Beaver, Utah sometime prior to 1890. A rancher, his wife, their two children, and a guest found themselves completely surrounded unfriendly Indians in the isolated ranch house. The intruders killed the guest. Fearing the worst, but hoping to save the children, the rancher lowered them from a window with directions to go straight to the nearly by canyon. There they were to follow the canyon to the town of Beaver and alert the townspeople.
When the two reached the canyon, the five-year-old boy told his twelve-year-old sister to stay on one side of the canyon while he traveled on the opposite. In doing so, if one were captured, the other could continue on to Beaver. Fortunately, the two children made it safely into town where a local posse was organized to return to the ranch and rescue the husband and wife. Spearman was most impressed with the alert thinking of the young boy and told the story often.
I was impressed that he served on the United States Court of Claims. Created in 1855 to ease petitions to Congress regarding payments to citizens and countries with claims against the United States, the Court was not able to render final judgments until 1866. Over the years I have used the Southern Claims Commission files from the Court of Claims for genealogical research and lectures. They are literally gold mines of personal information from pro-Union Southerners during the Civil War. I plan to investigate Indian Depredation Claims and Cotton Confiscation files for future lectures.
Spearman had a very successful legal career. So it seemed unusual to me that he did not rate a long obituary in the Greenville newspapers when he died on July 4, 1932. He and his wife were living in Marshall with their surviving daughter and her husband. His body was brought back to Greenville where he was buried at East Mount Cemetery on July 5th. The only item I found in the one extant newspaper was that he died and was buried. How sad!