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Tompkinses, on my mother's side, was with Gen. George Washington at the battles of Brandywine, Monmouth, and Valley Forge. Maj.-Gen. Samuel Parsons, of Massachusetts, my direct ancestor, was an officer in the Revolution of 1776, and Capt. Parsons was wounded at the battle of Bunker Hill. There are over 90,000 descendents from the original Parsons family in the United States.
My mother died when I was not yet 2 years old, and my father died when I was 5 years of age. Shortly after this my eldest brother, William Henry Parsons, who had married and was then living at Tyler, Tex., became my guardian. He was proprietor and editor of the Tyler Telegraph; that was in 1851-'52-'53. Two years later our family moved west to Johnson county, on the Texas frontier, while the buffalo, antelope, and Indian were in that region. Here we lived, on a range, for about three years, when we moved to Hill county and took up a farm in the valley of the Brazos river. My frontier life had accustomed me to the use of the rifle and the pistol, to hunting and riding, and in these matters I was considered quite an expert. At that time our neighbors did not live near enough to hear each other's dog bark or the cocks crow. It was often five to ten to fifteen miles to the next house. In 1859 I went to Waco, Tex., where, after living with my sister (the wife of Maj. Bird), and going to school, meantime, for almost a year, I was indentured to an apprentice to the Galveston Daily News, and in a year and a half was transformed from a frontier boy into a city civilian. When the slave-holder's Rebellion broke out, in 1861, though quite small and but 13 years old, I joined a local volunteer military company called the "Lone Star Grays." My first military exploit was on the passenger steamer Morgan, where we made a trip out into the gulf of Mexico and intercepted and assisted in the capture of the United States Gen. Twigg' army, which had evacuated the Texas frontier forts and came to the sea coast at Indianola to embark for Washington, D. C.
My next military exploit was a "run-away" trip on my part, for which I received an ear-pulling from my guardian when I re-
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