| Notes |
- Rusk County History, Texas 1982 by Rusk County Historical Commission
William Parnell Bassett, Sr.
In the 1930's and 1940's the Houston Chronicle took each day a surname of an American family and gave a sketch of the history of the name. One day the paper used the name of Bassett. The first information they had on the name was that of a William Bassett (with one T) who came to England from Normandy with William the Conqueror as his chief falconer in 1066. William claimed the English throne and made good his claim at the Battle of Hastings.
In 1870 my grandfather William P. Bassett, Sr., his wife, Vandoosan Jones Bassett, and their eldest son, Therad, came by boat from Selma, Alabama to Shreveport, Louisiana from where they started by wagon to the Temple-Belton, Texas area to settle. When they reached Rusk County, it was spring planting time, so they stayed over and planted a crop in the New Prospect Community. He made such a good crop that year that he decided to stay in Rusk County. He purchased a one hundred and twenty acre farm between what is now FM Road 782 and Mill Creek to the west. He lived here until his death on October 4, 1904. This was about five miles north of the Rusk County Courthouse.
My father, Therad, had changed his name to Sam Houston. He went by this name the rest of his life but was nicknamed "Bunk", which was the name he was better known by.
My grandfather and grandmother had eight more children, four of whom died between the ages of six and ten months. They are buried in the New Prospect Cemtery, and their parents are buried alongside them.
The second son, Rufus Frank, went to Waco, Texas when he was a young man, and when their father died, the other three also moved to Waco. They were Pearl Ward, Emma Crawford, and Lee Bassett.
My father, who married Margaret Eleanor Vison, stayed in Rusk County until 1907 when he moved to Limestone County where he farmed for four years, then to Rusk County. He died in 1945 at the age of seventy-eight, and my mother died in 1956, also seventy-eight years old.
William Parnell, Sr. had married twice before the Civil War and had ten children. Both wives died before the Civil War. He served in the Confederate Army under General Beauregard. I can account for only six of the ten children. They are John, the father of Luther and Tom Bassett of Rusk County; Sallie, who married Bill Vise; Josephine, who married a Lancaster; Ella, who married Gip Vinson, all of Rusk County; Isaac, who settled in Comanche County; and Bob, who settled in Kaufman County.
My immediate family consists of Mary Lee Freeman, Juliet Bozeman, Emma Pearl Wylie, all of Henderson, and John Luell Bassett and myself of the Crims Chapel Community. One brother, Sidney Earl, was killed accidently at fifteen, and another brother, Edgar Houston, died as an infant. My mother and father are buried alongside my two brothers in Crims Chapel Cemetery. Submitted by William P. Bassett
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Bassett Family Association Database
1902 - 1990 (87 years)