Stone Gardens: Greenbury Fields grew up in Benton County bu made his mark as a cattleman in the heart of Texas

Greenbury Washington Fields, known throughout north and central Texas as G.W., was born on September 22, 1849, in Santa Fe, Maury County, Tennessee, the second child and eldest son of Abraham Abel Fields and Louisa Virginia Thurmond.

The given name Greenbury sounds unusual now, yet it was not rare in the nineteenth-century South, where families often used surnames and patriotic names as first names

. Green appeared on boys’ birth records across Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, and neighboring states, sometimes honoring the Revolutionary general Nathanael Greene, whose name was frequently shortened to Green in family use.

Washington followed the same custom of naming sons after the first president. Together the names marked him as a child of that place and time. In daily life he went by G.W., and he later passed the Green to a son, William Green Fields. His brother Novel, or Norvell, likewise carried a family name from the Thurmond side.

Abraham Abel Fields

Abel, a farmer descended from early Tennessee settlers, and Virginia, who had been born in Albemarle County, Virginia, raised their children on the family land in middle Tennessee.

Green spent his boyhood there with his older sister Mary Catherine and the brothers and sisters who followed: Macarina

, Novel Thurmond, the twins James Anderson and Martha Jane, and later children born after the family left Tennessee.

Formal schooling was limited, as it was for most farm boys of that time. He learned livestock, land, and self-reliance from the work itself.

About 1859 or 1860, when Green was eleven, the family left Tennessee. They crossed the Mississippi by barge, one enslaved person with them, and settled for a time in Sarcoxie, Jasper County, Missouri. The 1860 census recorded Abel there.

The Civil War years brought violence to that border country. Jayhawkers and bushwhackers operated nearby, and regular fighting took place at Carthage. Family memory holds that

they once fled across a river and looked back to see their house burning, set by Union soldiers.

Around 1865 they moved again, into what was then Washington County, later Benton County, and made their home in Osage Township near the mills on Osage Creek.

Abel’s health was already failing. No land deed in his name has been found, and family tradition says any claim he might have held was taken in the disorder after the war.

The 1870 census listed him as a farmer, fifty-five years old, with Virginia, Macarina, Novel, and James still at home. Youngest daughter Laura Francis was born there in May 1867. Abel died intestate on March 1, 1872, and was buried at Osage.

Green spent his late teens and early twenties in that neighborhood. He courted Frances Julia Farmer of Osage Mills, born March 5, 1849, to William H. Farmer, known as Wade, and Elizabeth.

Wade Farmer had come from Bledsoe County, Tennessee, in 1840 and married Elizabeth in 1844. He lived for years just west of Bentonville and later near Colville, three miles west of Lowell.

On October 1, 1866, the Benton County court paid Frances for appearing as a witness.

Courtship included a footrace Green ran for her hand. They married at Bentonville on January 13, 1870.

That same day they loaded a wagon and started for Texas. Wade gave his daughter a dowry of seven- hundred- dollars.

The young married couple would move to desolate and often sagebrush country in an effort to lead the way for numerous pioneers

Mary Catherine Fields Dunn

Some of the family remained in Benton County. Mary Catherine Fields married J. H. Dunn there on September 27, 1870. Wade Farmer stayed a respected citizen until his death on March 2, 1907, at nearly ninety, and was buried at Oakley Chapel Cemetery.

His second wife, Rutha, lived on in the area for many years.

Osage Mills, once a stage stop and a milling center used by both armies, slowly faded, yet Farmer kin and a few Fields connections kept their roots in Benton County long after Green and Frances had gone west.

The young couple first lived in the Dallas and Tarrant County country. Two infant sons, Franklin Pierce and William Green, were born and died there in 1871 and 1872.

They then pushed on into Jack County and settled on the Balch land in an old sandstone rock house that had once been a trading post and Butterfield stage stop.

Comanche raiders still moved through the country and stole horses from time to time. Being on the road that connected the various native tribes criss-crossing the region on hunting expeditions made life at the location particularly harrowing for the young family.

Later they built a house on a nearby hill, modeled after the plantation-style home of Green’s grandfather John Fields in Tennessee, with a wide porch and columns. Lightning destroyed that house in a Texas storm.

Green made his living as a stockman. In 1874 he was among the early members of the Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association and registered his brand, an F with a bar across the top, in Young County.

The ranch on the Balch and Lively Oaks lands became a gathering place. Young men of Jack County competed there in jousting tournaments and polo matches. Sundays meant loading the wagon for church, most likely the Baptist congregation in Bryson.

Green would not bury his people in the nearer Rock Creek Cemetery because of a feud with another family, so the Fields' dead were taken instead to Cottonwood Cemetery.

Ten children were born to Green and Frances. After the two infants lost in Dallas County came Charles Washington in 1875, James Creedy and George Ernest, both of whom died in April 1880, Walter Lee in 1880, Lester Wade in 1882, Verbie Frances in 1883, Fred Wells in 1887, and Tessie Bell in 1889, along with unnamed twin girls who died at birth the same day as Tessie.

Several of the surviving sons stayed in the Bryson country, raised families, and continued the stock-raising life.

Green Washington Fields died in July 1917 at sixty-seven near Bryson and was buried in Cottonwood Cemetery. The cemetery lies on the west side of Jack County, Texas, about two miles east of Bryson and ten miles west of Jacksboro.

. Frances lived until June 29, 1931, and was laid beside him.