James Monroe Tullis Family
of Cherokee County, Texas

Photos and information provided by Edgar & Nancy Bice and Susan (Bice) Bulcken, Dickinson, TX (sbulcken @ aol.com); Family Bible provided by Barbara Clark (clark3637 @ aol.com)

Editor’s Note: In the last issue of this newsletter, we had an article about Thomas Monroe Tullis and his family of Cherokee County, Texas. Now we step back a generation and look more at the family of his father, James Monroe Tullis (1839-1879).

James Monroe Tullis was born 27 January 1839 in Coosa County, Alabama, a son of Newell Tullis (1799 - 1873) and Mary Elizabeth White Rainey (1801 - aft. 1841). The birth of James was recorded in the Family Bible of his parents, which was published in Family Puzzlers, Aug 30, 1979, No. 619, p. 19. On 15 July 1858, James married Nancy Ann Harvey in Rusk Co and they appear there in the 1860 census. James and Nancy had two daughters, Julia Ann and Addie. Along with his brother, Gilbert Gibson Tullis (b. 1835), James served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War in Waul’s Texas Legion, Company E. Shortly after the war, Nancy died on 22 April 1867. On 5 Nov. 1868, James married Mary Elizabeth Singletary (b. 1845) and by 1870 they had settled in neighboring Cherokee County, where they appear in the census. James and Mary Elizabeth had five children: George A. (abt. 1870 - bef. 1880), Thomas Monroe (1871-1921), Peggy Ann (1873-1943), Henry Singletary (1876-1915), and James Johnson (1879-1956). James Monroe Tullis died at the age of 40 on 5 March 1879, a month before the birth of his youngest child, James.

Mary Elizabeth Singletary (1845-1920), second wife of James Monroe Tullis. After the death of James, she married Tom McClure and had four more children. (Full-sized image)

Henry Singletary Tullis (22 Nov 1876 - 26 Dec 1915), a son of James Monroe Tullis and Mary Elizabeth Singletary. In 1906 he was a Sergeant in the U.S. Army. (Full-sized image)

Family Bible of the James Monroe Tullis Family

Editor’s Note: I’m very grateful to Barbara Clark for allowing me to borrow the Bible to scan these pages.

Note that the Bible itself has a printing date of 1873, indicating that the earliest entries were retrospective.

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Family Group Sheet

Obituaries