Real Family History & Genealogy

Richard (Dick) Real was the son Edward real and Sarah Portman. Richard was born Nov 10,1813 in North Carolina and died after 1887 in Montgomery County, Texas.

He purchased numerous tracts of land in 1841 in Chickasaw County and Columbus County, MS. He was a wild-catter in the oilfields and bought and sold land with his son Jesse Malachi Real # 1 in Texas and also bought and donated land for the Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Keechi, TX.

He married Lucrecia Lewis on Sep 1,1836 in Winston County, MS. She was born in 1815. Marriage Record Book #1, pg. 33; Bondsman Thomas Jones. Married by Benjamin Prestidge. Attachment to application: Lucrecia Lewis is the daughter of E. Lewis.

Richard Real, his wife Lucrecia Lewis, four of their seven children; Jesse Malachi # 1, b. 1847, Edward (Ed) b. 1852, Thomas b.1853, Missouri America b.1854 and Richard's 71 year old father Edward Real came to Texas on a wagon train ca 1861 and settled in Keechi, Leon County, Texas.

Richard and Lucrecia Real's son Thomas died of “the fever” on the trip to Texas. When and where is unknown.

Richard and Lucrecia other daughters; Sarah b.1837 and Margaret b.1839 Real married brothers Mike and Sam Austin and stayed in Mississippi. Nancy Josephine b. 1841 married and moved to Ohio.

The Real's were independent types who usually moved on to the next frontier as soon as civilization came too close.

Below is a transcribed copy of a letter Richard wrote to his brother Henry back in Alabama. It was sent to me by Frazier Real. Parts of the letter was missing. The words in parenthesis is my interpretation of what may have been said.

Keechi Leon Co., Texas March 2nd 1879

Dear Brother

I wrote to you sometime ago but have not received any answer from you yet and I thought I would write again as I could not imagine what was the reason you did not write. I have been looking for you to come to this country all the winter but as you have not got here yet I guess that you will not come soon but I would like for you to come as soon as you can. Jessey is doing well he lives about 5 miles from me. Ed is living near me about ½ mile. They are both on places of their own they are both well. Ed is not married yet. Henry I fear that you have forgotten me and the pleasure that we have had together please write to me and tell all about how you are getting along and all about the Estate to what they are doing with it try to keep me posted as well as you can give me the Administraters name and address in full {I} {seem to have} forgotten it if the money is dollars {please write to} me and I will get you to receive my {share and you can} come to this country and bring {my share to} me. I have nothing of interest {to write.}

Close for this time write news to your brother.

Richard Real

Source: The Real Family Album written by Sue Real Mullins. Copyright © 2004 by Sue Real Mullins, P.O.Box 67, Crockett, TX. 75835.

As told to Sue Mullins by Cecil Verlon Brown:.....
"Verlon" was the son of Susan (Susie Bell) Real Brown Perry and grandson of Jesse Malachi Real # 2.
Verlon served on the front lines in Korea with the Navy and the US Army in World War II. In the Army his job was dozer operator. Part of his job on the front lines was digging mass graves for the dead soldiers. He had to dig the deep holes then using the dozer blade, had to push all the dead soldiers into the big holes which served as mass burial sites. There was so much shooting and shelling going on that in most cases the soldiers were not allowed to individually place each body into the holes.
One time when Verlon came home to Montgomery County, Texas on leave he went to see his Uncle Allen Zachariah (A.Z.) Real who owned a sawmill. Well I guess that Verlon was enjoying his leave so much that he just plum forgot what day it was because one day while out at the mill he looked up and saw two MP's heading toward him. Verlon took off running around the blade cutting area with the MP's chasing and trying to corner him. All of a sudden he stopped at the big saw blade and stuck both his hands to the huge sawmill blade and cut off all his fingers. (Someone had told him that if he could not fire a gun that the Army would discharge him)
As soon as he was well enough the Army placed a rifle in his hands. The nubs that were left on his hands were long enough (one joint) to reach the trigger on the rifle so they sent him once again back to the front lines as a dozer operator.
Every few months Verlon got into just enough trouble to stay in the brig so he would not have to go back to the dozer.
The Army refused his mental disability discharge and instead gave him a dishonorable discharge and sent him home.
After he was discharged from the Army he came home severely depressed and would sit and cry for days and weeks at a time. It took awhile but soon he started to pull out of his depression (or cover it).
He became the best prankster anyone could ever want to meet. He was always laughing, always trying to cheer people up, always had a joke to tell. He was one of the best, and most respected men I have ever known. Now looking back on it, the best prank he ever pulled was…..
One time when he and my mother (Daisy Lee Real) were outside and everyone else was busy on the other side of the house he told my mother that he wanted to take her picture on a gentle old milk cow.
My mother at that time was a city gal and her trouble was that she could not tell a gentle old milk cow from a bucking long horn bull. She figured that if the old milk cow was just standing there then it must be O'K and that everyone must ride this old cow.
He put her on the bull, it started to buck, she started to scream, Verlon fell on the ground laughing and she flew off. Everyone came running to see what the screaming was all about. They had to pull her off Verlon. After that, every time someone saw her that had heard about her “famous ride” they would moo-o-o her.
Verlon died of a heart attack in 1991. He is buried in Pilgreen Cemetery, Montgomery County, Texas.

Source: The Real Family Album written by Sue Real Mullins. Copyright © 2004 by Sue Real Mullins, P.O.Box 67, Crockett, TX. 75835.

John Luther lived in Montgomery County, Texas. He was the son of Jesse Malachi Real # 1 and Susan Frances Neal. Uncle Johnnie was born in Keechi, Leon County, TX. on Nov 30, 1878, and died in New Caney, Montgomery, TX. on March 29, 1959. His wife was Lottie Elezzbbech Wiggins, born Nov 30,1888 and died Feb 12,1919. John and Lottie are buried side by side in Dry Creek Cemetery, Montgomery County, TX.
Uncle Johnnie was so well liked that not only family but others as well called him "Uncle Johnnie".
While living in a little sawmill town of Waukegan, Montgomery County, Texas, he was the assistant manager of the sawmill commissary.
He owned the first and maybe the only taxi service in Waukegan. Before anyone else owned a car John Luther had the first one in town. He hired a man to run a jitney service (a taxi that charges 5 cents) with his car from Waukegan to Conroe. Before long he had to buy another car because some people were demanding to ride in style into Conroe to shop and didn't want to ride the train.

Quote from Joyce Blackmon, John's grand daughter: Mother used to tell me about going to town with Papa, and his habit of thinking the car would follow the road just like his horse. She said they spent a lot of time getting the car out of the woods or the ditch because he just couldn't steer it. One time, after they finally got to town, Mother was lying on the back seat, and the car salesman came up to Uncle Johnnie and told him about a new car called a "roadster" and that he really should get one. Mother, being sick and tired of hauling the car out of roadside thickets and such, raised up and said, "Papa, let's get one of those roadsters; I'm so tired of this woodster."

Source: The Real Family Album written by Sue Real Mullins. Copyright © 2004 by Sue Real Mullins, P.O.Box 67, Crockett, TX. 75835.

True to her word, in the year about 1865, Susan was 19 years old and Jesse was 18 years old, Susan Frances Neal married Jesse Malachi Real. They had six living children, Marion Francis, Josephine Evaline, Susan Frances, John Luther, Emma Ann and Jesse Malachi Real, # 2.

They lived in Keechi, Leon County, Texas where their family grew up. They lived on a farm. Susan cooked on a fire in the fireplace. Their house had a mud roof and a dirt floor.

In a few months they bought a cook stove and also a sewing machine. They were the first family to own a sewing machine in that part of the country.

Susan had a spinning wheel she spun thread on to knit socks and stockings. She wove the thread into cloth for making clothes. The thread was made from the cotton they raised. Her work seemed to never end. Her days were long and hard. It was not uncommon for her to still be working after her family was asleep in bed. Her duties, as was all the frontier women, was to have children to work the land. She also produced the family's food and clothing. She planted, plowed, harvested and cooked the food for her family. She planted, raised, picked, cleaned the cotton and spun it into thread to make the cloth to sew the clothes to clothe her family. She pressed the cottonseed to make cooking oil, margarine and soap. After the oil was removed she ground the seed to make seed meal to feed the cows, horses and sheep. She had to be teacher and nurse for her children, her husband and often for the children of neighboring families when the men and other women shared the work of the homestead.

The family raised all their food and had fruit trees. They preserved fruit and put it in large churns and crocks. It would keep for months without spoiling.

Susan Frances Neal Real was said to have started labor pains while plowing in the field. She walked back to the house, had her baby, (Jesse Malachi Real, # 2) washed up, took her baby and went back to the field to finish her plowing.

Jesse Malachi Real, # 1, was a man of many talents. He and his son Jesse, # 2 were considered to be the best fiddlers in the family. His life and adventures included being an expert horseman, a pony express rider, and a farmer. He also owned numerous sawmills, J.M. Real Lumber Company, with his son Jesse Malachi Real # 2. With his father Richard, he was a wildcatter in the oilfields of East Texas. He was a deeply religious Baptist man. And from what I've been told he was a faithful loving husband and father. Maybe that's why Susan was so willing to pack up and follow him anywhere.

Edward Real, Richard Real and Jesse Malachi Real # 1 bought and donated land to build and helped to build the first church in Keechi, Leon County, Texas. It was the Mt. Zion Baptist Church of Keechi. They along with Jesse's wife Susan Frances Neal Real and David Recknor were original charter members of the church.

Soon Jesse Malachi Real, # 1 and Susan Frances Neal Real decided to move their family, including his parents, Richard and Lucrecia, from Leon County Texas.

In about 1881 they loaded all their worldly possessions, sewing machine and cook stove, into their covered wagon, tied the milk cow to the back of the wagon and set out on the trail again.

There was still a lot of country to be seen.

Source: The Real Family Album written by Sue Real Mullins. Copyright © 2004 by Sue Real Mullins, P.O.Box 67, Crockett, TX. 75835.

Susan Frances Neal's family had sold the farm, commissary and the saloon. They had been waiting on the wagon train.

Jane McGuffin Neal Recknor (Susan's mother) and her new family reluctantly gave up their wait for her two boys (The Neal boys) to return home.

They loaded everything their covered wagons could carry, including wagons loaded with barrels of whiskey to trade for land in Texas.

Susan, her mother Jane, her stepfather David Recknor, her brothers and her sister Menerva Evalina Neal were headed to Texas.

Many people died on the wagon train. Drownings at river crossings, dysentery, cholera, injury, pneumonia and “the fever” were common killers on the trail. The men often suffered accidental gunshot wounds. Pregnant women died in childbirth.

Richard and Lucrecia Lewis Real's son Thomas died of “the fever” on the trip to Texas. When and where is unknown.

The wagon train started its trip in the springtime so hopefully they would be at the end of their journey by fall.

The trip was devastatingly hard. They awoke at four a.m. so they could be rolling by seven a.m. They paused for ten minutes each hour to rest the livestock. At eleven a.m. they stopped for what was called a “nooning”. They had a meal, greased the wheels and checked the wagons, did other chores, perhaps got some much needed rest and by two p.m. were back on the trail again. They kept rolling as long as they could, sometimes well into the night. Faced with scorching heat, violent storms and scarce water these brave frontier settlers still managed to covered an average of fifteen miles a day. At night the wagons were pulled into a circle that would provide some defense in case of an Indian attack.

The Indians were wild and hostile. They attacked the wagon train. They stole horses, burned wagons, killed the men and kidnapped the women and children. Someone always sat guard at night.
The Indians came and asked for food and chattered words Edward Real and the others could not understand.

The wagon train stopped on the banks of the treacherous, swirling river and the weary settlers wondered how they would ever cross that huge gap of water with no bridge and high steep banks blocking their way. Winter was closing in and bad weather would soon be upon them. The settlers were not willing to go out of their way to find a more suitable crossing. They had come too far to turn back now. Could they find a way to cross the river?

These families were strong, determined, pioneer stock.

Soon the men, women and children were all working side by side. They cut down and trimmed trees.

Susan Frances Neal and Lucrecia Lewis Real could handle an axe and saw as well as any man.

Dirt was removed from the steep banks and fashioned into slopes on which they could lower the wagons down to the lower banks with ropes. The trees were made into rafts and placed near the water's edge. Someone had to swim the treacherous river currents to the other side with a rope and tie it to a tree or some other suitable anchor. When all the work was done, the wagons were loaded onto the rafts and, using the ropes, were pulled across the river with great difficulty. Sometimes if the river was calm, or there were no trees nearby, they removed the wheels from the wagons and floated them to the opposite bank. When the wagons got stuck in the mud they hitched two, sometimes more, teams of mules or oxen to the wagon and the men, women and children all had to help push it through the mud.

The larger wagon was about 10x4x2 feet and pulled by a team of six mules or oxen. The wagons were awkward, heavy and rough riding. They were filled with all their worldly processions and a food supply that had to last for the whole trip.

The food supply consisted of 150 pounds of flour for each adult, 5 pounds of baking soda, 10 pounds of jerky, 40 pounds of bacon, 40 pounds of dried fruit, 40 pounds of sugar, 40 pounds of coffee, along with rice, yeast, vinegar and molasses.

Between the laughing and the crying, the living and the dying, the singing and the sighing, the wagon wheels rolled on.

Source: The Real Family Album written by Sue Real Mullins. Copyright © 2003 by Sue Real Mullins, P.O.Box 67, Crockett, TX. 75835.

Johnnie Malachi Real like his father, Jesse Malachi Real # 2, and his brother Allen Zachariah (A.Z.) Real owned sawmills.

You might say the Reals have sawdust instead of blood running through their veins.

Johnnie Malachi Real owned a large sawmill in Security, Montgomery County, Texas.

In the early 1960's he heard that the state of Colorado was in dire need of sawmills. Supposedly in Colorado you could make as much money in one year as you could make in Montgomery County, Texas in ten years. That was just too much temptation. This was one opportunity he wasn't going to let slip by. If they could work there for two years he would have it made.

He decided he needed a change. He hired the mill hands that wanted to go and they loaded his complete sawmill onto old logging trucks and headed for Colorado.

It was like a wagon train. Grandpa Jesse, #1 and the other ancestors would have been proud of him.

There was Johnnie Malachi, his wife Vera, their daughters, Arvenia, Betty Jean, Brenda Joyce and Barbara Lou along with 22 logging trucks loaded with equipment, 14 cars, 10 pickups, 50 drivers / mill hands and families of the mill hands.

Some of the logging trucks were new but most were old and needed engine repair. They went up the mountains, over the mountains and down the mountains. They finally made it to the top of the mountain near the Denver area after two weeks of traveling time, break downs and car sickness.

It was the end of summer and the mountains were beautiful. They knew this was going to be a great two years.

They got the trucks unloaded and the mill set up. It was time to get to work cutting, sawing and plaining the timber.

I don't know if it was the light headedness from the high altitude, the colds, the fever, the cold blisters, the frost bite, the shortness of breathe, the double and triple layers of clothing or if everyone was just plain homesick. After four months of Colorado mountain winter weather, Malachi sold his complete sawmill where it stood.

He was back in Montgomery County, Texas three days later.

That was the last of the sawmill business for any of the Real's.

Source: The Real Family Album written by Sue Real Mullins. Copyright © 2003 by Sue Real Mullins, P.O.Box 67, Crockett, TX. 75835.

Jesse Malachi Real # 2 was the sort of person that would give you the shirt off his back if you needed it. His favorite thing to do was ride his horse, “Old Dan 2nd ”, and play his fiddle. His favorite snack was bowls of fresh churned butter.

I remember many days when I was about three years old that he and I would sit on the door steps and he would share his butter with me. He would sneak the butter out of the house when he thought Grandma and Mama weren't watching, but sometimes I would see them sneak up to the door checking on us.

The sawmill / oilfield town of Wigginsville, Texas was a town of heartache and heart- break for the Real family.

Just a couple of years earlier (Dec.17,1948), Allen Zachariah (A.Z.) {Jesse Malachi's son} and Daisy Real's twenty month old daughter Barbara Allen had died.

The date was Wednesday, January 11, 1950. It was a cold stormy night. Grandpa Jesse was worried because “Old Dan 2nd” was throwing a fit. The lightning was streaking across the sky and the thunder was booming. Old Dan sounded as if the devil himself were after him. He was rearing up, stomping the ground and trying to kick his corral down. This went on for a few minutes then he would quiet down.

Grandpa Jesse looked out the windows and the door but could see nothing wrong outside. Even though it wasn't like Old Dan, Grandpa figured he was just upset about the storm. Finally Grandpa decided he had to go outside to try to soothe his horse. Old Dan was his baby. He had raised him from a colt. Old Dan would make noises like he was begging every time Grandpa left the house and he couldn't go with him.

Daddy told Grandpa not to go outside in the bad storm because there was nothing wrong with the horse except he was spoiled and probably just wanted to come into the house with Grandpa. They laughed about the joke as Grandpa walked out the door. When Grandpa did not immediately come back into the house, Daddy told Mama that Grandpa was probably telling that old horse a bedtime story. Grandpa had been outside for awhile when Old Dan started having another fit.

Daddy knew something must be wrong and ran out the door toward the corral. He found Grandpa Jesse lying dead on the ground outside the corral, his head in a pool of blood, with a hammer laying beside his body.

It is told in the family that Jesse had information about a murder and that was why he was killed.

His death was ruled a stroke.

Source: The Real Family Album written by Sue Real Mullins. Copyright © 2003 by Sue Real Mullins, P.O.Box 67, Crockett, TX. 75835.

Grandpa (Jesse Malachi Real # 2) once told me that when he was a kid, they didn't have all the fancy doctors and hospitals like we do now, they had an illness called the “sleeping sickness”.

They buried people with a breathing pipe and a bell so they would know if the person woke up after they were buried.

He said the “sleeping sickness” caused a person's blood pressure and pulse to drop so low that you could not find it. Their breathing became so shallow it would not even show on a mirror. They thought the person was dead so they buried them.

One time they were having a funeral for a man they thought was dead. They had already put the wooden box (coffin) into the ground and was covering it with when all of a sudden they heard pounding on the box and yelling coming from the hole in the ground. They pried the lid off the box and sure enough the man was still alive. Grandpa said, “the women started dropping like flies”. Four of them fainted at the sight of the “dead man” climbing out of his coffin. So that after that funeral they started burying people with a pipe sticking out of the grave (breathing pipe) and a bell attached to the above ground end of the pipe. A string was tied to the bell and the other end of the string was ran through the pipe into the coffin. This was so that if the person was not really dead when he was buried the pipe furnished air for them to breath and they could pull the string to ring the bell so someone would know they were alive.

For three or four days after the next few funerals some one would sit guard of the bell, waiting to see if it rang.

Grandpa said there were a few rambunctious boys that when they were bored would hide in the cemetery and ring the bells so they could watch the town folks come running to the cemetery. After the whippings with a razor strap it only happened a couple of times. He would not say if he was one of the boys.

Note: There are several breathing pipe graves is in the old Bohemia Cemetery in Groveton, Trinity County, Texas.

Source: The Real Family Album written by Sue Real Mullins. Copyright © 2003 by Sue Real Mullins, P.O.Box 67, Crockett, TX. 75835.

Malachi and Vera lived in Wigginsville, Montgomery County, Texas. Malachi's brother, Allen Zachariah {A.Z.} Real, and his wife Daisy, lived next door. Malachi had a horse he kept in a corral in the front yard. He had no barn so he kept the horse feed barrel in the house in a corner of the living room. When it was feeding time they would go in the front door, get a bucket of feed and head straight to the corral to feed the horse. One particular night their children were asleep in the living room. About two in the morning, Malachi and Vera awoke to a loud, crashing noise. Remembering their children were asleep in the living room and fearing for their safety, Malachi grabbed his gun and ran toward the living room. The noise had been so loud that it woke A.Z. and Daisy next door. A.Z. fearing the worst for his brother's family, came running with his shotgun to help Malachi fend off the intruders. Malachi and A.Z. got to the living room at the same time. They discovered the children awake and laughing and the horse standing in the corner eating from the feed barrel. The horse had kicked in the front door to get to his feed.

The families arrived and settled in Leon County, Texas.

In about 1861, “Young Jesse”, (Jesse Malachi Real #1) as he was called, lied about his age and became a "PONY EXPRESS" rider. He carried the mail from Leon County Texas to the Ft. Worth / Dallas, Texas areas. He also carried the mail from Leon County Texas to Houston County Texas before the stage lines. He had to have the mail in Houston County by 6:00 pm. He would head back to Leon County, at 6:00 am the next morning.

He was a true cowboy and an expert horseman.

Jesse was riding through Indian country when a renegade war party chased him. He managed to get away but his horse (Old Dan) tripped and fell on him. Young Jesse broke his leg but finished his mail run with the mail along with his scalp.

After his pony express adventure Jesse joined the “Frontiers”.

Source: The Real Family Album written by Sue Real Mullins. Copyright © 2003 by Sue Real Mullins, P.O.Box 67, Crockett, TX. 75835.

While in Tamina, Jesse and Mary Neal Real's son Johnnie Malachi Real met Olive Vera Bebee, daughter of Charlie Bebee and Mary "Mae" Sise Bebee.

When Malachi told Vera's mother that he wanted to marry Vera, her mother said that she did not have any shoes to wear to the wedding and that if Malachi wanted to marry Vera he would have to the mother a pair of shoes. She wanted a pair of red shoes.

Well, the only place to buy a pair of red shoes was on the other side of the river.

Malachi thought about what Vera's mother had said. He knew the nearest safe crossing was farther than he wanted to walk. When after about a month of trying to convince Vera's mother to change her mind about the red shoes Malachi finally jumped into the swirling river to swim to the other side. He fought the currents and barely made it to the other side alive. He bought the red shoes, swam back across the river with the red shoes tied safely to his body under his shirt.

He married Olive Vera Bebee and Mary Sise Bebee wore her red shoes to her daughter's wedding.

They were married forty-five years until his death.

Source: The Real Family Album written by Sue Real Mullins. Copyright © 2003 by Sue Real Mullins, P.O.Box 67, Crockett, TX. 75835.

One day in the year 1861 Susan Frances Neal and her sister Menerva Evalina Neal were sitting outside at the family farm in Many Louisiana when two men came riding up.

The two men were Richard Real and his young son Jesse Malachi Real, # 1. They were traveling with their family. Richard Real, his wife Lucrecia Lewis, and four of their seven children, Jesse Malachi # 1, b, 1847, Edward (Ed) b. 1852, Thomas b.1853, Missouri America b.1854 and Richard's 71 year old father Edward Real were on a wagon train headed for Texas. One daughter Nancy Josephine Real, born 1841, married and moved to another state. Sarah, born 1837, and Margaret, born 1839, Real married the Mike and Sam Austin brothers and stayed in Mississippi.

The Real's were independent types who usually moved on to the next frontier as soon as civilization came too close.

They were camped just outside Many, Louisiana near the Neal farm. The Real family had come from Chickasaw / Choctaw Territory, Pontotoc County, Mississippi. They stopped at the farm to buy corn.

Susan commented to her sister Menerva that she was going to marry that boy. Her sister told her that she was crazy because she did not even know that boy.

Source: The Real Family Album written by Sue Real Mullins. Copyright © 2003 by Sue Real Mullins, P.O.Box 67, Crockett, TX. 75835.