Zenobia Barnes and Henry Clay Searcy
We have written before about Brigadier General James W. Barnes, a native of Georgia who came to Texas in 1840. He established a 900 plus acre plantation a short distance southeast of Fanthorp, now Anderson. Barnes wore many hats and served as Brigadier General of the Confederate Army’s Texas Home Guards.
This Sandbar is not about Barnes, but his daughter Zenobia. Born in Oct. 1844 in Grimes County, she as an adult was called “Noni.” Her first husband, Henry Clay Searcy, who she married here in Grimes County on June 27, 1866, brought her to the forefront as a young ‘grass’ widow. Searcy was a young lawyer, born in 1843 in Tennessee, who found his way to Grimes County and served in the Civil War as a Sergeant Major in Company D, 27th Texas Cavalry Regiment.
On Feb. 13, 1868 Searcy was relaxed in a Navasota barber’s chair getting a shave when a man by the name of Dan McKinney entered the shop. McKinney had obviously spent the day drinking in a nearby saloon. Blustering about in the barber shop, he chose Searcy to engage in a boisterous and outrageous argument, making serious threats.
According to a news article in the Navasota Texas Ranger Newspaper, McKinney was reported to be a desperado who had left Austin following an unlawful act.
As the altercation progressed, Searcy reportedly left the shop and returned bearing a double-barreled shotgun. As Searcy entered the barber shop, McKinney shot him in the head with a pistol. He appeared dead as he fell to the floor but recovered enough to be taken to a room where Noni and others were summoned. A friend, Charles Gibbs, rushed to his side. As he lay dying, Searcy muttered to him to “take care of his wife.”
McKinney was apprehended. Enroute to Anderson’s jail, a crowd of “disguised and blackened” armed men overtook the guards to force the killer into their hands. He was hung to a limb, “wherein the rope or limb broke, and he fell to the ground…then was tied and hung over ten feet high and left hanging.”
Searcy was buried on the Barnes plantation near where Barnes son Mark, who died during the Civil War of illness, was buried, and where Barnes himself would be buried at his death in 1892.
On Dec. 8, 1870, Gibbs lived up to Searcy’s wish, marrying widow Noni. They relocated to San Antonio. Gibbs became prominent, first listed employed by the Railroad Land Commission in the 1900 census. Ten years later his occupation is recorded as ‘capitalist.’ He built and owned the Gibbs Building in downtown San Antonio.
A daughter, Marian, is listed in the family records with confusing dates that indicate she was possibly fathered by Searcy. She, herself, becomes a well-known socialite in San Antonio. Her mother, Noni, died of pneumonia in early March 1911, and buried in San Antonio’s City Cemetery No. 5 near her mother’s grave marked by a gravestone that states “C. A. Barnes, Mother of Mrs. C. C. Gibbs.”
Gibbs is ‘retired’ in the 1920 census living at home with four black servants. He died in early Jan. 1927 and is buried at the Mission Burial Park South in San Antonio.
Meanwhile, daughter Marian had a brief marriage to a Higgins. By 1914 she is often socially publicized as married to Lt. Colonel John D. Burnett. He served in France during World War I and later died in 1928. Marian filed for a widow’s pension. She then married Major Carl L. Caphton (Capleton) and joined him serving in the Panama Canal Zone.
Marian is next living outside Ft. Worth with Caphton and writing a letter to a newspaper editor regarding animal cruelty. News is quiet until she died in 1964 in Pennsylvania. She was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Her ample estate was sued by several animal ‘humane’ groups.
Written by Betty Dunn, Two Rivers Heritage Foundation. See www.tworiversheritagefoundation.org for more info and membership.