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 Site of Galloway Farmstead
N 32° 48.172 W 096° 37.516
14S E 722356 N 3631929
Texas Historical Marker commemorating the Galloway family, early area pioneers (with a future mayor of Mesquite in the fold), and the homestead they built at this site, which now occupies a private site in Sunnyvale, TX.
Waymark Code: WMFW65
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 12/06/2012
Views: 9
The marker is located in front of a Salt Grass Steakhouse at 18680 Lyndon B. Johnson Freeway (I-635), Mesquite, TX, where I-635 intersects Town Centre Dr.
Marker Number: 11674
Marker Text:
Confederate veteran Benjamin Franklin Galloway (1833-1912) and his wife Eliza (Fletcher) (1852-1883) came to Texas from Tennessee in 1872. Their son Bedford Forest is said to have been born in a covered wagon at Duck Creek (Garland) in 1873. They purchased 101 acres in 1874 and Benjamin Galloway erected a cabin where they lived while a two-room house was built. A farmer, he also raised horses, mules and cattle. A second son, Nathan Lemmon, was born in 1876. Twin sons were born in 1883, but they lived only a day, and Eliza Galloway died soon after. Her niece, Clara Gentry, came to live with the family that year. At that time Benjamin had a Blackland Prairie hay company. Dallas clients included Tennessee Dairy, Caruth Farm and Ringling Brothers Circus.
Benjamin Galloway married Amanda Jane Miller (1848-1938) of Tennessee in 1887 and built a 1½ story addition onto the home place. The structure eventually featured an entrance hall, bedroom, parlor, and a kitchen on the first level, with children's rooms upstairs. A son was born in 1888, but died at birth. Bedford returned home after attending college in Waco and New Orleans and made his living farming, baling hay and ginning cotton. He and his first wife, Nannie Lawrence, had four children. After her death in 1915, he married Bertha Dakan in 1917 and they had two daughters. Bedford was a city alderman, a member of the school board, and served as mayor of Mesquite from 1927 to 1940. A Galloway descendant restored the house between 1949 and 1950 and built another addition in 1955. Designated a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1973, the Galloway Home Place was moved from this site to a more rural location in Sunnyvale in an effort to protect it from encroaching urban development. (2000)
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