Wiley Wood Foster

Wiley Wood Foster is the grandson of John Foster of the Stephen F. Austin Colony’s “Old Three-Hundred” (15 July 1824, Fort Bend County; GLO Abstracts, 1838; Ray, 1970). Wiley’s Uncle Ran (Randolph Foster) assisted Austin on excursions into Mexico as a hunter, was “the first of the Three Hundred” (Wharton, 1939:145) and provided food during the “Runaway Scrape” to the Texas Republic Army and other refugees (TX State Handbook). Apparently Wiley’s father, John Claiborn Foster, followed his father and older brothers (including Isaac of the Texas Republic Army and of the “Old Three-Hundred” and George and Moses; ) between 1834 and 1838 to Fort Bend County where he had “4 slaves, 2 horses, and [50] cattle” (White, 1840 Tax Census). By 1842 John C. and Jane were in Newton County, according to the births of Roseanna (b. 1838 “TX”) and George Rodney (b. 14 Feb 1842 in Newton Co.). In 1844, in Newton County of the Republic of Texas, Their third son, Wiley Wood Foster, was born.

He lived in Llano County, probably near the present town of Kingsland, and later to Belton, Bell County, where he enlisted at the age of 17 in the Confederate Army as a member of Capt. M.W. Damron’s Company D, of Col. Nicholas Henry Darnell’s 18th Texas (Dismounted) Cavalry in engagements on both sides of the Mississippi. After serving with Granbury’s Brigade in the Atlanta Campaign (May-September, 1864), the 18th Texas Cavalry joined Hood’s famed Texas Brigade in its Tennessee Campaign from October through December 1864 (Simpson, 1970).

According to his marriage to Clarissa (Richardson-Crockett) Richardson in 1866 in Jasper, Texas, he returned from the War to his family in East Texas. Clarissa is the daughter of John and Mary Richardson, who organized the Antioch Primitive Baptist Church in their Buna, Jasper County home in 1841 (TX Histroical Marker, 1972). Wiley was 21 years old, Clarissa was 36 when they wed. They returned to Llano County by the time their first child, Emmit, was born in 1868. By early 1870 they returned to East Texas, possibly in time to see John C. before his death between 1870 and 1880. Two sons were born in East Texas, one of them named in John C’s honor, John Clayborn (b. 6 Oct 1872, Jasper Co.).

Wiley and Clarissa lived well into the 20th Century, living in Limestone County and then to Cross Plains, Callahan County. In 1917 a fire destroyed his store where he sold dry goods and farm equipment. Clarissa was 93 when she passed, Wiley lived another 24 years as a lively story teller, as my grandpa Jim Luce and his sister, Aunt Lily, recall.