Nelson Denson

Nelsen Denson was born December 22, 1847, in Ashley County, Arkansas, one of eight children; his mother was from Virginia and his father from Kentucky. Their enslaver, Jim Denson, joined the rush to Texas not long after the Mexican War, traveling in company for protection against wolves and making peace with Native people along the way. Nelsen vividly remembered crossing the Red River Raft, the great logjam of driftwood that had grown into a floating forest more than a hundred miles long, guided by a Caddo man in a small boat and finding bee trees full of honey on it. They settled near Marlin, but Denson fell into debt and sold the whole family to Felix Grundy before Texas seceded.

Grundy went to war as a bodyguard in General Hardeman's brigade and took sixteen-year-old Nelsen with him. Nelsen remembered the night before the Battle of Mansfield, camped on the Sabine with the campfires burning and whippoorwills calling, and the Union troops singing "The Battle Cry of Freedom" as they charged. He stayed close to Grundy through the fight. After freedom most of the family worked on for Grundy. When interviewed at nearly 90, he lived in Waco, Texas.