Edwards (Peyton Forbest) Family

Peyton Forbes Edwards (1844-1918) was a soldier in the Civil War, lawyer, judge, politician, and Nacogdoches county treasurer. He was the eldest of eight children of Sarah M. (Forbes) and Haden Harrison Edwards, soldier and legislator. Edwards’s grandfather, Hayden Edwards, was a leader of the Fredonian Rebellion (December 1826-January 1827). During the Civil War, Peyton Edwards served in the Fourth Texas Cavalry and in Company A of the Seventeenth Texas Cavalry, Confederate Army.

After earning a law degree from the University of Virginia in 1867, Edwards returned to Nacogdoches to practice law. He served as county treasurer before joining the state Senate of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth legislatures (1876-1879). Edwards served as a judge of the Third Judicial District (1874-1884) and in the electoral college for the Democratic party (1884) before moving to El Paso in 1886.

Edwards married Odelia Arnold, granddaughter of Hayden S. Arnold, Texas Revolution army officer and Republic of Texas legislator, in 1867. The couple had three children, including El Paso County sheriff Peyton F. Edwards, Jr. Following Odelia’s death, Edwards married her sister, Minnie Arnold, and subsequently Callie Myrna Stewart. He died in 1918.

Source: Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. Edwards, Peyton Forbes, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/EE/fed8.html (accessed July 8, 2010).

From the guide to the Edwards (Peyton Forbest) Family Papers 1948., 1812-1947, (Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin)