Feris family.

George Achille Feris, born to first-generation European immigrants in 1817 in Kentucky, was a Texas physician who practiced medicine in Fort Bend County before and after the Civil War. Feris graduated from the Military School of Georgetown, Kentucky, and received his M.D. from Transylvania Medical College in Lexington, Kentucky. He moved to Texas from Missouri in 1835. In January 1841 he married Lavinia Thompson (1819-1886), an Alabama native whose father was one of the original three hundred Austin colonists. Lavinia and two other women were present at the fight at Thompson's Ferry, braving grape and canister shot to saddle the horses of the men escaping from Santa Anna. George joined the Texas army in 1836, and fought numerous battles against the American Indians. He was also a surgeon with the Texas Rangers at the Battle of Plum Creek and the Council House fight in San Antonio in 1838. During the Mexican War, he again served as a military surgeon at the battles of Palo Alto, Resaca de la Palma, and Monterrey. He was also present in the battle of San Jacinto. He briefly resigned his commission and served as a doctor in Galveston before relocating permanently to Richmond, Texas. When the Civil War began, Governor Francis R. Lubbock appointed Feris hospital surgeon to the Confederate Army. In 1863 he was captured by Federal troops, but was exchanged and returned to Confederate service. He was a notable physician, as evidenced by his appointment as a Trustee to Texas Medical College and Hospital, which later became the University of Texas Medical Branch. In addition to his medical practice, Feris was known throughout the South for his deep interest in and knowledge of horses. He traded horses and advocated for equestrian interests through the organization of jockey clubs and fairs, even drawing up the first constitution of the Houston Jockey Club. He was also prominent in financial circles. His wit and scholarship earned him a reputation as an intellectual. He died on April 8, 1898.

George and Lavinia Feris had nine children between 1841 and 1858, seven of whom survived to adulthood: Irene Feris Hocker (1841-1920), Achille Feris (1843-1878), Yandell Feris (1847-1895), Sarah (Sallie) Lavinia Feris (1852-1943), George A. Feris, Jr (1855-death unknown), Mary Elizabeth Feris Bass (1856-1926), and Keene Richards Feris (1858-death unknown).

The correspondence of George Feris' oldest child, Irene Feris, makes up the bulk of the collection. She lived in chronic poor health and spent the Civil War at home teaching her younger siblings. In the aftermath of the war, with no domestic help to be found, she found herself pressed into service at home, a situation which she so disliked that after a few years she ran away on the pretense of visiting friends and began tutoring students privately. She married her uncle by marriage Captain William Kavanaugh Hocker, an Arkansas native and a Mason, in August 1885. Irene corresponded regularly with her siblings and siblings-in-law, nieces and her stepdaughter, Willie K. Hocker, an Arkansas teacher. W. K. Hocker died of cancer in March 1897 at their plantation in Wabbaseka County, Arkansas. Irene died from a stroke in 1920.

Achille Feris was the second child and oldest son of George and Lavinia Feris. He went to school in Velasco, Texas, in the 1850s. At the age of eighteen, Achille joined the Confederate army and served in the 8th Texas Cavalry (Terry's Texas Rangers) in the Civil War; after the war ended, he joined his brother Yandell in his surveying business. Achille married Robertina Bobbie Wade Bohannon in 1871, and the couple had three daughters, Lavinia, Mary, and Nellie. Lavinia Feris, called Vinnie by her family, married Charles Adrian White in 1897 and thereafter moved to Pennsylvania. Mary Feris married Robert Pearce Briscoe, Jr., the deputy tax assessor in Fort Bend County, and died at the age of 28 in January 1903. Nellie, also known as little Nell, the family member who became the collection's caretaker, was a schoolteacher in San Antonio. Achille died in 1878, leaving Bobbie and her three daughters in the care of their grandfather and aunt Irene, who considered herself the primary caretaker of both Nellie and Mary. Bobbie Ferris died aged 69 in 1922.

Less is known about George and Lavinia Feris' other children. The second son and third surviving child Yandell Feris, who lived in Richmond, Texas, served in the Confederate Army and later became a county tax assessor and then county surveyor of Fort Bend. In 1883 he married Ella Frost; they had one daughter, Myrtle, the same year, but Yandell died when Myrtle was twelve. Sarah (Sallie) Feris, the second daughter and fourth surviving child, never married, and corresponded with her sister Irene all her life. She died in 1943. A third son, George A. Feris, Jr., was born in 1855, but he is nonexistent in the collection apart from a listing in the genealogy. His date of death is unknown. Third daughter and sixth surviving child Mary Elizabeth Feris (1856-1926) married Sam Bass sometime after 1885; the two had at least one son, who died in infancy, and one other daughter. Keene Richard Feris, George and Lavinia's fourth son and youngest child, was an avid horseman and horse breeder. He may have been named after the Keenes of Kentucky, who were among the first to travel to Arabia and purchase desert-bred horses to bring back to the United States.

(Source: Feris (George A.) family papers.)

From the guide to the Feris (George A. ) family papers, 1829-1944, undated, bulk 1850-1900, (Texas State Archives)