(Scroll down to bottom to find earlier descendant interviews)
The descendants of Sarah Ellen “Ella” Ferris have preserved and promoted the history of their family over five generations. Had it not been for their efforts, the letters of Warren Angus Ferris would not have been saved for use by modern historians.
Sarah Ellen Ferris - Age 13
After her father Warren Ferris died in 1873, Ella, one of the youngest of the children, was sent with her younger sister Frances Laura to live with her mother’s sister, Emily Moore Ellison in Smith County, Texas. When her aunt died in 1879, Ella lived for a time with a cousin and then with her brother Robert Ferris in Euless, Texas. She must have felt like an orphan being passed around in the family during her teen years.
Sometime in this period, Ella came in possession of Ferris family letters. One story is that a female relative (perhaps her older sister Mary Catherine “Kate” Ferris) gave her a packet of letters tied with a pink ribbon, telling Ella that they would be a link to her parents. Another version has it that Ella asked her brother Robert if she might keep some of the brittle, yellowed letters from her father’s old trunk. Whatever the case, it is clear that Ella and other members of the Ferris clan recognized the significance of the letters written from Buffalo, New York to Warren Ferris in Texas. Ella became of the custodian and preserver of the letters and the Ferris memoranda book, a little notebook where Warren kept notes and dates, including names of those buried in the Ferris Cemetery.
While in Euless, Ella met and married George Washington Cannon and followed him to West Texas where he had a store and farm near Rising Star. Ella and George had eight children, six of the Cannon children - Chester Arthur, Lela Moore, Fannie Pearl, Clyde Ferris, and Horace Larry - lived to adulthood. One of Ella’s daughters, Fannie, married Elzo F. Been, a prominent lawyer in Eastland County; and, after her husband died in 1930, Ellie came to live with the Beens on a farm out in the country.
Clyde Cannon, 13 yrs old. Fannie Cannon, approx 20 yrs old. Two of the six children of Ella & George Cannon
In the late 1940’s, a car drove up to their farmhouse and two men said they were looking for Sarah Ellen Ferris Cannon. How they ever tracked her down was amazing in the days before the computer. One of the men was Walter McCausland from Buffalo who had a collection of letters written by Warren Ferris to his mother in New York. McCausland, a stamp collector who was first attracted to the stampless letters from Texas, became fascinated with the life of Warren Ferris. The other visitor was Homer DeGolyer, an historian from SMU who was driving McCausland around Texas. When McCausland showed Ella his Texas letters, she went inside and returned with her letters tied in pink ribbon. Together the New York and Texas letters were a complete correspondence of ten years of the Republic of Texas and the founding of Dallas.
From Sydna Arbuckle, “This was my grandparents (Elzo and Fannie Been) home in the country near the Long Branch community of Eastland County. How on earth did Mr. McCausland and Mr. DeGoyer ever find the place in the 1940s without computers. Granny Cannon spent much of her years as a widow in this house; in fact you can faintly see an outside entrance on the left side of the house and we called this entrance Granny's door and her bed room was just inside this door. When she died in 1953, her body lay in state in the front bedroom until the actual funeral. One of the pictures that I sent of Granny Cannon as an adult was made just outside this side door of the house.”
Granny Cannon besides Been farm house
Ella’s daughter Fannie Been also took an interest in family history. She corresponded with McCausland in 1941, telling him of visiting a Texas cemetery where Warren’s half-brother Joshua Lovejoy was buried. Fannie wrote a memoir centered on the career of her husband who was district attorney and later judge of the Eastland district court. During the Ranger Oil Boom (1917-1922) the population of Ranger, Cisco, and Eastland mushroomed with wildcatters and roughnecks. Litigation was lively. Crime increased. The jails overflowed so that prisoners were handcuffed to telephone poles. People attended trials for entertainment, bringing their lunches so they would not lose their seats. Fannie recorded these exciting times.
Fannie Cannon, approx 23 yrs old. She didn’t marry Elzo Been until she was 26
Circa 1959. The 4 generations of the Beens include a picture of Fannie and Elzo Been. Note the difference in height. Nell is in the red suit, Sydna is holding the baby (Ronda Arbuckle), the Been's first great-grandchild
Photo 5 - Elzo and Fannie Been, Nell Been Davis, Sydna Davis Arbuckle and baby Ronda
Fannie’s only daughter, Ruby Nell Been, was fed history at the dinner table. She relished the stories told by her grandmother Ella who lived with them, especially the tales of how her great grandfather Warren Ferris was a fur trapper who wrote the first account of white men in the Yellowstone country. Nell Davis married Sydney Lee Davis and moved to Elgin, Texas where as a young bride she begin to collect documents and stories of the town’s history. She wrote a history of Elgin’s First Baptist Church, helped inventory the Bastrop County cemetery, and was on the committee that wrote a history of Elgin for its centennial (1872-1972). Nell Davis also worked with Frances James to get a Texas Historic Marker for the Ferris Cemetery in Dallas and was present for its dedication in 1988. She copied the Ferris letters and placed the originals with the Barker Texas History Library at the University of Texas where they would be preserved and available to scholars. When she lost her voice, Nell taught herself to use the computer so that she could continue to communicate. Just before her death in 2011, she was honored by the Elgin Historical Association for her life-long efforts to preserve the past.
Nell Been Davis passed on her love of history to her daughters Sydna Davis Arbuckle and Judy Davis, both of Elgin. Sydna serves on the Bastrop County Historical Commission and Judy is on the board of the Texas Historical Foundation in nearby Austin. Judy and her cousin Glynda Schroeder (also a Ferris descendant) recently visited the Museum of the Mountain Man at Pinedale, Wyoming. When asked if he had heard of Warren Angus Ferris, the director responded, “Heard of him? Why, without his historic writings we wouldn’t have a museum.”
Sydna Arbuckle on left in red, mother (Nell Davis) in center and Judy Davis on right in black, 2008
Written by Susanne Starling, based on writings of Fannie Been and Nell Davis and information furnished by Sydna Arbuckle and Judy Davis.
