I am researching my ancestor, Lewis Gardner, my great - great - great grandfather. He was born about 1810 in South Carolina, lived in Georgia where he was a farmer, married, and fathered children. Later, he removed the family to Newton County, Mississippi where he owned a plantation. His wife divorced him in 1863 and he gave her the farm. It was often rumored he was a horse thief and a bigamist. However, he had no record as a thief and consented to divorce. Gardner killed a man in 1865 in Jackson, Mississippi it is said and in 1865 he went to Texas. He lived in Houston County for a time where he remarried and he was a horse trader. It is said he lived in Brownsville, Texas. It is said Lewis Gardner was good with a gun and could shoot bottles from a fence yards away with a pistol. He was described as a "bad man". He was supposedly ambushed and killed by horse thieves, but it seems he died peacefully. He died in 1879 in Denton, Texas and had "spent his last years in Johnson County".

Does anyone have any record of him in Texas?


Corey Gardner