1877 - Graduated from Wofford College with a BA degree
1878 - July, married Parmelia Williams.
1878 - Arrived in Texas, lived at Anona, Red River County
1880 - Farming, living next door to wife's parents.
1896 - Elected as Texas State Representative from Fourth District, Red River County, two year term. Served on the Education, Penitentiaries, and State Affairs committees.
1897 - Jan 12, marked present in Austin, TX at the commencement of the 25th TX legislature, representing Red River. Served two years.
1897 - Principal of Swanville Academy, co-ed school, 120 students
1899 - Replaced in House of Representatives by Charles McClellan Chambers, age 20, father is a judge, future mayor of San Antonio.
1900 - Moved to Lockney, Floyd County, Texas.
Jan 1900 - Worked as editor of a paper, the Llano Estacado
Nov 1900 - Paper was bought by competitor, Preston was fired
2 May 1902 - PW Henderson registered a cattle and horse brand in a panhandle county.
1910 - Worked as a Drayman (hauling loads on flatbead wagons pulled by horses or mules).
1916 - Died in Trinity County, Texas. Daughter Bertha was married there.
Notes from Herman Old, Jul 10, 1989:
Preston's father, James Simmons Henderson, was born blind or became blind early. He attended a school for the blind in his native Tennessee, then moved to South Carolina close to Laurens County, where his parents were born. An older brother, William Bias Henderson, was practicing law in Laurens and probablyh had something to do with James Simmons' going to South Carolina. With or without William's help, James Simmons around 1855 got a job at Cedar Spring, about 30 m1les away, as the first teacher of the blind at a school set up originally for deaf students by the Rev. Newton Pinckney Walker, a Baptist preacher. Shortly after arriving at Cedar Spring, James Simmons married Louisa Carol Walker, daughter of Preacher Walker. She taught there at the time and continued to do so until her death in 1894. Wal ker started the school to help deaf nieces and nephews of his wife. Adding James Simmons Henderson to the staff extended teaching to the blind as well as the deaf. The school is run now by the state and is called the South Carolina School for the Deaf and the Blind . Until recently a Walker was traditionally president . Newton Pinckney died in 1860 (of measles>, and for a short while Professor Henderson (the title on his tombstone) ran the entire school. Then he died in 1870, aged 38 . His widow remarried, to Capt. George M. Irby.
Family lore says that Preston got mad and left home in South Carolina after a furious argument with an uncle over whether a whippoorwill and a bullbat were the same bird . It isn't clear which proposition Preston favored . He is said to have left when he was 19, which would be about 1878, the year he married in Texas. It is unclear why Preston chose to go to Texas and fetch up as he did in the bosom of Andrew Williams 's family. Some guesswork may be justified. Preston's mother was descended from the Adair family that claimed to have settled the first colony in what now is Laurens County, S.C. His future father-in-law, Andrew Williams, had an Adair connection back in Tennessee that may have been an offshoot of the Laurens Adairs, two of whose male kinsmen settled in that part of Tennessee in the early 1800s. So Preston could have been sent away to stay with kinfolks in Texas
and become romantically involved with a distant cousin. Preston had a brief and spectacular career as a weekly
newspaper editor. At the beginning of 1900 he took up residence in Lockney, Floyd County, all the way across Texas from Red River County, as the editor of the weekly there, the Llano Estacada.
Another weekly flourished nearby in Floydada, the county seat. The rival at first welcomed Preston, but over the months the papers fell to squabbling over county tax policy. Soon the feud was between the editors, and Preston, who could turn a mean phrase, appeared to have the advantage. The rival trumped him, though, by buying his paper, sacking Preston, and announcing his triumph on the front page of his own publication. By Thanksgiving the Llano Estacada was defunct.
Where Preston went next is unclear. On May 8, 1902 , a P . W. Henderson registered a cattle and horse brand in one of the Panhandle counties. It isn 't known if that was our Preston, or if he indeed ventured into ranching. Whatever the sequence of events, once uprooted from Red River County the family never went back, and seems to have settled in Sweetwater soon after the Lockney debacle.