Update on F. O. Gallaway

Frank Owen Gallaway was the son of Amos Ponder Gallaway and Caroline Gewin. He was a member of Mt. Carmel at least by 1867, and probably much earlier. He served as the church clerk until dismissed by letter in May of 1870. The 1870 census lists him as a “medical student”. F. O. Gallaway served clerk pro-tem of the organizational meeting of the Smyrna Missionary Baptist Church, and was a constituting member of the church. He married Susan Salmon, daughter of John L. and Martha Salmon, in May of 1871. Frank O. Galloway was granted a letter of dismission from Smyrna Aug. 21, 1874. This may signal his move from Rusk County (though he is back in 1880). A ‘Dr. F. O. Galloway’ is listed in Butterfield and Rundlett’s 1875 Directory of the City of Dallas. As well as practicing medicine, he was a director of the Exchange Bank in Dallas, Texas (The Dallas Daily Herald, June 7, 1876, p. 3).

Frank O. Gallaway is found in the 1880 Rusk County census, and was postmaster of Gourdneck in Rusk County in 1880 – but was back in Dallas in 1882. A note in a newspaper (Fort Worth Daily Gazette, February 20, 1886, p. 5) puts his arrival in Henrietta circa 1884. F. O. Gallaway was born February 16, 1845 in Alabama. He died in 1889 and is buried at the Hope Cemetery at Henrietta, Clay County, Texas. [My original source gave his death date as January 12, 1882. His tombstone gives the year as 1889, but in her Confederate pension application his wife gave his date of death as January 14, 1888. Based on his newspaper obituary, the day of the 12^th, and the year of 1889 is correct.]

“Dr. F. O. Galloway has returned from Rusk county to make his home again in Dallas.” (The Dallas Daily Herald, March 15, 1882, p. 8)

Gallaway was a Confederate Veteran, a member of the Masonic Fraternity and the Knights of Pythias.

Many records give the surname as “Galloway,” but the family seems to have consistently spelled it “Gallaway.”

Fort Worth Daily Gazette, Sunday, January 13, 1889, p. 1