William Elbert "Buck" Mayes

Duane's take

Here's how the marker tells it, and I'm going to give it to you straight. Born on July 14, 1837, in Alabama, William Elbert Mayes came into this world as the son of the Reverend Isaac C. Mayes and Lucinda Fuller.

Now, folks called him Buck, and that name alone ought to tell you something about the man. In 1856, Buck pointed himself toward Texas and came. Two years later, in 1858, he married Sarah Clark, born a Dickerson before her first marriage.

Then the Civil War came along, as it did for so many men of that era, and Buck served. He came back to Houston County when it was over, and here is where the story gets interesting. A lot of men came back from that war to find nothing waiting for them but hard ground and harder times.

Buck Mayes looked at that same hard ground and apparently saw something else entirely. He built a lumber business. He built mercantile operations.

And then, quietly but consequentially, he stood up one of the earliest banking operations the area had ever seen. The marker says his commercial enterprises played a vital role in Houston County's post-Civil War development, and that is not nothing. That is a county's future getting built, plank by plank, ledger by ledger.

Buck Mayes died on August 27, 1915, but Houston County was never quite the same place he had found it back in 1856, and that, right there, is a life that earned its marker.

What the marker says

(July 14, 1837 -- August 27, 1915) Alabama native William Elbert "Buck" Mayes, son of The Rev. Isaac C. Mayes and Lucinda Fuller, came to Texas in 1856. He married Sarah (Dickerson) Clark in 1858. After serving in the Civil War Mayes returned to Houston County and became a successful lumber and mercantile businessman. Mayes' various commercial enterprises, which included one of the area's earliest banking operations, played a vital role in Houston County's post-Civil War development. Recorded - 1995