A History of James Emory Hutto
by Hugh Davenport, Hutto resident

T he man for whom the town of Hutto was named was born to John Castleberry and Nancy Holliday Hutto in Greenville , South Carol ina on May 8, 1824 . In 1830 the family moved to Huntsville , Madison County, Alabama where his mother died in 1836, when James Emory was 12 years old.

After a few years, he joined a group of 25 persons immigrating to T exas which arrived January 16, 1847 and settled at Webber's Prairie near Austin . James Emory Hutto was a very capable and industrious person and immediately became involved in development of the Central T exas area as well as providing for himself and the family he and Margaret Hughes of Alabama had begun after their marriage in T exas , and this may indicate that she came to T exas at the same time J.E. did. He had helped George Glasscock in building the first grist mill in Georgetown and was present when the town was staked off and the first election was held in 1848.

Mr. Hutto moved his family to Williamson County in 1854 and, whether by foresight or chance, selected land which provided the townsite for the town of Hutto when the I.G.& N. Railroad passed through his property some years later. He was immediately preceded in the immediate vicinity by Adam Orgain, a freed slave of the Orgain family which owned land not far removed. Also, soon after James E. Hutto settled in the area, other settlers acquired land for cattle raising and farming cotton and grains especially in the area to the southeast where the small settlement of Shiloh was in existence. Early settlers in the area near the to-be town who had considerable acreage were Hugh Goodwin and W. H. Farley, Sr. and his bachelor brother F. F. Farley.

In 1876, when the railroad came through the area, Mr. Hutto sold fifty acres of land to the T exas Land Co. of New York for a townsite reserving five acres of that tract as a gift for the International and Great Northern Railroad right of way through town.

Mr. Hutto was a very successful operator and a respected civic leader in the community where he was active in church and school activities; and when a post office was established in 1877, he was appointed Postmaster.

He and his wife, Margaret, had a family of six sons and three daughters, all of whom, except the last child Mary , reached adulthood in the Hutto Community. In May, 1881, his wife Margaret, mother of all known descendants, died and was buried alongside the youngest daughter Mary M. in the Shiloh Cemetery some three miles southeast of the town of Hutto. After about two years, Mr. Hutto, then 57 years of age, married Mrs. Nancy Jones and in 1885 he sold his holdings in cattle, land and home and moved to Waco , where it was understood that the former Mrs. Jones had some relatives and where he planned to go into the implement business.

It is not clear what interest Mr. Hutto had for the next few years as the Waco City Directory of 1890 listed him only as a resident at the corner of North 18th and Barron Streets. T he next two years a partnership of sorts was listed with a T homas H. Killingsworth. T hen from 1892 through 1897, James W. Hutto, Sr. was listed as operating an Agricultural Implement business including Carriages, Wagons, and Buggies at 110 S. 8th St .

Mr. Hutto's second wife died in 1892, at approximately the same time that he started his implement business. In 1894, he married again; this time to Mrs. Helen A Wilder who outlived him by some two months after his death on April 29, 1914 , only nine days short of his ninetieth birthday. James E. Hutto, Sr. and his second and third wives are buried on the same lot in Oakwood Cemetery in Waco , T exas .

Upon his death, an obituary from a Waco paper was lavish in its remarks regarding Mr. Hutto's character and his activities in church and charities and the caliber of his friends in the Waco area.

Portions of article reprinted with permission of the Hutto Herald.