Champion Travis Traylor Jr.

b. 7 May 1809, d. May 1877
  • Champion Travis Traylor Jr. was born on 7 May 1809 in Georgia.
  • He married Martha E. Olds, daughter of W. W. Olds and Unknown (?), on 18 September 1842 in Dallas County, Alabama.
  • Champion Travis Traylor Jr. and Martha E. Olds appeared in the US federal census of 1 June 1850 in Roscoe's Beat, Dallas County, Alabama, and six others included a dancing master, a lawyer, and a carpenter.. Other members of the household included Lucy Alice Traylor and William W. Traylor.
  • He was a machinist, according to the 1850 census.
  • On Friday, 12 November 1852, Green Wood recorded in his plantation daily account book: "Mr Jackson Thompson, Traylor, & Tab & T McGar came this evening."
  • Champion Travis Traylor Jr. and Martha E. Olds appeared in the US federal census of 1 June 1860 in Waverly, Walker (later San Jacinto) County, Texas. Other members of the household included Lucy Alice Traylor, William W. Traylor, Charles S. Traylor, John Randolph Traylor, Josiah Albert Traylor, Thomas E. Traylor and Newton Murrah.
  • He was a farmer, according to the 1860 census.
  • During the 1860s the Texas Land, Labor and Immigration Company was formed under an Executive committee with Thomas Affleck of Washington County as the general chairman. Agents operated south of France very successfully; others in Scotland and England. Offers were made in Poland, Holland and Belgium. Mr. Affleck crossed the ocean in December 1865, to see how matters stood in Europe, and on his way through the North, published letters calling attention to Texas.
         Following the Civil War, when plantation owners needed a labor force after emancipation of the African American slaves, some cotton planters met on 19 September 1866 and organized the Waverly Emigration Society. C. T. Traylor was elected President and Colonel H. M. Elmore was elected secretary of this society. They met in a general store in Waverly, Walker (later San Jacinto) County, Texas, owned by James Meyer Levy, a Polish Jew.
         Mr. Levy voyaged to his homeland in 1867 and recruited laborers from his home village of Exin (today known as Kcynia), Slupy, Smogulec, Szubin and the surrounding areas in Poland. Correspondence reviewed in the John W. Hill Papers at the Center for American History in Austin indicates that Mr. Levy arrived in New York in April of 1867, and passenger records confirm their arrival in New York on 9 April 1867 aboard the steamship City of Antwerp. On 13 April 1867, Mr. Levy notified W. W. McGar in Galveston that he needed funds to complete his journey to Texas.
         Ten days later, 29 families arrived in Galveston aboard the C. W. Lord, a coastal steamer from New York, as reported in the Galveston Daily News. Funds in the amount of $169 were remitted to the teamsters in Houston for passage of the immigrants to Houston, and it is believed that they then journeyed to Waverly, the cradle of Polish Emigration for Southeast Texas.
         Adapted from "Polish Texans," accessed online at the Polish Genealogical Society of Texas website.
  • Champion Travis Traylor Jr. and Martha E. Olds appeared in the US federal census of 1 June 1870 in Huntsville PO, Walker County, Texas. Other members of the household included William W. Traylor, Charles S. Traylor, John Randolph Traylor, Josiah Albert Traylor and Sarah E. Traylor.
  • He was a farmer, according to the 1870 census.
  • Champion Travis Traylor Jr. died in May 1877 in Walker County, Texas.
  • His wife Martha E. Olds became a widow at his death.
  • Last Edited: 24 Jun 2013

Family: Martha E. Olds b. circa 1820