Alexander Campbell Ponton

Alexander Campbell Ponton

• Father: Joel Ponton b. 3 July 1802, d. 2 February 1875
• Mother: Rhoda Delaney b. 16 March 1813, d. 5 March 1850

• Alexander Campbell Ponton was born on 19 July 1843 in Texas.
• Joel Ponton and Mary Henderson appeared in the US federal census of 1 June 1850 in Lavaca County, Texas. Other members of the household included Alexander Campbell Ponton, David Barton Ponton, Joseph Parthenias Ponton, Joel E. Ponton Jr., Martha Ponton and Ellen Maude Ponton.
• Joel Ponton and Mary Henderson appeared in the US federal census of 1 June 1860 in Hallettsville PO, Lavaca County, Texas, enumerated a few households from the Koonce family.. Other members of the household included Alexander Campbell Ponton, Joel E. Ponton Jr., Martha Ponton, Ellen Maude Ponton, Sarah Ponton, James Thomas Ponton, Laura Anne Ponton and John Ponton.
• He was working on the farm, according to the 1860 census.
• Alexander Campbell Ponton appeared in the US federal census of 1 June 1870 in Hallettsville PO, Lavaca County, Texas, enumerated next to his brother Joel. Also in the household was farm worker Edward Edwors (age 35).
• He was a farmer, according to the 1870 census.
• He married Winifred Pauline Koonce, daughter of John Philip Koonce and Harriet Newell Melton, on 5 September 1871 in Lavaca County, Texas, and Winifred's sister Elizabeth married Alexander's brother Joel. Also, late in life, Winifred's mother married Alexander's father.
• Alexander Campbell Ponton died circa 1879 in Lavaca County, Texas.
• His wife Winifred Pauline Koonce became a widow at his death.
• He was interred at Mossy Grove Cemetery, Ezzell, Lavaca County, Texas.
• The following appeared in the 1903 edition of the Year Book for Texas:
        THOMAS JOEL PONTON, HALLETTSVILLE, TEXAS,
  Representative from the Fifty-second district (Lavaca and Wharton counties) in the Twenty-eighth Legislature of Texas, is a school teacher by occupation and was bom in Lavaca county, February 17, 1876, [sic] the son of A. C. and Mrs. Winifred (Hoonce) [sic] Ponton. His father was born in that county in 1842, served gallantly through the war between the States, and was killed by a horse when the subject of this notice was a child. His mother is still living in Lavaca county. She was bom in Mississippi, and in 1860 moved to Texas with her father, who was an extensive planter and slave owner.
       Thomas Joel Ponton, after attending the common schools, completed his literary education at a college in Houston, Texas. He has taught school six years, is a close and constant student and keeps abreast of his profession. He has always taken an active interest in politics and worked in the interest of Democracy. He has also labored ardently for good roads, the development of the rice industry, the betterment of conditions for the laboring class, and purity of the ballot. He was a member of important committees and made an excellent record in the Twenty-eighth Legislature. In that body he introduced and pushed to enactment a bill providing for the publication of notices of the sale of lands under execution and (with Mr. Pearson), a bill for the protection of the birds of Texas. He also took an active part in securing the passage of the general good roads bill and a bill offering a reward of $50,000 to any person who discovers an effective means to exterminate the boll weevil.

• Last Edited: 5 Mar 2014