Born in a log cabin at the edge of the woods near the county line of Henderson and Panola. He was the only child of the second marriage of both his parents on the Thornton side he has three brothers and three sisters. On the Truelock side he has nine brothers and sisters. After his birth his mother and father separated and he was raised by his mother. There must have been some anmosity on both sides because neither family will say much about the other, or there may been so much age difference between them he was more like a nephew than a brother. At the time of his death I was not old enough to know anything about his family and my mother, like the rest of her family didn't seem to care much
about who was related to who or how. Living in New Mexico and the family being on the other side of Texas, they didn't know anything about us until Cecil, my oldest sister ran across one of the family who had married into her husband's family. Since that time records are being kept by various members of the family. Dad worked most of his life as a share-cropper until he came to New Mexico, where he worked as a handyman, doing carpenter and plaster work mostly, however he would dig a ditch, hang sheetrock, or plow up a garden with the team he had. At one time he hauled the trash to the dump for Texico-Farwell. He worked at the base during the war and walked to and from
each day because he had no car and could not drive anyway. I heard him tell a friend one time that his intention was to go to California but my mother got sick and Texico was as far as he ever got. From some of my older brothers and sisters I have heard that Dad met Mom when they were both working for the Harrison's in Van Zandt County Texas. I do know that after they were married he worked for the Railroad building the fill to lay tracks on somewhere near Dallas Texas. Mom would cook for some of the single men to pay for the groceries they needed. The only birth certifate we have was after dad was over fifty years old and sworn to by an aunt who said she was at the birth, so going by
the 1900 census given by his mother which had some dates wrong on the other children, I assume that Dad gave her the information as he knew it. This old set of twins who have lived in Texico most of their lives, said the first time they saw my dad was when he came to town with a mule hitched to the
front of his truck, him sitting on the fender driving the mule, Mom and a couple of small children in the cab, and the rest of the kids on the back with their belongings. He later traded the truck to them for some equipment, another mule and the lots where he later built the house where I grew up across from the church. Our neighbors were the Hapkes, Bowers ,Arnolds, Curds, and the Preacher C.C. Morgan who served at the funeral of both mom and dad although they were over twenty years apart.
According to my sister Hattie's birth certifcate, which was a delayed one also dad spelled his middle name FRANKLIN. His birth record shows it as FRANKLAND. Since Eli FRANKLIN Buckner seems to be the source of this name I would assume this to be correct and dad's aunt, Katie Truelock just mispelled it on her report.