Stephen "Steve" Hester

From Buffalo Express article "Flo News" August 23, 2005
written by Norma Moore

    Stephen "Steve" Hester was born January 27th, 1922 in our Russell/Flo settlement.  He is the son of Snowden and Bessie Elizabeth (Manning) Hester, who were first time homesteaders and most important in the establishment of farms, land and business development and Russell becoming a thriving, populated community.

    The Snowden Hester home place in Russell was located nearby where the Mabel Ruth Collins homeland is today.  Steve's Russell heritage started with his grandfather, Stephen Albert Hester, Sr., who Steve was named after.  Stephen Albert Hester, Sr. came to Texas to be a school teacher.  Our Leon County was blessed when he chose our Russell community as his destination.  Stephen built the Round Rock School in Russell.  It was located about three-fourths mile from the Russell Post Office.  He built the school from logs, and then Stephen as the one teacher of the school, taught the first grade through 7th.  He taught 20 children including the Robert Holland and Thompson Russell children as some of his students.

    Stephen also taught school at Oden/Flo School and Oakwood School.  The Russell Round Rock and Oden schools were also their church on Sundays.  The Oakwood school was a basic reading, writing, and arithmetic and spelling school, and was often used for community meetings and for special school plays and programs.

    Stephen married Nettie Bell of the Russell Round Rock settlements.  Nettie was the ancestor of the Jack and Eva Bell family, who as first settlers and homesteaders, established first farms, and Jack, as a carpenter, built a large home.  He, Eva, and children as Christians of the Missionary Baptist church ministry; their home was often used for church worship and Gospel singing.

    Nettie and Stephen helped to establish churches of Russell, Oden, and Oakwood.  Stephen helped with the building.  Nettie prepared food for workers and both were leaders as Sunday School teachers.  Stephen and Nettie lived in the Russell, Oden, and Oakwood settlements where they were most important in promotional success and wealth in the community's establishment.

    Steve's American inheritance started with Thomas Hester in 1715.  The Hester's originally came from England.  The Thomas Hester family settled in Bladen County, North Carolina, where they were basically tobacco farmers and of excellent reputation in redeeming frontier American states into bountiful resourceful homelands.

    Jamsey Hester, born in 1870 in North Carolina, was unique in his profession, receiving his livelihood from the long leaf pine trees that grew in North Carolina.  Jamsey cut big square holes in the large trees to catch the resin (sap) that ran out of the trees, catching the sap into a bucket with a tool they called a turpentine puller.

    This substance was used in making medicines and varnishes.  His father Wright Hester's profession was also involved with the pine trees, something to do with pine boxes.  Jamsey left North Carolina at a young age and went to Georgia.  He visited his family in North Carolina, his mother Mary Eliza, four brothers and a sister twice and then he came to Flo and lived with a Hester relative.  Jamsey brought his turpentine puller with him and this is a prize possession of his descendant of our Oakwood, Mary Eldridge.

    Jamsey married Nancy Kidd, the daughter of first time settlers William and Martha Kidd who established the first Kidd's Mill settlement of Flo in 1854-1855, and Jamsey and Nancy were prosperous farmers.

    The Kidds were first time owners/operators of a gristmill, cotton gin, and sawmill of Flo.  Jamsey was a companion worker with the Kidds, learning the operation well.  He and Nancy and their three children, Mary, Joe and Winston later moved to Oakwood and Jamsey was a successful farmer, raising large crops of cotton, corn and vegetable gardens.

    Jamsey, with his training of the cotton gin business, helped to build the first cotton gin in Oakwood and Jamsey was a first to press the round bales of cotton  in Oakwood. He pressed the bales as long as this gin stood in Oakwood.  Jamsey lived a long productive life and he was a well-respected gentleman who served the Flo/Oakwood people with integrity and was most influential.  His ancestors have carried on with the same strength and dedication all through our history.  They are most important for advancing the development and success of the first homesteads.

    Our Steve Hester has an outstanding legacy as a hero of our American Military Wars, which began with Thomas Hester, Jr., who was a soldier in the Revolutionary War.  There were also four brothers in the Confederacy Civil War: Snowden, Wright, Joseph, and William.  They served in North Carolina regiments and our Steve was a military hero.

Sept 6, 2005

    Steve has been remarkable in the great prosperity of our Flo, Russell, Oakwood, and Buffalo settlements since 1900's.
    Steve with a rich american and Texas heritage of his ancestors, has carried on with the same dedication his descendants had, bringing honor and prestige.
    Steve was born in our Russell community and raised in our Oakwood township.  He had responsibilities by the time he was twelve years old.  He was a boy during the Depression Years and was introduced to hard times.
    With his parents he had to learn quickly of the farming and raising livestock.  His grandfather Stephen had come to Texas to teach, and he was a teacher of the newly established Oden, Flo, Russell, and Oakwood settlements.  His parents and grandfather knew that he needed a good education for a productive future.  Steve was a good student in the Oakwood school.  He received the basic educational skills from the first through eleventh grades.