NANCY PERMELIA HEROD LENAMON
Submitted by Frank Butcher, updated
May 28, 2007
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Nancy Permelia Herod was the seventh child of Thomas Jefferson Herod and Elvira
Campbell born in Attala County, Mississippi. Nancy came to Texas with her family
and settled east of Thornton near the Davis Prairie Community. Nancy Permelia gets credit for Ben giving large tracts of his land to the children. She wanted to be sure that her children would be taken care of, and on her death bed Nancy made Ben promise to give the children 200 acres each. If it had not been for Nancy's foresight, Ben’s second wife probably would have taken all of his land just like she did his money. In the long run the land, with its large natural gas deposits discovered in 1978, proved to be much more valuable than her husband’s gold. Nancy was known to work the fields with $1,000 in cash pinned inside her apron pocket. Even today that is a lot of money, and in the early 1900's it was a small fortune. Commenting on her stash to her daughter-in-law, Carrie, she made the prophetic comment that "I'll never use it and the kids will never see it either". The great influenza epidemic of 1918-19 that killed more than 500,000 Americans counted Nancy among its victims. Although she survived the illness, Nancy was left with a heart condition that eventually caused her death at the age of 57. Frank Butcher |