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Note: From the History of Titus County by Traylor Russell, Vol. 2, 1965, Page 330 - 331
James Henry Harkrider married Nancy Ellen Cook on December 2, 1894. The Dr. J. F. Wilkinson family lived north and east of the Harkrider family, on what is now State Highway 49 at the top of the hill west of Swannano Creek. The place is now owned by Morris Stevens. The Wilkinson family lived in a log house that had been built by Daniel Wall in 1844, and this house is still standing and is used by Morris Stevens as a smokehouse. Henry and Nancy Harkrider and Judge R. T. Wilkinson and Lelia Nelson, had a double wedding ceremony at the New Hope Church on Sunday, December 2, 1894. Bro. Sol Price, the Dean of East Texas Baptist Preachers, performed the ceremony. Judge Wilkinson says that he and his bride had the wedding supper the night following the wedding at Capt. Elijah Nelson�s home, father of the bride, and that he and Mrs. Wilkinson spent the night there. The next day they went to his mother�s home for the �infare.� Dr. Wilkinson had died in 1891. He says that the day was spent in feasting and dancing, and that all the family, relatives and neighbors were present, and that this �infare� went on for some two or three days. George Mitchell, Alec Traylor and Cancer Traylor, Negro men, were present and did the cooking and the serving, and Judge and Joe Cook took turns in furnishing fiddle music for the dancing. Judge says he doesn�t think that they paid Bro. Price anything for his services, but that he did partake of the wedding supper and the �infare� festivities. Dr. Wilkinson and Sol Price went through the Civil War together, and Dr. Wilkinson said that during the war Sol Price would bet on anything from a �card to a louse.� When asked to explain about the betting on a louse, he said that during the war due to a lack of sanitation, all soldiers, more often than not, had body lice, that when two of the lice were put in a cup, they would often fight until one was killed and that a soldier, out of boredom, would get a louse off his body and bet on that louse killing one that some other soldier put up. Sol Price began preaching after the war.
Henry and Nancy Harkrider had four children, Jeffie, who married T. W. Carmichael, James Hugh, who is now a merchant in Mt. Pleasant, Ernest, who died when about 18 years of age, and Fred, who lives in Mt. Pleasant.
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