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THE
LEE-PEACOCK FEUD
In the southwestern part of Fannin County, in the northwestern part of
Hunt, in the southeastern part of Grayson and the northeastern part of
Collin Counties, there was an area covered by thickets of various names.
These thickets were known as Mustang Thicket, Black Jack Thicket, Wildcat
Thicket, Jernigan Thicket and some times as the Big Thicket. As late as
1877 there was a dense thicket about seven miles long and a maximum width
of four miles south of the present town of Leonard, into which few people
had penetrated and through which only one man had ever gone. Bob Lee,
joined the Confederate Army, and served in Tennessee and Louisiana. He
held the rank of Captain in the Confederate Army, At the end of the war,
Captain Bob Lee returned home with better clothes and a better horse and
saddle than most Confederate soldiers and some gold coins. The Union
League, an organization led by the Freedmen's Bureau, carpet- baggers and
scalawags, with Federal support, had its North Texas headquarters
at Pilot
Grove, about seven miles from the home of the Lee families. The leader Of
the Union League was Lewis Peacock, whose home was south of Pilot Grove on
the Fannin-Grayson County line.
It was not long until the news of Bob Lee's return was known everywhere in
the Red River Valley. The Confederate Veterans were happy about it, for
now they felt they had a leader. To Peacock, Captain
Bob Lee, the
cavalryman, with his good clothes, his plumed hat and gold coins, was too
big for the "Corners" and would have to go.
Peacock and other members of the Union League conceived the idea of
extorting money from Bob Lee. They came to his house one night and arrested him and started to Sherman
with him, but stopped in Choctaw Creek bottoms.
They took Lee's watch and $20 in gold and he and his father, Daniel W,
Lee, were to sign a note for $2,000.
The robbery in Choctaw Creek bottoms started the Lee-Peacock War. During
the latter part of 1867, all of 1868, and until June, 1869, the war raged.
All told something like 50 men would be killed. By the summer of 1868 the
war had gotten so hot that the Union League
called for help from the Federal Government, which led to Captain Bob
Lee's murder. |