Local history tends to be written by the families that stick around. As a result, even very important figures from the early history of a place may be forgotten if they or their descendants later moved away. Abel Landers of Newton County is a good example of this. In the 1840s and 1850s, he was one of the Newton County's most prominent figures. Here is a brief list of his accomplishments.

• He ran for state representative from Newton County five times and was elected in 1842, 1846 and 1852.
• He twice ran for state senator from the district that included Barry, Jasper, Lawerence and Newton counties and was elected in 1848.
• He was on the commission that located the county seat of Barry County in 1839.
• He was on the commission that located the county seat of Jasper County in 1841.
• He is credited by one account with naming Jollification.
• In the period 1840-41, he was county assessor, a district road supervisor and a justice of the peace.

In 1858, however, Landers and his family moved to Texas, where he was a judge in Hood County after the Civil War. There he is largely featured in local histories as one of the area's most prominent and colorful figures, but in Newton County, he is largely forgotten. Goodspeed's History of Newton County (1888), for example, does not mention him at all. To right the balance, here are a few biographical notes.

Abel Landers and his wife Sarah Ann "Sally" Shipman were both born in Warren County, Kentucky, and raised in Tennessee. Abel was born about 1796, the son of Christopher Landers and Phoebe Lee, and Sally was born February 22, 1801, the daughter of Daniel Shipman. They were second cousins through the Shipman line and married about 1820, eventually producing 11 children (some sources say 13).

Abel is mentioned in real estate records in Bedford County, TN, as early as 1825 and freed a slave there as late as September, 1837. Shortly thereafter, he and Sally removed to Southwest Missouri. They may have been preceded there by Sally's younger brother Jacob Shipman, who was married to Abel's sister Mary Elizabeth Landers, and they were later joined in Newton County by Sally and Jacob's brothers William, Reuben, James and Charles Shipman.

Very little is known of Landers' life in TN, but he apparently left there prosperous. By 1842, he had puchased 640 acres of land in the Shoal and Capps Creek bottoms in eastern Newton County and had resold 240 acres of it, leaving a substantial farm of 400 acres. Of the land he resold, he sold 40 acres to his former slave Lewis Roberson and 120 acres to his brother-in-law William Shipman. Interestingly, he sold the land to his ex-slave for the same price he paid for it, but charged his brother-in-law a 300% markup. He continued to buy and sell land in the area until he moved to Texas in 1858. Given his extensive political activities, it seems unlikely that he personaly did much farming. More likely, he left it to his sons and sons-in-law. In the 1840s, the Landers children made marriages with several families in the Jollification area including the Wrights, the Nutts and the Brites.

In Tennessee, Landers had owned the Lewis Roberson slave family, consisting of Lewis, his wife Tempy and two young children. Lewis is described in one instrument as crippled in his hip and probably provided domestic help rather than field labor. Before leaving TN in 1837, Landers freed Lewis and, from 1839 to 1844 in Missouri, he sold Lewis his wife and children. See my biographical notes on Lewis Roberson. In February, 1842, he bought an eight year old slave girl named Claricy from a man named James Fowler for $400, the purchase price apparently paid with 80 acres of land. Thereafter, Landers was not involved in any recorded slave transactions except those involving the Robersons, and by the time of the slave schedules in the 1850 census, he no longer owned slaves.

Given his later service as a judge in Texas, it seems likely that Landers was a lawyer. In the 1840s, he served as administrator in several family probates in Newton County, but otherwise left few traces in this activity. His name does not show up in the published rolls of attorneys from area counties, suggesting he concentrated on politics and opportunities for public service instead.

At the end of 1838, Barry County was reduced in size by the creation of Newton County, requiring that the county seat of Barry County be relocated to a more central location. Three years later, in 1841, Jasper County was created from Newton County, necessitating the choice of a county seat for the new county. Since the siting of a county seat was a major economic decision and potentially controversial, it was common practice at the time to appoint commissioners from outside the affected county to make the choice. In 1839 for Barry County and in 1841 for Jasper County, Landers was chosen to help locate the new county seats. This suggests he had already risen to a position of some prominence in the area.

Beginning in 1840, Landers name also appeared frequently in the minutes of the county court of Newton County (an administrative rather than judicial body). In February, 1840, he was mentioned as a justice of the peace; in December, 1840, his bond as county assessor was approved; and in February, 1841, he was appointed to district the roads in Benton Township. Then, with the 1842 election, he began his legislative career.

From 1842 to 1854, Landers ran for state representative from Newton County five times and state senator from the district twice. He was elected representative in 1842, 1844 and 1852 and state senator in 1848. His legislative career has not yet been researched, but he is known to have been a Democrat and likely followed the party line on the great issues of the day such as aid to the railroads and the approaching sectional controversy over slavery. In the elections he lost, Landers was defeated by James S. Rains, a lawyer and future Confederate general who eventually settled in Jasper County; Mathew H. Ritchey, a prominent merchant from Newtonia and later namesake of Ritchey, MO; and Littlebury Mason, a wealthy slaveowner from Cassville. Here are the detailed results of his elections: Landers Election Returns.

The reasons for Landers' political success are suggested by an exchange in the Neosho papers in April, 1870, 12 years after he left Newton County. The Neosho Investigator published a column repeating a current story that Jollification was named by Landers, who bought whiskey for the men at the mill there and sponsored fist fights which he called by that name. A letter was immediately fired back to the Neosho Times saying Landers was much too high-minded to have done any such thing. A man who could be remembered in such contradictory lights was probably bound to succeed at politics. For details, see Jollification.

In 1858, Landers sold out in Newton County and moved to Texas to join a brother who was already there. He settled on the west bank of the Brazos River in what was then Johnson County and later Hood County, Texas. This area was just south of present-day Fort Worth and, in 1858, was a true frontier still subject to Indian raids. Several related families from the Capps Creek area ultimately joined him there, and names from early Newton County such as Wright and Nutt are also prominent in the history of Hood County.

When he moved to Texas, Landers was already over 60. His wife Sally died shortly after the move, and he seems at first to have settled down to a quiet life of farming and stock raising. He is not known to have taken any particular role in the Civil War, although two of his sons, Abel R. and Henry, served with the 15th Texas Cavalry and Henry was killed at the Battle of Mansfield, Louisiana, in 1864.

In 1867, however, Landers returned to public life, serving as the first trial judge of the newly-created Hood County. He is remembered there as something of a character, as these excerpts from Texas histories suggest:

Judge Landers was a man of the people but of great determination, often amounting to bluntness which in others would have been offensive, but not so in him. He was public-spirited; in politics a Democrat; in religion a "hard-shell" Baptist. Lewis Publishing Company, History of Texas (1896).

He was too far advanced in life and too much addicted to creature comforts to now post himself thoroughly in the laws of the state, but possessing good natural abilities and large experience in the affairs of the state generally, with a strong sense of justice, he with such aids as were at hand, discarded many of the forms of procedure, and reached conclusions with but meagre [sic] respect for laws that obstructed his views. Thomas Taylor Ewell, Hood County History (1895). Ewell's Hood County History Online.

During this period [the late 1860s] many vexed public questions came before him, which he disposed of without much regard for precedents which happened to stand in the way of what he deemed just results... Lewis Publishing, History of Texas.

Upon one occasion he was engaged in trying a criminal case, well defended by a lawyer of good technical qualifications. Judge Landers was already convinced that the defendant was guilty, and when the state's witnesses were testifying, he allowed them to state everything without interruption, but when the defendant's witnesses begun to testify he repeatedly warned them to be cautious how they swore. Ewell, Hood County History.

[N]o appeal from the lawyer could change the current of his course for crude justice, and while the lawyer was still talking in his client's cause, there suddenly came the pre-emptory order from the Judge that the court adjourn to the grocery [i.e. saloon] for refreshments. While retiring to that favorite resort his honor could hear the rumblings and cursing of a disappointed and chagrined lawyer. Ewell, Hood County History.

One example of Judge Landers jurisprudence will suffice. In the late 1860s, he ignored "beastly majorities" and overruled three popular elections in a row selecting the site of the county seat. Only when the voters had the wisdom to locate it near land owned by him, his family and friends did he find the election without procedural flaws. His choice, Granbury, is still the county seat of Hood County.

Abel Landers died in Texas about 1873.

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