John Wesley Lantrip

John Wesley Lantrip was born Feb. 2, 1859 in Louisiana to George Wesley and Mary Ann (Baggett) Lantrip. Sometime after this, the family moved to the Liberty Community in Milam Co., Texas, where John married Martha Bowlin Euzene "Mattie" Alley on Dec. 18, 1879. After their marriage, the couple lived in a tent on the Lantrip home place until they could build themselves a house. The couple had nine children, all of whom survived to adulthood, a rather rare occurrence at that time.

The Lantrips were sandy-land farmers, growing what they called "goobers" (peanuts), sweet potatoes, peppers, cotton, and tomatoes. They were part of the Great Tomato Boom of Milano, TX. which occurred in the teens and twenties.

The Lantrips enjoyed music and singing, especially hymns they sang in the Methodist church. John Lantrip had a beautiful voice, and frequently sang at funerals of family and friends.

John Lantrip and his mother-in-law, Mary E. (Stewart) Alley, died within two days of each other of influenza during the great worldwide flu epidemic of 1918. When John Lantrip died on Oct. 26, 1918, there was no one left to sing at his funeral. John Wesley Lantrip is buried in the Liberty Community Cemetery in Milam Co., Texas.

A great deal of information has been compiled on the Lantrips in America in the book The American Genealogy of the Lantrip Family . . . including the surnames Lanthrip & Landtroop, compiled and documented by Ivolue Sanders Lantrip & James Erwin Lantrip.