DR. REUBEN PEARCE TYE
This biography of Dr. Reuben Pearce Tye is in
James Alonzo Matthews, Jr. and Lucille Pearce, comps.,
Pearce, Bartlett, Matthews, Smart, and Allied Families
(Austin, Tex.: Eakin Publications, Inc., 1983), on p. 141.
Minor typographical corrections have been made.
Reuben Pearce Tye, the only son [of Florence V. Tye and Henry C. Taylor], was born March 17, 1851. He was called "Pearce." When he was twenty-two, he went to Texas to live with his uncle, George Tye. He worked on the farm there until the summer of 1876, when he visited his uncle, Joshua Jackson Tye, in Whitley County, Kentucky. There he saw his cousin, Margaret Susannah Tye, age sixteen—"a lovely blond with pretty blue eyes and golden curls," as he later described her. Born February 16, 1860, at Carpenter, Kentucky, her nickname was "Sudie." They were married November 16, 1876, at her father Joshua Jackson Tye's home in Whitley County, about twelve miles from Williamsburg on or near Big Poplar Creek.
In March 1877, Reuben Pearce Tye returned to Texas with his bride plus nine others: his aunt, Eliza Jane Tye Faulkner, who had been widowed from her husband Wesley Faulkner; his aunt, Louanna Tye, who never married; and his aunt, Margaret Tye Evans, who was divorced from her husband, John R. Evans; and Margaret's six children: Eliza, Nancy Ellen, George Monroe, Lou Catherine, Margaret Minerva, and Sue Leona Evans—an entourage of eleven people. They traveled by train by way of Memphis and across Arkansas to Fort Worth, finally arriving at Oak Grove, Tarrant County, Texas, where George Washington Tye put them all up at his home for awhile. Later some of them stayed with Robert Wickliffe Tye. Pearce and Sudie stayed with George until September or October 1877, when they moved into a one-room house that Pearce had built on the prairie just west of George's house. Here their first two children, Commodore and Bessie, were born. In 1879, Sudie's parents, Joshua Jackson and Permelia [Parmelia?]* Tye, and their children came to Texas from Kentucky and built a house east of Village Creek.
Reuben Pearce Tye tried farming, but his health was not equal to it. He decided to become a doctor, though he had meager funds, a young wife, and small children. First, he started "reading" under some doctors in Fort Worth for about two years—at the time a common practice among medical students. The doctors loaned medical textbooks to the students and then quizzed them on their studies. About 1884, Pearce entered medical college at Louisville and passed his exams. He then returned home and moved his family to Glen Rose, Texas, and then to Iredell, Texas, where he practiced medicine for about a year. He returned to Louisville, entering the Kentucky School of Medicine and graduating in 1886. He moved his family to Quanah, Texas, where he practiced for nearly a year, and then to Clarendon, Texas, in 1888. He was appointed surgeon for the Fort Worth and Denver R. R. In 1892, he went to New York City to the New York Polytechnic for a postgraduate course in surgery.
In September 1893, Reuben Pearce Tye and some friends left Clarendon and went to Oklahoma, and he decided to locate his family in Chickasha. He bought business lots on the corner of Fourth and Chickasha Avenue, where he later constructed the Tye Building. He practiced medicine in Chickasha until ill hearlth forced him to retire about 1919. He and Sudie returned to Tarrant County, Texas, near his original home and spent his remaining years on the farm. Dr. Reuben Pearce Tye died February 9, 1922, and was buried at Chickasha, Oklahoma. Sudie returned to Chickasha with her daughter, Verna, and her two children to live. Margaret Susannah "Sudie" Tye died in September 1945 in Chickasha at age eighty-five and was buried there.
*Bracketed matter was bracketed in the original.