“Memorial and Biographical History of Dallas County,” published:  
Chicago;  The Lewis Publishing Company, 1892.

DAVID C. NANCE.  As a man of business, Mr. Nance’s name is well 
known in Dallas county, and every step of his business career has been 
illustrated with acts of liberality and kindness.  With each vital interest of his 
section and his people, he has been closely identified, and as a result he has 
the confidence of all who know him.

His father, Allen Q. Nance, was born in Kentucky, in 1813, in Green county, 
and in 1832 removed to Illinois.  He came from Cass county, that State, to 
Dallas county, Texas, in 1852, settling a mile and a half northwest of 
DeSoto, where he remained until his death in 1873.  He was a self-made 
man, for he began the battle of life for himself with comparatively nothing, 
and at his death was in very comfortable circumstances.  He was a 
Democrat, and was for many years a member of the Christian Church, in 
which he was Elder for a time.  His wife, Elizabeth W., who was a daughter 
of Daniel Deeren, a native of Virginia, was born in Green county, Kentucky, 
in 1826, and in her early girlhood was left an orphan.  In 1939 she went to 
Illinois with a brother-in-law, and there she married Mr. Nance, January 11, 
1841.  They had eleven children, viz.:  David C.; Mary Jane, who died in 
1890, the wife of James Reagan, of Brownwood, Texas; Columbus, who 
died in infancy; Gustavus A., who resides in Dallas county; Ellen, now the 
wife of George W. Bowman of Palo Pinto county; Anna L., the wife of 
William Horne of Dallas county; Sarah C., the wife of John Cruse of 
Calloway county, Missouri; Charles P., who resides in this county; Etta, the 
wife of Benjamin Brandenburg and a resident also of this county; John H., 
who died in infancy; and Lee, who died at the age of eight years.

The paternal grandfather, Zachariah Nance, was a Revolutionary soldier and 
served in the battles of Stony Point on the Hudson, July 15, 1779, and 
Yorktown from the 9th to the 19th of October following.  He witnessed the 
surrender of Cornwallis at the latter place, seeing him hand up his sword.  
He was married twice, first to Jane Wilkins of New Kent county, Virginia, in 
1785, and lastly to Elizabeth Bingley, nee Morris, of James City county, 
Virginia, December 15, 1802, who became the paternal grandmother of the 
subject of this sketch.

The paternal great-grandfather, who also bore the name Zachariah, and his 
wife, Susanna Duke Sherman, were early settlers near Jamestown, Virginia.

D.C. Nance was born in Cass county, Illinois, February 2, 1843, came to 
Texas with his parents in 1852, locating on a farm one and one-half miles 
northwest from De Soto.  He remained with his parents until September, 
1861, at which time he enlisted in the military service of the State, and 
subsequently of the Confederate States.  He was a member of Company E, 
Twelfth Texas Dragoons, under command of Colonel W.H. Parsons, a 
brother of the Chicago anarchist, Albert Parsons.  Mr. Nance was in the 
Cache river battle near the town of Cotton Plant, Arkansas, July 2, 1862, in 
which engagement his horse was killed under him and he himself sustained 
three severe wounds.  He was captured also, and made his escape the same 
day.  A peculiarity of this day’s work is the fact that one of his wounds was 
made by the first ball fired in that battle.

During the winter following, he was engaged in the manufacture of 
gunpowder at Waxahachie, Texas, in answer to a requisition made by the 
Legislature of this State.  In the spring of 1863, there was an explosion and 
the mill was blown to atoms, Mr. Nance being the only one left alive.  
Subsequently he returned to the army and was in about thirty engagements 
along the Red river in 1864, sustaining no injuries in any until the last, the 
Yellow bayou battle, on May 10, in which he was wounded again, twice.  
After his recovery he was appointed First Sergeant of his company.

At the close of the war he returned to his father’s house, penniless, and 
applied his hands to the plow handles.  At the age of twenty-five he turned 
his effects into money and took a course of study in the Bonham schools for 
two years, after which he turned his attention for a time to teaching.  In 
1874, he purchased a farm near Bonham, Texas, where he remained sixteen 
years.  In 1889 he purchased the old homestead near De Soto, where he still 
plies his vocation of farming and cares for his aged and widowed mother; 
but in connection with this he also owns and operates a general mercantile 
establishment at De Soto, where his business has made his name familiar to 
many.

He was married, November 12, 1870, to Miss Sallie M. Hackley of Bonham, 
who was born in Lincoln county, Kentucky, April 22, 1844, and came with 
her mother to Texas, in 1857.  She was the daughter of James and Susan 
Hackley, both of whom are now dead.  She has borne Mr. Nance four 
children, viz.: Charles C., who manages his father’s farm; James A., his 
father’s store; Quilla, a son, and Anna Laura are yet school children.

In politics, Mr. Nance is a high-tariff Democrat, and is the present 
Postmaster of De Soto.  Up to 1880 he was identified with the Christian or 
Campbellite Church, but since that time he has been a Restitutionist, having 
discarded many of the popular doctrines of the Spiritualists or 
Immaterialists.  Prominent among these are the doctrines of heaven and hell, 
of immortal souls and of endless punishment.  He believes there is a God 
and a Christ; that the Bible reveals something of their character and 
intentions; and that one of these intentions is that all men shall live again, on 
the earth, though not in pain as now.  He also believes there will be in that 
day one universal, unending kingdom over all the nations, present, past and 
future; that this kingdom was foretold by the prophets and proclaimed by the 
apostles of our Lord as the kingdom of God, which proclamation they called 
the Gospel.


Submitted by: L. Pingel