Surname	Shook
Given Name	John Wesley Sr.
Gender	Male
Born	09-APR-1846 in Jasper County, Texas
Died	14-MAR-1921 in Pearl, Coryell County, Texas
Buried	Pearl Cemetery, Pearl, Coryell County, Texas
Father	Nathaniel SHOOK (1816-1820 MO - 1849 TX)
Mother	Lorena ROBINSON (28-SEP-1819 AR - 17-FEB-1907 TX)

Family Line

John Wesley Shook, Sr.-> Nathaniel Shook (f)-> Jacob Shook (gf)-> Johanne Jacob Shook (g-gf)-> Johanne Hans George Shook (Schuck) (gg-gf)-> Johannes Shook (Schuck) (ggg-gf).

Marriage

Cynthia Jane LEWIS; born: 06-MAY-1842 near Rome, Floyd County, Georgia; died: 22-APR-1912 in Pearl, Coryell County, Texas; father: Lotspeich Sidney LEWIS (22-JUL-1805 TN - 28-DEC-1857 TX); mother: Elizabeth Jane PEDEN (12-DEC-1812 IA - 28-NOV-1881 TX); buried: Pearl Cemetery, Pearl, Coryell County, Texas.

Children

• Coryell SHOOK (1870 TX - 16-FEB-1870 TX)
• Joshua Holland SHOOK (02-MAR-1871 TX - 06-DEC-1927 TX)
• Clarence Juan SHOOK (02-JAN-1872 TX - 07-APR-1951 TX)
• Carrie Jefferson SHOOK (05-APR-1874 TX - 07-SEP-1962 TX)
• Elizabeth Lorena "Bessie" SHOOK (19-NOV-1876 TX - 23-JAN-1966 TX)
• William Andrew SHOOK (20-NOV-1879 TX - 20-JAN-1952 TX)
• Mary Tennison "Ted" SHOOK (26-FEB-1882 TX - 16-MAR-1974 TX)
• John Wesley SHOOK, Jr. (29-NOV-1884 TX - 15-JUN-1963 TX)

Stories

John Wesley SHOOK was born about 1847 in Texas.

The following biographical sketch of John Wesley Shook and Cynthia Jane Lewis and their family was written by their granddaughter Vivian W. Andrew for "Coryell County Families." The sketch is entitled SHOOK-LEWIS and includes a photograph of the family which was taken in 1897.

"The John Wesley Shook family of Pearl counted the Robinson, Lewis and Peden names in its background. First to come to Texas was the Robinson family, in 1829. Laureno Robinson married Nathan Shook, a Methodist preacher, in 1842, and John Wesley (1846-1921) was the youngest of their three sons. He grew up in the Robinson home, and was a boy of eight when they moved from Walker to Coryell County in 1854.

Cynthia Jane Lewis was born near Rome, Georgia, and came to Texas in 1849 at age six. The family lived in Cherokee, then Freestone, before coming to Coryell County. Jane was a teenager during the Civil War and lost a brother in a northern prison camp. One story handed down was how she carried her shoes until she got almost to church, then put them on. She and John Wesley were married in 1869 and lived happily together until her death in 1912.

In 1875 the family moved from Owl Creek to western Coryell County. The cove near Live Oak Gap stayed in the Shook family until 1952, and descendants still made sentimental trips there to see "our old tree."

John Shook had diversified talents: carpenter, farmer, rancher, and harvester. His account book lists many families for whom he cut grain. However, his real love was the ministry. He was a licensed local preacher, and did mostly supply work. Jane also had a strong Methodist background and the Pearl Methodist Church was organized in their home.

Seven children survived to adulthood. Joshua (1871-1927) married Sarah Cox; their children: Frankie, Frieda, Lucian, Lorraine, Leon, J. H., Clarence, and Jack. Clarence (1873-1951) and Ida Williamson were married in 1895 and had two children: Ouida, who married Dan Jones, and Gordon, who married Myra Merle Adams of Meridian. Carrie (1874-1962) married Wesley Cooper in 1879 [sic]. Their children were Gladys, Gladyne, Garland, and Graydon. Bessie (1876-1966) and Will (1880-1952) never married. Mary Ted (1882-1974) married Will Andrew and had seven offspring: Shook, Shannon, Dorothy, Vivian, W.G., Katherine, and Winifred. John Wesley Jr. "Dick" (1884-1962) married Etta Roberts. Roger and Shirley were their children.

Clarence, "C. J." Shook spent most of his life in the Pearl community. He ran a grocery store, bought cotton, hunted Indian artifacts, and led the singing at the Methodist Church. Will stayed on the farm until his death in 1952, exerting his quiet, steady influence in the community. From 1927 Ted and her orphans lived with him. Bessie began teaching in her teens, riding horseback across the "mountains" to her first school. Her long and distinguished career as an English teacher ended after World War II. The three other children also left the county. Josh is buried in Stephensville, Carrie in the Pearl Cemetery, and Dick in Bentonville, Arkansas, where he retired after long residence in Canyon, Texas.

The family is still represented in Pearl, in 1984, by Mrs. Myra Shook and Mrs. Dorothy Andrew Carroll.

The following biographical sketch of John Wesley Shook was also written by his granddaughter Vivian W. Andrew and was extracted from "Vignettes Of Coryell County" by Claude and Mabel Bailry, 1976. Those who reported incidents in the life of John Wesley were his daughters, Miss Bessie Shook and Mary T. Shook Andrew, and a granddaughter, Mrs. Quida Shook Jones.

"J. W. Shook (1846-1921) was the third son of Nathan and Lorena Robinson Shook. Nathan was a minister and surveyor, and when a party organized to go to California at the time of the Gold Rush, he went along as a surveyor and left Lorena with her father. Nathan married Lorena in 1842 and she bore him four children before he went away in 1849. John Wesley was one of the children. "So far as my grandmother knew, not one of the party was ever heard from again. any of the wagon trains were demolished by Indians," said Mary T. Andrew in July 1969.

1869 John Wesley married Cynthia Jane Lewis (1843-1912) a native of Georgia who was the daughter of Lotspeich and Elizabeth Jane Lewis of Oglesby ...

When John Wesley and Jane moved to Pearl in 1875, Lorena went along and made her home with them. After reaching the frontier at Pearl, the Shooks offered their home for the organization of a Methodist Church. Among the charter members were Grandpa's sister, Mary and her husband W. G. Davenport ...

In 1887 Grandpa was licensed to preach, and in 1892 at Waco he was ordained a local deacon. Except for part of one year, he did only local ministerial work, but he loved to preach, and as long as he was physically able to had appointments at needy places near home.

Quoting from Aunt Bess in Grandpa's obituary: "No man loved the great hymns of the church more than Father did. He loved to sing them, and he knew dozens of them. As a child, I used to go with him to the market twenty-five miles away, and he would frequently sing hymns all the way along the country road."

The ministers who served the early rural churches traveled from community to community on horseback, carrying a Bible, a tuning fork, and a hymn book. This writer has seen the hymn book that was carried by John Wesley Shook, and it was hand written. No group of people is entitled to more praise than the circuit rider. With a gun in one hand and a Bible in the other, he brought comfort and cheer to many lonely men and women. (Mears, Scrapbook of Coryell County.)

Although preaching was Grandpa's great love, there was a living to be earned for a growing family. He farmed, tried his hand at raising cattle, was a fair carpenter, and by 1886 owned a reaper for the use of which he had a respectable list of clients. Tradition has it that he erected the second barbed-wire fence in the county.

Religious training came naturally in the Shook family. Aunt Bess recalled that each morning the family rose, dressed and had morning prayer -- "to feed the spirit before the body." My mother added that sometimes Grandpa would get carried away by his own eloquence and Grandma would say, "Hurry it up, John Wesley, my biscuits will burn!"

Uncle Clarence (Quida's father) remembered when Grandpa came back in the house one late evening after he had checked on his stock at the barn, threw his gun on the table and said, "This is the last time I am going to carry a gun. I think we are peaceful enough that no gun-toting is necessary." And he kept his word.

Another story Quida remembers was when there were a number of "outlaws" around Evant who were causing trouble. Some of the Evant citizens and perhaps an officer of the law chased one man over Live Oak Gap and down, and caught him just south of Grandpa's house. They had a rope and were about to hang the man from one of the oak trees close to the house. Grandpa walked out and told them that he was a peace loving man and that there would be no violence on his property. He convinced them enough that they left. Quida did not know if they finally hanged the man or not.

But some events even his forceful personality could not affect. A postcard was found addressed to Clarence and bearing the following message:

Dallas, April 3, 1912

Dear Clarence,

We are here at Peacock Hotel, 1922 1/2 Elm St.; got here at 9:30 o'clock last night. Just got back from the Doctor. He thinks he will make a final cure this time.

J. W. Shook

But, his Jane died April 22, before he got her back home.

J. W. Shook was the grandfather of Gordon Shook of Pearl.

Finally, the following paragraph relating the history of the Pearl Methodist Church was extracted from "Historical Markers In Coryell County."

"A group of Methodist gathered in the home of the Rev. John Wesley Shook (1846-1921) in the winter 1875-76 to organize a congregation. Early worship services were held in the Hope Schoolhuse. In 1890 landowner Charley Karnes (1854-1933) gave the Methodist Church three acres of land on which to build a sanctuary. By 1892 a Sunday school was in operation, and in 1900 a Parsonage was built near the Church. The existing sanctuary was erected about 1919-20, and the Parsonage was sold in 1953. Serving the people of a large area, the size of the Church's membership varied over the years. As the population of surrounding communities began to grow, members of Pearl Methodist Church withdrew to help organize new congregations. In October 1975 the Church celebrated its centennial with a special program involving descendants of J. W. Shook and other early members. Four years later, in March 1979, the congregation voted to disband and the Church was officially discontinued by the Methodist Denomination. The Church property was given to the Pearl Cemetery Association in 1985. Pearl Methodist Church stands as a reminder of the area's early heritage."

Elizabeth SHOOK (Jacob) was born in 1815/1820 in Missouri Territory.

Elizabeth Pearce was named a daughter and identified as "formerly Elizabeth Shook" by Jacob Shook in his will. She was bequeathed 1/5th of his estate. In 1850 she lived in Franklin Parish in Louisiana. Her husband died that year and she returned to Arkansas. In 1860 she was a farmer in Ouachita County with real and personal property valued at $3,390.

Elizabeth married (1) P. L. SMITH on 03-JAN-1836 in Hempstead County, Arkansas.

Elizabeth also married (2) John Harris PEARCE2, son of Benjamin Franklin PEARCE and Selah Celia) HARRIS, in 1842 in Union County, Arkansas. John was born on 18 Oct 1796 in Georgia. He died on 8 Dec 1850 in Franklin Parrish, Louisiana.

John Harris Pearce was married twice before his marriage to Elizabeth. His first marriage was to Mary Robertson Tooke, daughter of William Tooke and Mary Gatlin, on May 23, 1823 in Pulaski County, Georgia. They had five children; Edmund Jackson Pearce (1828), Sarah Gatlin Pearce (1829), Rebecca Ann Pearce (1832), William Tooke Pearce (1833), and Benjamin Franklin Pearce (1835). Edmund died after a duel with M. P. Dailey, his wife's sister's husband. Sarah helped raise her half-sister Paralee after the death of their father. His second marriage was to Millie Neals in Lowndes County, Alabama in 1837.