Surname Saturday: William Leon “Hoss” Brinlee and Myrtie Short Wilson

William Leon “Hoss” Brinlee
b. 27 Oct 1873, Blue Ridge, Collin Co., Texas
d. 5 Jan 1952, Collin County, Texas
& Myrtie Short Wilson
b. 23 Sep 1879, Texas
d. 27 Apr 1961, Wolfe City, Hunt County, Texas
m. 10 Jun 1897
|--Guy Leon “Square” Brinlee
|----b. 17 Oct 1899, Collin County, Texas
|----d. 30 Nov 1978, Greenville, Collin Co., Texas
|--Vernon Argos “Bun” Brinlee
|----b. 9 Nov 1903, Blue Ridge, Collin, Texas
|----d. 3 Apr 1985, Grand Prairie, Dallas, Texas

William Leon Brinlee was the son of Hiram Carroll Brinlee, Jr. and Diza Caroline Boone. Myrtie Wilson was the daughter of W. A. Wilson and Lydia Short.

There are rumors that Vernon “Bun” Brinlee actually got married at one point while his parents were out of town but was too afraid to tell them, so he came home and lived with them as though he was still single. He is listed as single on the 1930 census and is living with his parents. There is at least one family tree that shows him married to a Mary Josephine McDonald on 17 September 1928, and I found a birth record on Ancestry in which a Mary Argos Brinlee is listed as the mother.

Bun and Square Brinlee continued to live on the family homestead after their parents died. Square acquired his nickname from being a square-dance caller, and Bun was apparently short for “Bunnen” (?=Vernon). They led an exciting life and worked in many different jobs: shoeing horses, farming, rodeo circuit rider, gunsmith, barber, and others. The story went that they themselves owned no guns and would allow no hunting on their farm (which did not have any electricity or other modern conveniences), but this was apparently a fiction they allowed people to believe; people who visited them as kids (their place was a favorite hangout to hear stories of the old days) said that they were allowed to hunt and fish. A book was written about them by Dr. Joseph Faulds called Conversations with Kid Cougar and Lim Hang High.

I would love to share information with anyone related to/researching this family; you can contact me at my e-mail address, which can be found by going to my profile page (there is a link to that page in the About Me section to the left).