My GG-Grandfather
“Due to the troubled period toward reconstruction in the State of Georgia, John Joel Hutchins decided to move his family to Texas. In Early 1884 they got off the train at Iredell. He was a carpenter by trade. They lived just south of the Bosque River for a few years. His son, Johnathan, told of sitting on their chicken house in 1887 and watching most of the buildings in the old town on the north side of the river as they washed away.
In John Joel’s family there were five children so he decided to farm and ranch. He acquired some land south of Iredell at the foot of the hills just east of Johnson Peak.
Here his wife soon died, but he remained to raise the children. They were Tellie who married Mr. Kaylor; Johnathan who married Dovie Worrell; Aubrey who married Effa White; Elizabeth who married Anson Bryant; and Perry who died as a young man.
Jonathan W. Hutchins (John) lived near Iredell all of his life. He married Dovie Worrell in 1898. In 1903 they bought a farm in the Spring Creek Community.
There were six children in this family; Mattie who married Noah Ray; Bettie married James (Bud) Cranfill; Marie married Charles Cockrell; twins Bonnie and Johnie who married Sam W. Battershell and Alice Chamblee, respectively; and Katherine who married Elton Sanders.
John Hutchins was a Baptist preacher. Although he never preached for a fee or salary, he preached almost every Sunday at either Rocky, Unity, County Line, Foot Out, Flag Branch, Spring Creek or schools of Center Grove and Fair View.
It was through some of his efforts that Spring Creek was the last rural church to be active in the Iredell area. He also farmed to make a living for his family.
Johnie and Alice Hutchins have three sons. Joseph (Joe) Wayne married Willie Mae Jordan, and they have one son, Jay Lee, and one daughter, Amber Rihann. James Aubrey married Renate Deitz, and they have one son, Jerry Albin, and one daughter, Judith Ann. Johnie Ray married Linda Fater, and they have three daughters, Jenna Lyn and twins, Jessica Ann and Janice Elaine.
Johnnie and Alice Hutchins and Bonnie and Sam Battershell now live in the Mustang Community. James Aubrey also has some land in the Mustang area where he plans to make his home when he retires from the Army.
The Hutchins family has remained in this area for the past 100 years.”
(source: Bosque County History; copied by Scott James, 1989)