Name: James Francis Stinson
Death date: 27 Aug 1926
Death place: Wylie, Collin, Texas
Gender: Male
Race or color (on document): w
Age at death: 79 years 9 months 20 days
Estimated birth year:
Birth date: 17 Oct 1846
Birthplace: Ohio
Marital status: Married
Spouse's name:
Father's name: William Stinson
Father's birthplace: Penn.
Mother's name: Lucy Hoten
Mother's birthplace: Ohio
Occupation: Financier
Residence: Wylie, Collin, Texas
Cemetery name: Forrest Grove
Burial place:
Burial date: 28 Aug 1926
Additional relatives:
Film number: 2114144
Digital GS number: 4165582
Image number: 3334
Reference number: cn 27645
Collection: Texas Deaths, 1890-1976



James Francis Stinson was born in Akron, Ohio. He was orphaned when young, migrated to Missouri then to Collin County when a young man. He came by wagon train with a family by the name of Roundtree and settled south of McKinney wehre he went to work for Benjamin F. Biggs. In 1876 he married Margaret Catherine Biggs, the oldest daughter of his employer.
They started housekeeping on a small acreage he bought on what is now Parker Road. Mr. and Mrs. Stinson added to their small farm from time to time until they owned around a thousand acres of land in various places. The earliest school in the area in that day was a one-room school located southwest of Parker, and also a one room school at St. Paul, which is east of Parker. When the need arose for another school Mr. and Mrs. Stinson donated the land, and another one-room school was built on the west side of the Stinson farm, and it was called "Stinson School". It was also called "Who'd a Thought It.". That was the exclamation from a man who passed while the school was being built and the name stuck. It was the school that all the Stinson children and other nearby neighbor children attended in that early day. Mr. and Mrs. Stinson were the parents of ten children, eight of whom lived to adulthood.