Jacob Anthony (b. 1800), the Anthony family patriarch, emigrated from Virginia to Tennessee sometime around 1821 and married Evalina Graham, daughter of Alexander Graham, in 1826. They had five children, four boys and a girl. After Graham's death, Anthony married a woman identified only as Crenshaw.
The primary creators of this collection are Elizabeth (Bettie) Claiborne Cryer Anthony (1838-1905) and Daniel J. Anthony (1838-1909), son of Jacob Anthony. They were married in 1856 in Tennessee near the Cumberland River and later moved to Kaufman County in Texas in 1872. Daniel J. Anthony served two terms as mayor of Terrell, Texas and two-term Kaufman County representative to the Texas Legislature. Elizabeth's father, Hardy Cryer, was a close friend of Andrew Jackson. Members of the Cryer family fought with the Confederate Army in the Civil War and one, Edward, was killed at the Battle of Shiloh.
The Anthony-Cryer Family Papers consist of correspondence, business papers, financial documents, photographs, ephemera, artifacts, and a family bible that document the Anthony-Cryer family, specifically Elizabeth Claiborne Cryer Anthony, her husband Daniel J. Anthony, and their descendants, first in Tennessee near the Cumberland River and later in Texas in Kaufman county. The collection dates from 1806-1935, the bulk of which dates from before 1901.
The archive begins with material from Daniel J. Anthony's grandfather Alexander Graham and his father Jacob Anthony. Other records in the collection were created by Alexander Graham (Daniel J. Anthony's grandfather) and Jacob Anthony, Graham's son-in-law. It continues through his and his wife's children and grandchildren's lives and travel in Texas (primarily in Terrell, Corsicana, San Antonio, and Dallas) and other Southwestern states through the time of the Great Depression. The material documents their successes, such as Daniel J. Anthony's political achievements and his grandson Marc Anthony's presidency of the Dallas Cotton Exchange. They also include the Anthony family's trials, such as cowboy Frank Anthony's wanderings in Oklahoma Territory and New Mexico (when his parents believed him dead), the death of Daniel J. Anthony's grandson, Tom Goddard, in an Arizona mine shaft in 1898, and the death of Graham Anthony's wife and four of his children in a Terrell house-fire in 1918.
Anthony-Cryer Family Papers, 1806-1935, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin