Notes on back of photo of D.L. and Sudie Nutt. Click to see larger image.
David Lee Nutt was born in January 6, 1848 in Newton County, Missouri, located in the southwestern part of that state. He was about 11 years old when he made the journey by wagon to western Johnson County, Texas (later to become Hood County) with his parents and four other siblings. They joined his older brother Jesse and his uncle, Abel Landers, who had come to Texas a year earlier with their families. The paths they followed were typical of many family migrations throughout the Upland South as they followed the expanding American frontier seeking land and opportunity.
David Lee and Sue Garland Nutt
David Lee became a prominent businessman in early Granbury and on February 28, 1872 married Sue (Sudie) A. Garland, daughter of Captain Peter Garland who led local campaigns to protect the area from Indian raids. They had five children, three of whom survived to adulthood. Sudie Garland Nutt passed away on August 20, 1920 and David Lee February 18, 1929.
Two older brothers of David Lee were the twins, Jesse and Jake Nutt who were blind from a young age. They were the co-owners of the grocery, saloon and hotel located on the northeast corner of the Granbury Town Square, now known as “The Nutt House”.
The following narrative appears in “The History Of Texas” published in 1896:
About 1880 D.L. Nutt erected his present handsome home as a private residence; but as there was a dearth of hotel accommodations in Granbury, he subsequently built additions to the original structure and converted his home into a public hostelry, which has since been maintained greatly to the comfort and satisfaction of commercial travelers and all others requiring transient homes. As host and hostess Mr. Nutt and his amiable wife are without peers as entertainers, and all who stop beneath their roof are made to feel at home. He is genial yet undemonstrative in manner, and there is a warmth of sincerity in his language and ways that denotes the true friend. He has business qualities of the highest order, and the phenomenal success that has attended the Nutt Brothers’ business is in no small degree attributable to his able and conservative management. In 1864 D.L. Nutt regularly enlisted in the home guards, a military organization to suppress the depredations of hostile Indians, and was active in the service until the close of the civil war. He is a Mason of the Royal Arch degree, having been admitted to the Granbury Lodge in 1871.
