Charles and Emma Tullis
George West, Live Oak County, Texas
Marker Inscription
CHARLES AND EMMA (LEWIS) TULLIS Charles (Charlie) and Emma Tullis, native live oak county residents, shared roots preceding the republic of Texas and Live Oak County. Charles’ (b. Oct. 10, 1873) forebears, James and Rhoda Creel Beall Winters and family, walked from Tennessee to Texas in 1834. James, who fought with Sam Houston in the war of 1812, provided three sons and supplies in the Battle of San Jacinto. Winters’ daughter, Lillie Ellen, widowed by Thomas Adams and later William Cude, married Charles O. Edwards. Their grandson, Andrew Mitchell Tullis (Charlie’s father), defended against one of the last Indian raids in south texas in 1872. Emma’s Texan roots began in 1835 with a Mexican land grant procured by her ancestor, John McGloin, killed with Fannin in the Goliad Massacre. A portion of the property passed to Mary McGloin. It later passed to granddaughter, Margaret Ellen Dolan, married to Simeon Wise Lewis, owner of a Gussettville General Store. Their son, W.H. Lewis (Emma’s father), preceded Charlie as sheriff and tax assessor-collector. Charlie assumed the office in 1909 and, shortly after, his first wife, Jessica Kay, died of cancer. Charlie and Emma married on Jan. 1, 1913. Known to deliver tax notices without a gun, Charlie served during tough times including county seat transition from Oakville to George West. Emma supported him in the tax office during his tenure until 1922. As founding president of First National Bank of George West, Charlie served the bank thirty-eight years. His leadership and integrity in banking, ranching and law enforcement earned him the title of “Mr. Charlie.” He and Emma are buried in St. Joseph’s Cemetery at Gussettville, established by Irish Catholic pioneers. (2014)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Charles "Mr. Charlie" Tullis and his wife Emma carried deep Texas roots: his forebears walked from Tennessee in 1834 and gave sons and supplies to the San Jacinto campaign, while her ancestor John McGloin died in the Goliad Massacre. Born in 1873, Charlie served as Live Oak County sheriff from 1909 — known for delivering tax notices without a gun — through the county seat's move from Oakville to George West, and later spent thirty-eight years as founding president of the First National Bank of George West. He and Emma married in 1913 and are buried among the Irish Catholic pioneers at Gussettville.
Why it matters
Their intertwined family stories thread the whole Texas saga together — the Revolution, frontier Indian raids, and the ranching and banking that settled South Texas into a modern county.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
To stand at this marker is to look through a single family straight down the length of the Texas story. The Tullis and Lewis lines reach back before the Republic of Texas itself, into the years when Anglo and Irish settlers were pouring into a land that was still Mexican soil, drawn by the promise of cheap ground and a fresh start.
Those were dangerous, defining decades. The 1830s brought colonization and then revolution; the frontier that followed was raw and often violent, with settlers pressing into country that had long belonged to others. By the time Charles Tullis was born in 1873, Live Oak County was moving from that frontier era toward the more settled, institution-building age of banks, courthouses, and county offices.
The marker holds both of those worlds at once — the pioneer generation who walked to Texas and fought for it, and the modern generation who governed and financed the county it became. In one family you can watch the frontier close and a settled society take its place.
People & events
The deep roots run on both sides. Charles's forebears, the Winters family, walked from Tennessee to Texas in 1834, and the patriarch James — who the marker tells us had fought in the War of 1812 — gave three sons and supplies to the cause at the Battle of San Jacinto. Down through the generations that line passed until it reached Charlie's father, Andrew Mitchell Tullis, who helped defend against one of the last Indian raids in South Texas in 1872. Emma's roots ran just as deep and just as hard: her ancestor John McGloin secured a Mexican land grant in 1835 and died with Fannin's men in the Goliad Massacre, and a portion of that granted land descended through the family to her own father, W. H. Lewis.
Those two rivers of history joined in Charlie and Emma. W. H. Lewis served as sheriff and tax assessor-collector before his son-in-law-to-be, and Charlie stepped into the office himself in 1909. Not long after, grief found him: his first wife, Jessica Kay, died of cancer. On the first day of 1913, Charlie and Emma married, and she stood beside him in the tax office through his years of service.
What people remembered was the manner of the man. He delivered tax notices without carrying a gun — a small detail that says everything about the trust he had earned in a place not far removed from its violent frontier. He served through hard times, including the county seat's move from Oakville to George West, and then gave thirty-eight years to the First National Bank of George West as its founding president. Between his integrity in law, in ranching, and in banking, the county gave him a title warmer than any office: “Mr. Charlie.”
Its place in the American story
Most Americans experience the great chapters of the nation's history as separate things — the wars for independence, the closing of the frontier, the rise of the settled institutions that followed. In the Tullis and Lewis families those chapters are not separate at all. They are grandfathers and great-grandfathers, a single bloodline threaded through the Revolution, the frontier raids, and the ranching and banking that finally tamed the county into modern shape.
That is the quiet lesson here. National history is not made only by generals and presidents; it is carried in ordinary families who show up, generation after generation, for whatever their moment demands — supplies for an army, defense of a homestead, honest service in a county office. The sweep from a land grant under Mexican rule to the presidency of a national bank is the American arc in miniature.
And Charlie's own reputation points to something larger about how the frontier became a country. A lawman who could collect taxes unarmed marks the moment a place stops being wild and starts being governed by trust and consent. That transition, repeated in county after county, is how a frontier becomes a nation.
If you visit
This marker rewards slow reading more than sightseeing. Give yourself time to trace the names and the dates, because what looks at first like a dense family tree is really a map of Texas history compressed into one couple's ancestry. Follow the two lines down — his from Tennessee and San Jacinto, hers from a Mexican land grant and Goliad — and feel them converge in the marriage recorded here.
George West makes a fine stop on a drive through the brush country, and this is a story best appreciated on foot, standing where Charlie and Emma lived and served. Think of him crossing the county with his tax notices and no sidearm, and of Emma at his side in the office; the marker turns the everyday work of a county government into something human and memorable.
If your travels take you to the old community of Gussettville, you will find St. Joseph's Cemetery there, established by the Irish Catholic pioneers whose story is woven into Emma's own, and where the couple is buried. Treat it, as always, as the quiet and sacred ground it is — a fitting last page for a family that helped write so much of the county's history.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Charles Tullis
- · Emma Lewis Tullis
- · John McGloin
- · W.H. Lewis
Themes & tags
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