January 20, 2026
Introduction: In this first of a four-part series, James Pylant tells his own genealogical journey, that started when he was 11, about his vast Meador family and their many connections and stories, including an unclaimed Texas oil fortune. James is an editor at GenealogyMagazine.com and author for JacobusBooks.com, is an award-winning historical true-crime writer, and authorized celebrity biographer.
In the 1960s, the small south-central Texas panhandle town of Slaton drew around 200 people from across the U.S. to attend the Meador family reunion. This newsclip refers to Danny Moorhead, a Meador family descendant.
My great-grandmother, whose maiden name was Meador, may have been among that reunion crowd. It was at that family gathering or another that she unexpectedly encountered a long-lost roguish relative she had assumed was long dead. She was a kind, soft-spoken lady, but this time she couldn’t hide her feelings.
“I thought you were dead!” she said.
“Hell no! I’m still alive, and I’m going to get even with each one of you!”
He wasn’t the only ancient kinsman with a dodgy death date. Other old, long-forgotten Meadors were surfacing from a rumbling in the family grapevine. They all seemed to be catching the same scent: money.
Genealogical Journey
My genealogical journey unfolded at age 11. That’s when I first asked my grandaunt about our family history, and she gave me a five-generation ancestor chart for my grandfather. It depicted his maternal great-grandparents, Obadiah Monroe Meador and Mary Francis (Meador) Meador.
Yes, Mary’s maiden and married names were the same.
Obadiah and Mary wed in 1850 in Itawamba County, Mississippi, “but claimed not to be related at all,” said a granddaughter. (1) At least, that’s the story they told; maybe they didn’t know. Some years before my genealogist grandaunt’s death, she learned two facts about her great-grandparents’ relationship: they were indeed related; and thousands of people wanted to be related to the Meadors.
Obediah and Mary had five children, one being John Benjamin Meador, a Baptist minister who died at 35 of pneumonia. (2) He was my great-great-grandfather. Another son, Lofton, “either accidentally killed himself or committed suicide,” said niece Virginia Meador Thompson. (3)
After Mary’s death, Obadiah married Mary Matilda Hoover in 1869. They had 13 children, the last being born when Obadiah was 62!
James Monroe Meador (Meadows)
One of these children, James Monroe Meador, was born on 3 October 1870. He grew up on his father’s East Texas farm and married weeks after his 22nd birthday. Jim, as he was called, made his living working farmland adjoining that of his father.
Obadiah Monroe Meador died on 6 November 1907. His widow survived him by 15 years, dying on 3 April 1922 near Jacksonville, Texas. Jim served as executor of her estate, which was valued at $12,000 (more than $230,000 today).
Long after Jim’s death, his name became linked to wild rumors involving a vast oil fortune – a tale in which identities blurred, and dates and places of death shifted to fit the latest narrative.
In the mid-1980s stories spread about a “forgotten, lonely old man” who died in a Texas mental hospital leaving behind a multibillion-dollar estate.
This article reports:
More than 150 people have trekked to the Tennessee Technological University library in search of records that could prove they are kin to a dead Texas oil magnate who left a multibillion dollar estate.
The searchers have last names of Meador, Meadors, Meadow and Meadows.
They are looking for the magic link to James Monroe [Meador] Meadows, who died in 1939 and whose family is believed to have changed the name to one of those variations.
…Some fortune seekers say Meadows died a forgotten, lonely old man in a mental hospital in Texas, while others like Pennsylvania lawyer Richard Ferris contend Meadows died in Pittsburgh. Ferris is representing about 160 possible heirs.
“They’re saying after taxes, lawyers’ fees and everything, each share will be worth right at $17 million,” [Glenna] Meadows said [one of the claimants]. “People have tried to prove their kinship in other cases for a lot less.”
The frenzy wasn’t just in Tennessee and Texas. Other states, like West Virginia, experienced it too.
This article reports:
Hundreds of would-be heirs to a Texas oil baron’s supposedly unclaimed fortune are besieging county offices across southern West Virginia, searching for ancestral records they hope will make them instant millionaires.
It was enough Tuesday to prompt deputy Summers County clerk Rachel Adkins to wish that reclusive tycoon James Meadows had never been born.
“Right now, I do, I really do,” Ms. Adkins said. “It’s really been a circus here. Our vaults are packed with people looking through documents. There’s been 50 to 60 people here a day, asking for birth certificates and land records.”
…The fortune-seekers recount tales of Meadows dying forgotten and alone in a mental hospital in Texas in 1939, leaving behind an unclaimed estate worth billions. He also left behind a vague family tree that includes some of the largest clans in West Virginia and Kentucky.
But Richard Ferris, a Pittsburgh lawyer handling a suit for about 160 purported heirs, said Tuesday that Meadows died in 1939 in Pittsburgh.
A growing number of would-be heirs are claiming a share of the take in federal court in Beaumont, Texas. Officials there are skeptical, and earlier this year U.S. District Judge Joe Fisher threw out one of three cases seeking a share of Meadow’s estate.
The oil developer’s estate reportedly included a one-eighth interest in the famed Spindletop oil field, and the promise of instant wealth has spread like wildfire through West Virginia’s unemployment-plagued hills.
Ferris said the first step in any claim is to establish that Meadows indeed owned a share in the oil field, something that has yet to be accepted by a court. He said no one knows how much the man was really worth.
“All these people have gone crazy,” he said. “I’m up to my eyeballs in rumors.”
…Local officials say determining ancestry is especially complicated because the tycoon’s forebears alternately spelled their name Meador, Meadors, Meadow and Meadows, and some also married into the Lilly clan, one of southern West Virginia’s biggest families.
The late family historian Victor Paul Meador estimated more than one million Americans descend from Thomas Meador, who came to Jamestown, Virginia, in the 1630s. (4) Multiple branches of Thomas’s descendancy have staked claims to James Monroe Meador’s (Meadows’) supposed outrageous fortune, whipping their interest into a family tree frenzy.
My mother always thought her grandmother’s maiden name was Meadow, whereas her aunts in West Texas pronounced it “medd’uh,” a throwback to the family’s roots in the Deep South. My great-grandmother, who appeared in the 1880 federal census as Meador, said those with “the name Meador never claimed [to be] Meadow.”
Regardless of how my half great-great-granduncle James Monroe “Jim” Meador spelled his last name, he didn’t die in an asylum. He died in his native Cherokee County, Texas, on 8 January 1931 at age 60 from complications of periodontitis following surgery.
Stay tuned for more on this fascinating family saga!
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Note on the header image: “Heywood #2 Gusher,” Spindletop, Beaumont, Texas, 1901. Credit: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
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(1) Susan Bownds to Lennie Bownds Allen (Dallas, Texas), undated handwritten letter in the author’s possession.
(2) Susan Meador Bownds, manuscript (spiral notebook), 1957, unpaginated; original in the author’s possession.
(3) Virginia Thompson Meador (Oklahoma City, Okla.) to Lennie Bownds Allen, 12 October 1982.
(4) Victor P. Meador with John W. Meador, “The Meador Families of North Central Tennessee” (Kansas City, Mo.: the authors, 1971), p. 19.
Holy mackerel!! This was interesting!!