The earliest Billings family settlers in Texas appear to have been lead by five children of the Peter Billings family of White (later Dekalb) Co., Tennessee.

In 1828, Richard Heath, a member of the John Heath family, neighbors to the Billings in the Caney Creek area of White County, became one of the first two or three men to receive a land grant in the Dewitt Colony of Coahuila and Texas.  By 1835, Richard had returned to Tennessee and married Rebecca Billings (1813-1868), one of Peter?s daughters.  Their first child, Perry Ford Heath, was born in Louisiana in 1836, suggesting that he was born while his parent were on the move to Texas or after an escape from the war in Texas, when Santa Anna?s army burned the Heath home after its victory at the Alamo.

 In 1840, brother and sister James and Elsie Mae ?Alsey? Billings moved from Dekalb County to the Republic of Texas accompanied perhaps by other family members and neighbors, to join Richard and Rebecca.  Their father Peter and his wife had died in 1838, apparently of yellow fever, family history says so close in time that neither knew the other was dead.  Shortly after their move to Texas, James married Louisa Kent, and Elsie Mae married Thomas Zumwalt, both in 1841.

 John Billings and his wife, Jane (Zumwalt) joined the others in 1850, bringing perhaps a dozen children and their families with them ? Jasper P. (who married Emily Rackley about 1847), Elizabeth (who married David Boyd Kent in 1841), Nancy (who married Edmond C. Burton in 1846), Rebecca (who married Bosman Kent in 1853), William MacDonald, Mary Jane, Madoline, Amanda Jane, James H., Harriet, John, and Otis.  It may be that Elizabeth had also moved with James and Elsie Mae, as her marriage date might indicate, and Jasper and Nancy may also have been in Texas by the time John brought the rest of the family from Tennessee.

 Gibson Billings, his wife Mary (Alcorn), and seven children joined them in 1854 ? William Carrol (who married Mary Jane Hesskew), Lucinda, John H., Elizabeth Ann, and Algernon Sidney.  After their moved, Gibson and Mary had additional five children, and after her death, Gibson married Americus Van Cleave, with whom he fathered another seven children.  A. Sidney Billings, who was five when the family left Tennessee and who would become a wealthy South Texas rancher and banker, remembered years later how a neighbor had rejoiced, ? Thank goodness.  There goes more white trash leaving Tennessee.?

 Thus, the progression could well have been Rebecca Billings Heath (1835), James and Elsie Mae (1840), and John?s children Jasper, Elizabeth and Nancy (also before 1850), John and the rest of his family (1850), and the Gibson Billings family in 1854.

Peter?s other children, Rhoda and Elizabeth both married and remained in Tennessee, Peter, Jr., married and moved to Indian before he returned to Tennessee, Bird moved to Missouri, and daughter Mary purchased a quilt from Peter?s estate for $1 and nothing more is known of her.