A Joint Project of the Sam Rayburn House Historic Site and the Fannin County Historical Commission
Celebrating America 250 with Spotlights of Fannin County Citizens Who Participated In or Witnessed Historical Events
Fannin County, Texas -- Thomas Peyton Steger was born in Tennessee on March 15, 1852. He married Alice Scales and earned a license to practice law. After working as a telegraph operator and for the Associated Press in Memphis, Tennessee, he moved to Bonham, Texas, in 1889.
In Bonham, he practiced law and served as the president of the Fannin County Bar Association. He was also a city judge for Bonham, and a lawyer for and director of the Steger Lumber Company.
One of Thomas’s most famous cases was his representation of the unknown heirs of Tom Bean, a Fannin County lawyer and surveyor who had great wealth at the time of his death in 1887. Tom Bean died without a will and over 100 people claimed to be related to him. The estate was litigated for many years.
Thomas was friends with Sam Rayburn, and supported Rayburn during his 1906 campaign for a seat in the Texas House of Representatives. When Rayburn needed training for his law degree, he worked with Thomas and Preston C. Thurmond at their law firm. Thomas managed Rayburn’s congressional campaign in 1912 when Rayburn first ran to represent the Fourth District in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Thomas was regarded as “one of the best read men in the county” and “had collected what was perhaps the most extensive and best selected privately owned library in this part of the Country”. In the latter years of his life, he wrote letters to newspapers across the country, mainly the Dallas News.
Thomas Steger and his wife had two children, Elizabeth “Bessie” Steger Rogers and Harry Peyton Steger. (The life of Harry Peyton Steger, who died in 1912, will be in another article.)
Thomas died on March 25, 1932. He is buried at Willow Wild Cemetery.
This information was obtained from the Fannin Co., Texas GenWeb (txfannin.org) and A History of Texas and Texans, V.5. The Sam Rayburn House SHS presented some of this information at their 2021 Cemetery Walking Tour. For a copy of the 2021 Cemetery Walking Tour guide or for other information, contact the Sam Rayburn House at (903) 583-5558 or email Margo.McCutcheon@thc.texas.gov.
