A seventh generation Texan, Melinda Jo Ray is a retired librarian and educator, who has long enjoyed sharing her life-long love of history and the real people who inhabit it with others. She has now added freelance writer and local historian to her list of occupations, and frequently writes articles for local publications and visits various groups as a speaker on local history and its connection to the American story and our present-day lives. For fourteen years she was also the owner and operator of the Historic Nutt Hotel on the downtown Granbury square, a business established by the families whose story is found in these pages. It is still offering a safe haven and hospitality to others after almost 130 years.
