Recollections of Early Texas (37 page)

Korges, William Henry. “Bastrop County, Texas: Historical and Educational Development.” Master's Thesis, University of Texas, 1933.

Perkins, Lucile Jackson. “The Local History Approach to Teaching Social Studies: A Compilation of Historical Data of Bastrop, Texas.” Master's Thesis, University of Texas, 1954.

Yager, Hope. “Archive War in Texas.” Master's Thesis, University of Texas, 1939.

Notes

Preface

*1
E. C. Barker (ed.), “Journal of Stephen F. Austin on His First Trip to Texas, 1821,”
Texas Historical Quarterly,
VII.

Chapter 1

1
There is some confusion regarding the date of the Jenkinses' emigration to Texas. The deed records in the county courthouse at Linden, Marengo County, Alabama, show that both Edward Jenkins, Sr., and his wife Sarah (Parrent) Jenkins were at that place on June 11 and August 8, 1829, when they sold two eighty-acre lots to Glover & Gaines of Alabama. The Register of Spanish Archives, IV, 630, however, tends to substantiate the statement that they left in October of 1828. Later references in the first chapter of these memoirs intimate that Jenkins was incorrect by a year concerning the early events of his life. It must be remembered that he was only six or seven years old when his family moved, and his reminiscences were written forty or fifty years after the events occurred.

2
A search of the Marengo County records shows that Benjamin, Elisha, and William Barton sold their land in that county about the same time as the Jenkins family. All three of these men settled at Bastrop and may have been members of the Jenkins party.

3
Captain James J. Ross, one of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists, led the attack mentioned against the Indians early in 1829, giving further evidence that the Jenkins family emigrated in that year rather than 1828. James T. DeShields,
Border Wars of Texas
(1912), 47–48 (hereafter cited as DeShields,
Border Wars
); Worth S. Ray,
Austin Colony Pioneers
(1949), 199, 274; Andrew Jackson Sowell,
Early Settlers and Indian Fighters of Southwest Texas
(1900), 15–16 (hereafter cited as Sowell,
Early Settlers
); Andrew Jackson Sowell,
Rangers and Pioneers of Texas
(1884), 23 (hereafter cited as Sowell,
Rangers and Pioneers
).

4
When the town was formally established on June 8, 1832, it was given the name of Bastrop, in honor of Philip Hendrik Nering Bogel, Baron de Bastrop, who had materially aided Stephen F. Austin to obtain the grant for the first American colony in Texas.

In 1834 while Stephen F. Austin was in prison in Mexico, under suspicion of working for the annexation of Texas to the United States, Texans were trying desperately to prove their loyalty to the Mexican government, so that Austin would be freed and the reforms for which Austin had been sent to plead would be granted. On April 3, 1834, Oliver Jones, a close friend of Austin, introduced a bill in the legislature of the State of Coahuila and Texas proposing that the town be renamed Mina, after Francisco Xavier Mina, a national hero and a martyr to the cause of liberty in Mexico. The bill also proposed that a new municipality be created out of the area surrounding the town, to be called the Municipality of Mina. The bill became a law on April 24, 1834, and by August 18 of that year the ayuntamiento (the Spanish equivalent of our modern city council) had been established with Robert M. Coleman as alcalde, or president.

After Texas had won her independence, however, Mexican authority was no longer feared and Mexican heroes no longer honored. On December 18, 1837, James Seaton Lester introduced a resolution to the Second Session of the First Congress of the new Republic of Texas changing the name of the town and county of Mina back to Bastrop. This joint resolution passed the Senate and the House on the same day, and President Houston approved it that afternoon. Both the town and county have had that name ever since. Charles A. Bacarisse, “Baron de Bastrop,”
Southwestern Historical Quarterly,
LVIII, 319–330; Grace Fitzwilliam, “From Bastrop to Mina to Bastrop,”
In the Shadow of the Lost Pines
(1955), 41.

5
Names marked with an asterisk indicate that further information is given in the Biographical Notes, where the names are listed alphabetically.

6
Woods' Prairie, named after Zadock Woods, is near West Point, ten miles west of La Grange. Zadock Woods's residence was used as a fort for protection against Indian attacks between 1828 and 1842.
Monuments Erected . . . to Commemorate the Centenary of Texas Independence
(1939); Walter Prescott Webb and H. Bailey Carroll (eds.),
Handbook of Texas
(1952), II, 933 (hereafter cited as
Handbook of Texas
).

7
Homer S. Thrall,
A Pictorial History of Texas
(1879), 507–511.

8
Hills Prairie was named for Abraham Wiley Hill, who bought the east half of the Jenkins League from Sarah Jenkins in 1835.
Handbook of Texas,
I, 816.

Chapter 2

1
Noah Smithwick [
The Evolution of a State
(1900), 241–242] also recounted this incident, with the same details. He added that, having been thus outwitted, most of the men burst out laughing. The only one who remained silent was Wells, who had devised the scheme.

2
This was indeed a most mysterious murder. According to family legend, Jenkins was killed by the half-Negro, half-Indian slave of Moses Rousseau. Edward Jenkins had killed Rousseau in a knife fight a year before and there are no records of Jenkins's ever being brought to trial. Matters of that sort were generally handled by the families or friends of those involved. Rousseau's slave was semicivilized, wore moccasins, and was known to be able to handle a bow and arrow. General Burleson, it is said, told John Jenkins this when he reached manhood. The general had wisely wished to avoid any more murders on that account and since the slave was never again heard of in civilized circles, it was supposed he joined the Indians or was killed by them. Edward Jenkins was buried in a small graveyard on the Benjamin Barton league near Smithville, supposedly near where he was killed.

3
John Rabb and John Henry Brown state that Canoma, the glass-eyed Caddo referred to, presented a written certificate from the citizens of Robertson's Colony, who had hired him to recover some of their lost horses. Burleson was satisfied of his loyalty, but the men, already angered at finding shod horses, believed that the other seven Indians had betrayed the Robertson citizens and were on their way to the mountains. They voted 40 to 22 to kill them, and Robert M. Coleman and a few men volunteered to do the deed. The Indians were scalped and one had the skin torn from his back by a Texan to be used as a razor strap. When the true facts about Canoma's band were learned, they “were ever lamented by the chivalrous and kind-hearted Burleson.” The rest of the Caddo tribe declared an unconditional war on the Bastrop colony, but remained friendly to the Robertson colonists. John Henry Brown,
Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas,
quoted in John Henry Brown,
History of Texas from 1685 to 1892
(1892), I, 285–287 (hereafter cited as Brown,
History of Texas
); John Rabb, “Story of an Indian Experience in the Early Settlement of Texas,”
Texas Monument,
August 27, 1841.

4
The battle took place in July of 1835 at Tehuacana Spring in Limestone County. The first name of neither Bliss nor Wallace is known. Jenkins is the only source found to give even the last names of those wounded and killed. The Indians were Tawakonis not Wacoes. Coleman retreated to Parker's Fort, where he was joined by three other companies under Robert M. Williamson, Dr. George W. Barnett, and Captain Coheen. John H. Moore was elected to command the force as colonel and James C. Neill was elected adjutant. Brown,
History of Texas,
I, 287–288;
Handbook of Texas,
I, 371–372; J. W. Wilbarger,
Indian Depredations in Texas
(1889), 218–219.

5
Since no man named Stranuther participated in Wilbarger's fight, Jenkins was probably referring to William Strother, and nothing is known about him prior to his death while with the Wilbarger party. He was survived by his wife, Mary B. Strother, who must have been previously married to a man named Litton, for she had a son named John Litton. Mrs. Strother died in 1859. Probate Records, Bastrop County, File S-1.

6
Haynie came from Missouri and was perhaps a relative of John Haynie who later settled in Bastrop.

7
This version differs materially from that of J. W. Wilbarger, Josiah's brother, which has been accepted as the most reliable account. See Bastrop
Advertiser,
August 29, 1935; J. Frank Dobie,
Tales of Old-Time Texas
(1955), 34–41; Margaret Belle Jones,
Bastrop
(1936), 10; Mary Ann McDowall, “A Little Journey through Memory's Halls” (unpub. ms., Bastrop Historical Society), 61–63 (hereafter cited as McDowall, “Journey”); Anne Doom Pickrell,
Pioneer Women in Texas
(1929), 58–68;
Telegraph and Texas Register
(Houston), August 12, 1840.

8
According to Wilbarger, this happened in the fall of 1836 and not in 1833. Wilbarger,
Indian Depredations in Texas,
259.

9
Judge Smith's cabin was located at the north end of Montopolis in the eastern edge of the present city of Austin. Aloise Walker Hardy, “A History of Travis County, 1832–1865” (Master's Thesis, University of Texas, 1938), 44.

10
This must have been in November and December of 1835, when Edward Burleson was in command of the Texas volunteer army at the Siege of Bexar.

Chapter 3

1
This was the Mexican Constitution of 1824.

2
Actually Jenkins was thirteen years and four months old when he joined Billingsley's company, and he has been called the youngest soldier in the army during the Texas Revolution.

3
The “Mina Volunteers,” as Jesse Billingsley's company was called, was organized on September 28, 1835. Under Captain Robert M. Coleman the company was kept in reserve during the Siege of Bexar, December 5 to 10, 1835. On December 16, Coleman resigned and the next day the company disbanded and returned home. When Santa Anna began his invasion of Texas the company reorganized and on February 28, 1836, elected Jesse Billingsley as captain, Micah Andrews as 1st lieutenant, and James A. Craft as 2nd lieutenant. Edward Burleson joined the company as a private, but was soon elected Colonel of the 1st Regiment of Volunteers. The company marched to Gonzales where it was mustered into the army as Company C of the 1st Regiment. It participated in the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836, under Colonel Edward Burleson and was disbanded June 1, 1836. Jesse Billingsley Papers (Archives Collection, University of Texas Library);
Handbook of Texas,
I, 162, II, 554; L. W. Kemp, San Jacinto Roll; William Preston Johnston,
The Life of Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston
(1878), 65–66;
Monuments Erected . . . to Commemorate the Centenary of Texas Independence
(1939), 164; Ray,
Austin Colony Pioneers,
61, 309.

4
This was the home of General Edward Burleson and his uncle, Joseph Burleson. It was located on the Colorado River, two miles west of Smithville. The cabin, which recently collapsed, is still owned by the Burleson family. Burleson, Aaron Burleson II; Ray,
Austin Colony Pioneers,
342–345.

5
Houston arrived on March 11, 1836. His speech consisted mainly of the reading of the Declaration of Independence and the order of his appointment as major-general of the volunteer army, which he was to organize and command. Andrew Jackson Houston,
Texas Independence
(1938), 153.

6
Travis' force consisted of 145 men plus a number of San Antonians. He was reinforced on March 1 by 32 men from Gonzales, making a total of 187 men who died in the siege. The Mexicans lost about 1,544 men. Amelia W. Williams, “A Critical Study of the Siege of the Alamo and of the Personnel of Its Defenders,”
Southwestern Historical Quarterly,
XXXVII.

7
There is no record of General Burleson's being made guardian of John Holland Jenkins, but this may be explained by the fact that there are no minutes of the probate court in Bastrop County until late in 1837.

8
The home of F. W. Grassmeyer, who ran a ferry where the Colorado River crosses the Bastrop–Fayette County line. Remains of his house can still be seen.

9
Andrew Neal is not to be confused with Captain Andrew Neill, who did not arrive in Texas until after the Battle of San Jacinto.

10
The Texans pulled out of Bastrop in such a hurry when Cos's 600 men were discovered that they almost forgot the sentry, James Curtis, who had been placed at the river ford. Noah Smithwick happened to think of him as they were leaving and ran back to get him. Curtis was sitting under a tree with a bottle of home brew. “Hello, Uncle Jimmy,” Smithwick called, “Mount and ride for your life. The Mexicans are on the other side and our men all gone!”

“The hell they are! 'Light and take a drink,” was the reply.

“There's no time for drinking. Come—mount and let's be off. The Mexicans may swim the river and be after us any moment!”

“Then,” Curtis persisted, “Let's drink to their confusion.” And thinking it the fastest way to get him going, Smithwick drank with him. Then they struck out for Three-Legged Willie's command. (Editor's note: Abridged from Smithwick,
Evolution of a State,
126–127, with dialogue quoted from Smithwick.)

11
Among those known to have gone from Bastrop in the Jenkins party were the families of James Burleson, General Edward Burleson, Walker Wilson, Nancy Blakey, and probably the Wilbargers and McGehees. The Jenkins family consisted of Mrs. Sarah Jenkins Northcross, whose second husband, James Northcross, had been killed in the Alamo a month before, her children Edward Jenkins, Jr., William A. J. Jenkins, Elizabeth Jenkins, and her newborn baby, James Northcross, Jr. Jonathan Burleson and a son of Chief Placido were helping to move the Burleson family. Edward Blakey was escorting his widowed mother and sisters. Bastrop was completely deserted until Jesse Billingsley disbanded his company there on June 1, 1836.