Recollections of Early Texas (35 page)

T
AYLOR
S
MITH
emigrated to Texas from Georgia with his son Taylor, Jr., in the early 1830's. They settled in present Williamson County on their league and labor of land. Ray,
Austin Colony Pioneers,
307–308;
U.S. Census,
1850, Williamson County, 7; Wilbarger,
Indian Depredations in Texas,
89–90.

J
AMES
S
TANDIFER
was born in Tennessee about 1809, but moved to Alabama, where he married a girl named Sarah. In March of 1829 they moved to Texas with Standifer's widowed mother. At this time Standifer was 21 and his wife 19, and they had one daughter. On November 8, 1832, he and his mother received adjacent leagues on the dividing line between present Travis and Bastrop counties. Both later received labors of land in Bastrop County. Standifer was on the 1838 Bastrop tax roll but his mother was not. By 1850 James and Sarah had nine children and a farm valued at $3,750. Burlage and Hollingsworth,
Abstract of Land Claims,
660; Ray,
Austin Colony Pioneers,
307–308; Register of Spanish Archives, IX, 129;
U.S. Census,
1850, Bastrop County, 190; Smithwick,
Evolution of a State,
291–293; Wilbarger,
Indian Depredations in Texas,
8.

J
AMES
M
ONROE
S
WISHER
was born in Williamson County, Tennessee. He moved to Texas in 1833 with his father, James G., and mother, Elizabeth (Boyd) Swisher. They settled at Tenoxtitlan in present Burleson County. In 1835 Swisher joined Captain John York's company of volunteers and fought in the Siege of Bexar. He was Treasurer and County Clerk or Travis County and a member of the Texas Legislature in the 1870's. He died in 1907. Brown, “Annals of Travis County,” VI, 67; Muster Roll Book.

J
OHN
T
ANNEY
was born in Maryland in 1817. He escaped at Salado on February 11, 1843, and was recaptured. On March 25, 1844, he escaped again at the Castle of Perote and was again recaptured. Tanney was finally released on September 16, 1844. He was living in Travis County in 1850. Green,
Mier Expedition,
442, 450; Smithwick,
Evolution of a State,
272;
U.S. Census,
1850, Travis County, 15; Wade,
Mier Expedition,
I, 133, II, 23, 31–32.

T
UMLINSON.
The murdered man was one of the Tumlinson brothers who settled in DeWitt's Colony in present Fayette County in 1828. It was probably Joseph or George Tumlinson who was killed since James Tumlinson was with Captain James J. Ross in 1829 when he attacked the Indians near his home, and John Tumlinson was a famous ranger captain in later years. Brown,
History of Texas,
I, 143; DeShields,
Border Wars,
47; Sowell,
Rangers and Pioneers,
23.

D
ICK
V
AUGHN
at this time was serving as first sheriff of Bastrop County. He was born in Virginia in 1800 and came to Texas prior to 1835. As a member of Captain J. B. Chance's company, he served in the Texas Revolution and was stationed at Harrisburg during the Battle of San Jacinto. It is not known when he died. Burlage and Hollingsworth,
Abstract of Land Claims,
664; Kemp, Harrisburg Roll; Police Court Records, Bastrop County, 1837, A, 13.

W
ILLIAM
S
IMPSON
W
ALLACE
came to Texas from Tennessee in 1836. He settled at Bastrop and was elected county surveyor in 1837. He served under Burleson in the Cordova Rebellion and on May 14, 1837, killed Manuel Flores, a notorious Mexican whose gang had been terrorizing western Texas for some time. For this deed he was promoted from private to lieutenant colonel by President Lamar. The rifle and sword of General Flores were awarded to him by the Texans taking part in the battle. In 1841 he married Mary Ann O'Connell. Bastrop
Advertiser,
August 29, 1935; Jesse Billingsley Papers (Archives Collection, University of Texas Library).

J
OHN
B. W
ALTERS,
about twenty-four years of age, came to
Texas in 1825 from Missouri. He first lived with the Hornsbys, but soon moved to his half league about two miles up the river from Wilbarger Bend. In 1831 and 1832 he did work for Moses Rousseau as a carpenter and gunsmith. He received 320 acres of land for three months' service as a ranger, but when he served is not known. He was shot in the head at Brushy Creek. Burlage and Hollingsworth,
Abstract of Land Claims,
665; Probate Records, Bastrop County, File R-1; Register of Spanish Archives, IX, 53; Sowell,
Early Settlers,
17.

M
ARTIN
W
ELLS,
born about 1776, married Sally Boyd in Tennessee, and in 1815 had a son, Wayman F. Wells. In 1817 the family moved to Marengo County, Alabama, where a second son, Martin Jones Wells, was born in 1819. His first wife died about this time, and when he emigrated to Texas in 1826, Wells had a second wife, Sarah, fifteen years younger than he. In January, 1830, he moved from Fayette County to Austin's Little Colony, where he received title to a league of land in Bastrop County. When his land was surveyed in 1832, he moved from his home at the site of Bastrop and settled at Wells's Pyramid, fifteen miles away. His home, which consisted of three small log cabins built close together, was used as a fort during Indian depredations. He died in 1836, leaving his wife and eight children, who were still living in Bastrop County in 1850. Brown, “Annals of Travis County,” IV, 15; Burlage and Hollingsworth,
Abstract of Land Claims,
66; Deed Records, Marengo County, Alabama;
Handbook of Texas,
II, 878; Probate Records, Bastrop County, File W-1; Ray,
Austin Colony Pioneers,
338;
U.S. Census,
1850, Bastrop County, 206; Clarence Carter,
Territorial Papers of the United States, Territory of Alabama, 1817–1819
(1952), 197.

G
IDEON
W
HITE
emigrated from Alabama to Texas in 1837. He returned to Alabama in 1838 and brought his family to Bastrop County. In 1839 he settled at Seider's Spring, adjoining Glen Ridge, near Austin. Paying no heed to the admonitions of his friends, he frequently traveled alone through the woods on foot. On October 25, 1842, he went out afoot to look for oxen which he had turned out to graze. He was attacked by mounted Indians and was killed only a few hundred yards from his cabin.
He had five daughters. Brown, “Annals of Travis County,” IX, 15; Joseph C. McConnell,
The West Texas Frontier
(1939), I, 243; Wilbarger,
Indian Depredations in Texas,
275–276.

H
AMILTON
W
HITE
was born in Virginia about 1808. Coming to Bastrop prior to 1838, White engaged in farming and lumber hauling. He and his wife Tabitha had had one child born in Virginia and four others were born in Texas prior to 1850. The 1850 census lists White as a Bastrop County farmer having real estate valued at $10,760. It is not known when he died. DeShields,
Border Wars,
307; Ray,
Austin Colony Pioneers,
307–308;
U.S. Census,
1850, Bastrop County, 183;
ibid.,
1860, Bastrop County, 86; Wilbarger,
Indian Depredations in Texas,
266–267.

J
OHN
L. W
ILBARGER,
son of Josiah, was born November 29, 1829, in Matagorda, Texas. He was brought up in Bastrop County and joined the ranger forces under Colonel John S. (Rip) Ford while still a boy. In August of 1850 he received a furlough and went to visit his family. After remaining there for some time, he started back to join his command accompanied by Sullivan and Neal (who may have been Adolphus D. Neill). They were armed with two six shooters apiece, and so, when Indians attacked them, they made a firm stand and evidently killed a number of the savages. Wilbarger and Sullivan were buried on the spot by the search party sent out when Neal reached a settlement and told of the massacre. Some years later, Harvey Wilbarger, a brother, removed Wilbarger's remains to Fairview Cemetery in Bastrop, where they were placed near the grave of his father. Bastrop
Advertiser,
January 23, 1897; Wilbarger,
Indian Depredations in Texas,
615–616.

R
OBERT
M
C
A
LPIN
W
ILLIAMSON
was born in Georgia about 1804. When he was fifteen, he suffered an illness which left him crippled. His right leg was drawn back at the knee and he wore a wooden leg, which resulted in the nickname of “Three-Legged Willie.”
Handbook of Texas,
II, 917; Duncan W. Robinson,
Judge Robert McAlpin Williamson, Texas' Three-Legged Willie
(1949); R. M. Williamson Biographical File (Archives Collection, University of Texas Library).

W
ALKER
W
ILSON,
according to the records available, was born in three different years and died in at least four different places on five different dates. The 1850 Bastrop County Census report shows first, that a Walker Wilson was born in Virginia in 1795 (p. 164) and second, that a Walker Wilson was born in Virginia in 1805 (p. 186), while L. W. Kemp in his San Jacinto Roll states that Walker B. Wilson was born in Richmond, Virginia, on November 17, 1801. The last is probably correct.

Wilson came to Texas about 1834 and on March 12, 1835, received title to a league of land on Bear Creek, Travis County. He was in the Siege of Bexar in December of 1835 and on February 28, 1836, joined Jesse Billingsley's Mina Volunteers. After being detailed with Jenkins, Fisk, and Blakey to remove the families, he somehow made his way back to the army and participated in the Battle of San Jacinto. Wilson received 640 acres of donation land on May 18, 1838, and is listed on the 1838 Bastrop tax roll.

According to the 1850 Census and to the probate records of Bastrop County, he married Jane Wilson (b. 1814 in Alabama), and they had three daughters, the oldest born in 1848. Kemp states that Walker Wilson married Mrs. Mima Eggleston Turner (b. 1825 in North Carolina; d. 1897 in Austin, Texas).

The Bastrop County Probate Records state that Wilson died in 1850, in which year his wife Jane was appointed administrator of his estate. Frank Brown estimates that Wilson died in 1840 on his land in Travis County. Kemp says that he died in 1878 at San Marcos, while a member of the Texas Veterans Association, O. A. Fisher, records that at 4:30
P.M.
on September 8, 1876, Walker Wilson was buried by the San Marcos Grays. All state that he was a San Jacinto veteran. Brown, “Annals of Travis County,” IV, 48; Burlage and Hollingsworth,
Abstract of Land Claims,
665; Orceneth Asbury Fisher, Journal (unpub. Mss., property of Jesse N. Fisher); Kemp, San Jacinto Roll; Probate Records, Bastrop County, File W-1; Ray,
Austin Colony Pioneers,
307–308; Register of Spanish Archives;
U.S. Census,
1850, Bastrop County, 164, 186.

M
ONTE
(or M
ONTRAVILLE
) W
OODS
was born in Maryland in 1816 and came to Texas with his father, Zadock Woods, one of Austin's Old Three Hundred, in 1826. The family first settled
in Matagorda County, but soon moved to Fayette County, where Monte was still living in 1860 on his own league and labor of land. Bugbee, “The Old Three Hundred,”
Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association,
I, 117; Burlage and Hollingsworth,
Abstract of Land Claims,
15, 68; Gulick and others (eds.),
The Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar,
IV, pt. 1, 39–40;
U.S. Census,
1860, Fayette County, 374; Weyand and Wade,
An Early History of Fayette County,
9, 14, 64, 97, 151–158.

M
ICHAEL
Y
OUNG
was born in Georgia in 1802 and came to Texas from Alabama in 1829 with two children. He was in the Battle of Anahuac in 1832, and in June, 1836, he joined Jesse Billingsley's company of Mina Volunteers. In 1842 he was living in Bastrop County, where he was wounded by Indians who came to his plantation. Encountering Young's eight-year-old son Perry, they threw a lasso around him. Perry slipped through the loop and escaped to give the alarm. Mike Young gathered fifteen neighbors, including Jenkins, and gave chase to the Indians. In the ensuing fight, which lasted some four hours, Young was wounded in the breast. For his military service he received bounty land in Bell County, to which he moved in his old age—still living there in 1874. In 1850 two farm workers and a school teacher lived on his plantation and his real estate was valued at $9,111. Burlage and Hollingsworth,
Abstract of Land Claims,
669;
U.S. Census,
1850, Bastrop County, 168; Clarence R. Wharton,
Wharton's History of Fort Bend County
(1939), 62–63.

Bibliography

Bibliography

U
NPUBLISHED
M
ATERIALS

Bastrop County History. Historical Records Survey, No. 11. Archives Collection, University of Texas Library.

Bastrop County Scrapbook. Archives Collection, University of Texas Library.

Billingsley, Jesse. Papers. Archives Collection, University of Texas Library.

Brown, Frank. “Annals of Travis County and the City of Austin from the Earliest Times to the Close of 1875.” Transcript, Archives Collection, University of Texas Library.

Burleson, Aaron, II. Material Furnished by John Baptist Burleson's Son of Smithville in the Fall of 1937 to Mr. Kemp. Transcript, Texas History Collection, Baylor University, Waco, Texas.

Comptroller's Military Service Records. Archives Collection, Texas State Library.

Cunningham, L. C. Papers. Archives Collection, University of Texas Library.

Deed Records. Bastrop County, Texas, Office of County Clerk.

Deed Records. Marengo County, Alabama, Office of County Clerk.

Final Record of Superior Court of Cotaco County, State of Alabama, Held in Sommerville, 1819, III. Archives Division, Alabama State Library.