Recollections of Early Texas (32 page)

J
AMES
H. G
ILLESPIE
(or Gillaspie) was born in Virginia on January 5, 1805, the son of William and Elizabeth Gillespie, and emigrated to Texas in 1835. On January 14, 1836, at Nacogdoches, he enlisted in the volunteer auxiliary corps and served as first lieutenant and captain in J. L. Bennett's company, commanding it in the Battle of San Jacinto.

Gillespie married Susan Faris, daughter of one of the men in his company, in Walker County near Huntsville. They were the parents of seven children. Gillespie died on October 3, 1867. For further details see Comptroller's Military Service Records (Texas State Library), #6575; Dixon and Kemp,
Heroes of San Jacinto,
405;
Handbook of Texas
I, 689; Kemp, San Jacinto Roll; Probate Minutes, Bastrop County, A, B, C, D.

J
AMES
G
OACHER,
a native of Alabama, settled on Rabb's Creek in Lee County in 1828. Early in 1835 he and his family moved to Bastrop County where he opened a large cotton plantation. In February of 1837 the family was attacked by Indians; Goacher, his son, and his son-in-law, Jane Crawford's husband, were killed while cutting wood.

One of Mrs. Jane Crawford's little sons was caught by an Indian while running away from the house. He grabbed the Indian's thumb with his teeth and bit it so hard and long that the Indian beat him over the head with a ramrod. Once, while Mrs. Crawford was a captive, the Indians took her little daughter and threw her into a stream to drown. Mrs. Crawford jumped in and saved her, whereupon the Indians grabbed the child and threw her in again. This continued for some time, Mrs. Crawford retrieving the child each time she was pitched into the water. Finally the savages tired of the game and one of them started to stab the girl when Mrs. Crawford picked up a log and hit the Indian over the head, knocking him out. This amused the rest of the tribe and they laughed loudly at their fallen comrade. They finally gave the child to her mother, saying, “Squaw too much brave. Damn you, take your papoose and carry it yourself—we not do it.”

Mrs. Crawford and her children were taken to Holland Coffee's trading house on the Red River to sell. Charles Spaulding, a trader, bought them for 400 yards of calico, some blankets, a quantity of beads, and other articles. He married Jane Crawford and they moved to Bastrop, where in 1850 the family consisted of five Spaulding children and two Goacher boys aged 21 and 25.

The name Goacher was pronounced “Got-cher” by the early settlers and has been variously and incorrectly spelled Gotier, Gocher, Goucher, and Gotcher. Brown, “Annals of Travis County,” IV; DeShields,
Border Wars,
212–215; Korges,
“Bastrop County, Texas: Historical and Educational Development” (Master's Thesis, University of Texas, 1933), I, 72–73, 130; Sowell,
Rangers and Pioneers,
24;
U.S. Census,
1850, Bastrop County, 194; Wilbarger,
Indian Depredations in Texas,
15–19.

D
ANIEL
M. G
RADY
was born in Alabama in 1822. He served under Colonel Thomas Howard in 1842 and was 2nd lieutenant in Company C under Captain Thomas Green. Grady was captain of a company of Texas Rangers in the 1870's. He lived in Bastrop County. Henderson,
Colonel Jack Hays, Texas Ranger,
64, 78; Sowell,
Early Settlers,
809;
U.S. Census,
1860, Bastrop County, 70.

F
REDERICK
W. G
RASSMEYER
was born in Germany in 1801. He arrived in Texas a bachelor merchant in March of 1831 and established a ferry on his quarter league where the Bastrop–Fayette County line crosses the Colorado. This ferry was probably the flat boat used to carry the goods to La Grange. Grassmeyer also received three-quarters of a league in Bastrop County from the Mexican government, and bought half of the S. A. Pugh league in 1831. He was the first German to own land in Fayette County. Grassmeyer served in the Texas Revolution. In 1850 he was living on the farm of James Sorrell and owned real estate valued at $15,000. He died in La Grange in 1887. Burlage and Hollingsworth,
Abstract of Land Claims,
623; Ray,
Austin Colony Pioneers,
307–308; Register of Spanish Archives, IV, 606;
U.S. Census,
1850, Bastrop County, 194; Weyand and Wade,
An Early History of Fayette County.

J
ESSE
H
ALDERMAN
(spelled Holderman by most of the old settlers, but Halderman by himself) was born in Kentucky about 1801. He came to Texas from his native state in 1831 and on December 3, 1832, received title to one-quarter league in Austin's Fourth Colony, situated in present Washington County. In 1835 he owned a store in Bastrop, in which James Gilleland organized the first Bastrop County Church.

He joined the Texas Army with his brother David in 1836 and served in Jesse Billingsley's Mina Volunteers from February 28 to May 20. They donated two teams and wagons loaded with flour to the army. David was furloughed because of his
rheumatism during Houston's retreat, but Jesse participated in the Battle of San Jacinto, for which service he later received a donation certificate for 640 acres of land. In May of 1837 Jesse served on the first jury in Bastrop County. He and his brother received the first two marriage licenses issued in the county and were married in a double wedding on the Fourth of July, 1837—David to Candace Thompson and Jesse to Candace's stepsister, Harriet Campbell. On October 1, 1838, Jesse received a bounty warrant of 320 acres of land in Bastrop County for his services during the Texas Revolution. He died in 1850 in Bastrop. The administrator of Halderman's estate, Campbell Taylor, soon afterward married his widow. Burlage and Hollingsworth,
Abstract of Land Claims,
627; Jones,
Bastrop
(1936), 13; Kemp, San Jacinto Roll; McDowall, “Journey,” 59; Police Court Records, Bastrop County, A, 13; Register of Spanish Archives, A, 34;
U.S. Census,
1850, Bastrop County, 151.

G
EORGE
D
UNCAN
H
ANCOCK,
whose nativity and date of birth is as much a mystery as that of Walker Wilson, is listed by Dixon and Kemp as born in Adams County, Mississippi, on April 22, 1809. Baker in his list of members of the Texas Veterans Association, gives Hancock as a native of Tennessee. The 1850 census states that Hancock was born in Virginia in 1811.

It is definitely known that Hancock served in Kimbro's company at San Jacinto and soon afterward became a merchant at La Grange. He joined Company E under Fisher on the Mier Expedition, but was left on the camp guard detail during the Battle of Mier and hence was not captured. In 1845 he moved to Austin and served a term in the state legislature from Travis County. He married Laura Lewis in 1855 and had several children. Hancock died on January 6, 1879, at Austin. Baker,
A Texas Scrapbook,
599; Dixon and Kemp,
Heroes of San Jacinto,
429–430; Kemp, San Jacinto Roll;
U.S. Census,
1850, Travis County, 38; Wade,
Mier Expedition,
I, 125.

T
HOMAS
M
ONROE
H
ARDEMAN
was born at Bolivar, Tennessee, in 1814. He came to Texas in 1835 and fought in the, Battle of Gonzales on October 2 of that year. He participated in the Battle of San Jacinto under Captain William Heard. Hardeman was
captain of a company at Plum Creek and was in the Vasquez campaign in 1842. He married Susan Burleson, General Burleson's niece. Commissioned as a major, he joined the Confederate Army in 1862. He died at Knoxville, Tennessee, on September 14, 1862, while en route to join his command. Dixon and Kemp,
Heroes of San Jacinto,
210–211; Kemp, San Jacinto Roll.

A
NDERSON
J. H
ARRELL,
born in Tennessee in 1823, was the oldest son of Captain Jacob M. and Mary Harrell. The family came to Texas in 1833 and were living at Nashville, Texas, in 1836. In 1838 they moved to Waterloo, and built the first house where Austin now stands. He served in Hays's Texas Rangers and was wounded in the fight on the Hondo River. He was with Mark Lewis in the Archive War. Harrell was County Clerk of Travis County in 1845, Chief Justice in 1846, and later he was a clerk in the General Land Office. Harrell married prior to 1847, when he and his wife were listed as members of the Baptist Church in Austin. He died in the early 1870's. Brown, “Annals of Travis County,” VI, IX, 7, X, 32–34; Hardy, “A History of Travis County, 1832–1865” (Master's Thesis, University of Texas, 1938), 26, 113; Sowell,
Early Settlers,
28;
U.S. Census,
1850, Williamson County, 23; Hope Yager, “Archive War in Texas” (Master's Thesis, University of Texas, 1939).

J
OHN
H
ARVEY
was born in Tennessee in 1810 and came to Texas in 1834, settling at Nacogdoches. He served in Captain Hayden Arnold's company from March 6 to May 30, 1836, and participated in the Battle of San Jacinto. He married Polly Reed on October 15, 1837, in a double wedding with his brother James and Polly's sister Jane.

John and Polly Harvey moved to Bastrop in 1838, where he was engaged in many surveying expeditions. That same year he and twenty inexperienced men went on such an expedition out on the San Saba River. One day while encamped near a creek Harvey went to get some water and was captured by a group of Waco Indians. The Indians had stolen a Comanche pony and had eaten half of it. They made Harvey carry the other half on his back all day long, and near sunset they were surrounded by the Comanches. The Indian who had stolen the
horse was given three hundred lashes on the back with a rawhide whip. The Wacoes were then asked who was responsible for taking Harvey prisoner and this man was given the same flogging. Harvey was then given a knife and told to kill the chief. He refused and was told to cut off the savage's ears. He still refused, and expected to be killed for disobeying the order, but for some reason he was returned to his camp safely and throughout the rest of the expedition the Comanches considered the band of Texans under their special protection. This was a rare and possibly unique incident of kindness towards Texans by the Comanche tribe.

Harvey died at his home in Salado, Bell County, in 1885. DeShields,
Border Wars,
260–261; Dixon and Kemp,
Heroes of San Jacinto,
345–346; Kemp, San Jacinto Roll; Ray,
Austin Colony Pioneers,
116.

S
ARAH
(C
REATH
) H
IBBANS
suffered more at the hands of Indians than any other woman in the history of Texas. She first married John McSherry and with him moved to Texas. McSherry was killed by Indians about the time she gave birth to John, Jr. After a few years she married John Hibbans and settled on the Hibbans league on the east side of the Guadalupe River.

In 1835 she took John McSherry, Jr., and a newborn child by Hibbans to visit her family in Illinois. She returned by boat early in 1836 with her brother, George Creath. In February Hibbans met them at Columbia on the Brazos with an oxcart, in which they were to journey home. While camping on Rocky Creek in Lavaca County, only fifteen miles from their house, they were attacked by thirteen Indians. Hibbans and Creath were killed and Mrs. Hibbans was captured.

The facts given by Jenkins are substantiated by all other known accounts, except that upon her escape Mrs. Hibbans first went into the house of Jacob Harrell, where she sat down in a chair. The Harrells were given quite a shock because they had entered the house and had been in the room for some time before they discovered her. She was too exhausted to speak for a while, but finally recovered enough to tell her story to Harrell who at once took her to Reuben Hornsby's house, where Tumlinson and his rangers were camping. After the recovery
of her son, she lived with the Hornsbys and went with them on the Runaway Scrape. Soon afterward she married Claiborne Stinnett, a member of the Convention of 1832. He was killed by two runaway slaves in 1837, while sheriff of Gonzales County. In 1839 she was married a fourth and last time, to Philip Howard. They survived two more severe Indian attacks on their home, but suffered no more deaths in the family.

After the fight between Tumlinson and the Indians, the barrel of Josiah Wilbarger's gun was found on an Indian. The stock had been broken. Brown,
Indian Wars,
88–91; Smithwick, 118–123; Wilbarger,
Indian Depredations in Texas,
14, 220–221.

A
BRAHAM
W
ILEY
H
ILL,
the son of Sarah McGehee and Thomas Hill, was born in Georgia in 1816. In 1835 he and his brothers, Thomas and Middleton, joined a volunteer company in Montgomery, Alabama, and came to Texas to fight in the Revolution. Upon reaching Texas, the three brothers decided to settle permanently in Bastrop County, and bought the Edward Burleson league near Smithville. On July 7, 1835, Wiley bought the east half of the Jenkins league from Sarah Jenkins. He did not participate in the Battle of San Jacinto, for he was assisting his mother's family, the McGehees, on the Runaway Scrape. He returned to Georgia and in January, 1837, married Evaline Hubbard. They moved immediately to Bastrop County.

About 1854 Wiley Hill built a large, southern-type mansion on his half of the Jenkins league. It still stands. In 1850 Hill's real estate alone was valued at $14,925—which was then a large amount. Hill and his wife had six children. He died in 1887. Bastrop
Advertiser,
August 29, 1935; Korges, “Bastrop County, Texas: Historical and Educational Development” (Master's Thesis, University of Texas, 1933), I, 88; James E. Saunders,
Early Settlers of Alabama
(1899), 451, 530;
U.S. Census,
1850, Bastrop County, 192; Wilbarger,
Indian Depredations in Texas,
284–285.

J
OSEPH
H
ORNSBY
was the same age as John Jenkins, both having been born in 1822. Joe was the son of Reuben and Sarah Hornsby and lived in Austin. It is not known when he died. Hardy, “A History of Travis County, 1832–1865” (Master's
Thesis, University of Texas, 1938), Appendix E, 238–241; Ray,
Austin Colony Pioneers,
354.