USA > Texas > Montgomery County > A History of Montgomery County, Texas > Part 9
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man.
John Marshall Wade was born in New York in 1815. His mother was a blood cousin to the renowned Irish orator, Henry Grattan. Wade came to Texas in 1835 and resided at Montgomery until the call was made for volunteers to meet the invaders under Santa Anna. Wade immediately got up a small company in Mont- gomery and joined Sam Houston at Gonzales. Most of his men disbanded, or were incorporated with other commands, but he con- tinued with Houston's army during the retreat. He joined the artillery and with kindred spirits worked one of the Twin Sister
48 Loc. cit.
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cannon at San Jacinto. It was his gun that carried away the water bucket of the Mexican long-nine and did other damage.
John Wade came home a few weeks after the battle, but he again got up a company around Montgomery and joined the Texas army, then under Rusk, at Victoria. After the Mexican army had made its exit from Texas, Wade returned home ready to respond to the call of his adopted country. He turned out again in 1842 against Woll, but fortunately he did not cross the Rio Grande. 49
In the 1872 Texas Almanac John Marshall Wade gave the following account of himself:
I came to Texas in 1835 from the Western Creek Nation, being advised so to do by Gen. Houston. I came when he made his second trip to Texas, on the 11th of October, 1835. I joined troops going from Nacogdoches to Bexas, (Rusk's company), was taken sick and remained in San Felipe, and the present site of Montgomery, until the meeting of the Conven- tion at Washington, when I joined Capt. Ware's Com- pany; heard of the fall of the Alamo and hastened to the Colorado; was under Sherman at the upper en- campment until the retreat; Gen. Sherman will re- member me. At Groce's I was detailed, by Gen. Houston, with Dick Scurry, Ben McCullock, Tom Green, T. O. Harris, and others to man the Twin Sisters, which the lamented J. N. Moreland was appointed to command; staid with the Twin Sisters till after the battle of San Jacinto; rejoined Ware's company, and was discharged on the 11th of June, 1836.
Gen. Rusk hearing he Mexicans were rallying on the
49 Loc. cit.
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Rio Grande, called for men. I was elected captain of a company on the 4th of July, 1836; reported to Rush at Victoria; was assigned to duty with my company in the regiment of Col. Ed. Morehouse; served three months, the term of enrollment, and discharged my company. I then want to Columbia and worked as a compositor on the Telegraph; came around to Houston with Cruger & Moore, opening of the Land Office in 1838. I then returned to Montgomery and was appoint- ed to the office of Deputy Surveyor; elected Surveyor when that office became elective by the people, and was elected Colonel of Milita at its first organization. I started the Montgomery Patriot in 1845, moved it to Huntsville, and with the assistance of George Robinson published it one year and sold out. I returned again to Montgomery in 1854, and have been Surveyor until displaced by Gov. Davis.
Matthew Cartwright, R. Martin and myself, are the only survivors of the battle of San Jacinto, in this county.
I am a native of the city of New York, and 56 years old; have set type beside Horace Greeley and George Kindall when a mere boy. 50
J. H. Shepperd was a native of North Carolina and he came to Texas in 1831. He first stopped in Austin's colony, twenty miles above San Felipe at Colonel Jared Groce's settlement. In 1832 he made his first campaign as a lieutenant in Captain Abner Kuykendall's second company when the colonists rose to relieve W. B. Travis and P. H. Jack from the clutches of the tyrant, John Blackburn, at Anahuac. His next campaign was at Bexar in 1835, when he was
50 Loc. cit.
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in all the battles and skirmishes around there. The Powder House Fight, Grass Fight, and Concepcion were some of these, and he stayed at Bexar till the place surrendered.
He was first lieutenant in J. L. Bennett's company, and when the latter disbanded, Shepperd joined another company. He was not in the battle of San Jacinto for the reason that on the day the army crossed the Brazos River at Groce's, Sam Houston sent him with an express to the Coshattie Indians who lived on the Trinity River near where Swartwout was located. Sam Houston had heard this tribe of Indians would come to his aid with a hundred warriors, but Shepperd told him they would not take part in the contest on the side of Texas, and the result of this mission confirmed Shepperd's assertion, for, after endeavoring for several days to get the chiefs to hold a council, he had to return to his home at Montgomery. He was thus deprived of the honor of participating in the battle of San Jacinto. In the campaign after the battle of San Jacinto he was stationed at Southerland's on the Navidad as a bearer of expresses from headquarters at Victoria to the seat of government at Columbia. It was he who bore the dispatch from Sam Houston, then in eastern Texas, countermanding the taking of Santa Anna to the army, as per vote and determination of the army. 51
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51 Loc. cit.
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The following is a biographical sketch from L. W. Kemp's book, The Signers of the Declaration of Independence, of C. B. Stewart who was one of Montgomery's most prominent citizens. Kemp wrote:
Charles Bellinger Stewart was born in Charleston, South Carolina, February 18, 1806, son of Charles and Adrianna (Bull) Stewart. In 1827 he resided in Columbus, Georgia, and owned an interest in a drug store. For a few months in 1828 he conducted a business in Cuba. Later he was commission merchant in New Orleans. He came to Texas in 1830 and ran a drug store in the town of Brazoria. In June, 1832, he entered Francis W. Johnson's command, raised to attack in Mexican fort at Anahuac. Although he was not a member of it, the first Convention of Texas at San Felipe, on October 5, 1832, appointed him, John Austin, Charles D. Sayre, George B. Mckinstry, and Warren D. C. Hall members of a subcommittee to Safety and Vigilance for the District of Victoria (Brazoria). Their duties were to keep up a regular and stated correspondence "on all subjects rela- tion to the tranquility of the interior. " On November 21, 1834, Judge Thomas J. Chambers appointed Ira R. Lewis prosecuting attorney and Stewart secretary of the judicial district of Brazos.
Stewart moved to San Felipe prior to July 17, 1835. On that date he was secretary of the delegation from the jurisdiction of Austin, composed of Wyly Martin, presi- dent, Alexander Somervell, John R. Jones, and Jesse Bartlett, which met at San Felipe with delegates from the jurisdictions of Columbia and Mina, "to take into consideration the state of the country and the alleged outrages against Mexico, 'namely William B. Travis' capture of twenty Mexican soldiers under Captain Tenorio at Anahuac'. " The Committee of Safety and Correspondence for the Jurisdiction of Columbia of which Dr. Branch T. Archer was chairman, and William T. Austin secretary, at Velasco on August 19, 1835, wrote to Stewart that they, reposing the fullest
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confidence in his seal, energy, fidelity, and ability, had appointed him as confidential Agent to act within the Jurisdiction of San Felipe for the purpose of obtaining a Consultation of all Texas through her representatives, conformably to the plan contained in the address of the committee which is herewith forwarded to you.
On October 11, 1835, Stewart was elected secretary of the Permanent Council, a body organized to conduct matters of state until the meeting of the Consultation. Upon the recommendation of Governor Smith who had been elected November 12. the General Council, on November 18, appointed Stewart secretary to the execu- tive and enrollment clerk.
On February 1, 1836, Stewart, Thomas Barnett, and Randal Jones were elected to represent Austin Munici- pality at the Constitutional Convention. Stewart and Barnett were seated March 1. Jones did not attend. In Washington, Stewart had business additional to the Convention. On March 8, James Hall, Primary Judge of Washington Municipality, authorized "W. W. Sheppard of Lake Creek to celebrat a contract of Marriage between Chas. B. Stewart and Julia Sheppard and to give to it the said contract the necessary formality before attesting witnesses. " The ceremony was performed March 11.
Following the Revolution, Stewart moved to the town of Montgomery, formerly seat of Montgomery County, where he practiced medicine. Cn March 5, 1840, Judge A. B. Shelby appointed him district attorney pro tem of the county, and on May 11, 1841, President Lamar appointed him notary public. He represented Montgomery County at the Constitutional Convention which convened at Austin, July 4, 1845, and at the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Legislatures. While serving in the Fourteenth Legislature in 1874-75, his address was Danville, Montgomery County, and he repre- sented Montgomery and Harris Counties.
Toward the end of his life Dr. Stewart became almost totally deaf. His letters to Moses Austin Bryan indicate he was a profound believer in spiritualism. In a post- cript to a letter dated August, 1883, he predicted that he
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would die in about seven years. He passed away, however, in less than two years, on July 28, 1885. He is buried in a marked grave in the cemetery at Montgomery. In 1936 the Commissioner of Control for Texas Centennial Cele- brations erected a marker at the stie of his former home one mile from the town of Montgomery. 52
52
Kemp, op. cit., pp. 330-335.
CHAPTER VII
CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION
Montgomery County was one of the largest slave holding counties in the state. In 1850 Montgomery County had 945 salves, and in 1855 the number had increased to 1448 slaves, and in 1860 just before the Civil War the slave population had increased to 2106 slaves. The total value of the slaves in 1860 amounted to 1, 296, 380 dollars, and out of the 120 counties the state had at that time, Montgomery County ranked twenty-eighth in slave population. In a period of ten years the slave population of Montgomery County had increased by over one thousand. This rapid increase was due to the many immigrants who brought their slaves from the states of the Old South to find richer cotton lands and to be further away from the people who were agitating the slavery issue in Washington.
Many of these plantation owners who brought their slaves to Montgomery County settled near the vicinity of Old Danville. In 1854 a citizen wrote to his wife that, "Judge Goldthwait of Alabama bought the H. G. Johnson place a little over $5.00 per acre and has some 100 Negroes on it, and about as many over on the San Jacinto. " 2 1 Texas Almanac for 1860 (Galveston: Richardson and Company, 1860) p. 206
2 Letter of Nat Hart Davis to Betty Davis, December 16, 1854, in Addison Collection.
1
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The next year he reported in another letter to his wife, "I saw some very fine cotton when I went over to Danville on the 3rd. at Godlth- wait's plantation on the San Jacinto. " 3
Another plantation owner was A. J. Lewis who brought his family and salves from Virginia and built a three story home which he called Elmwood. This mansion was made by his slaves and con- tained a large ballroom on the third story. Another fine home owned by the widow of General Menucan Hunt was Malmaison, named for the chateau of Empress Josephine. 4
Other large plantation owners were the Woods and Elmores; he Elmores called their plantation Melrose, after their owner's ancestral home in Virginia. 5
Not all of the slaves were owned by large slave owners, for many families had just a few to be used as household servants; or a few field hands who helped them in the fields. Frequently during depressed years it was necessary for the owners to hire out their -
3 Letter of Nat Hart Davis to Betty Davis, July 10, 1854, in Addison Collection.
4 W. N. Martin, "A History of Montgomery, " (unpublished Master's thesis, Sam Houston State Teachers College, Huntsville, Texas, 1950), p. 76
5 Loc. cit.
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slaves. In 1854 "men field hands hired out for $ 190 to $200 and women $ 120 to $ 160" a year. 6
Slaves were a great deal of trouble and expense to keep. They had to be kept healthy and happy in order for the owners to get the best work out of them. Sometimes an owner would acquire one who had a tendency to run away often. The owner usually tried to get rid of such a slave when he captured him, because run-aways were a bad influence on the others. Many times blood hounds were used to trail slaves who had run away. In a letter in 1855 a citizen of Montgomery wrote that, "McHanna's negro, Ball, killed himself when the dogs were after him. " ?
On the whole, ill treatment was the exception rather than the rule in managing slaves because a slave who was injured by beating could not work for several days, therefore the owners tried to sell the ones who habitually broke the slave rules. The following quotation indicates what an owner thought of one of his runaway slaves:
My Negroes are hired out until the 10th. When I sell I will let you hear of it as soon as possible. In your next letter to me say how likely young Negro men sell with you. I have one that I am bound to
6 Letter of Nat Hart Davis to Betty Davis, January 31, 1854, in Addison Collection.
7 Letter of Nat Hart Davis to Betty Davis, July 15, 1855, in Addison Collection.
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sell. He ran away from me twice and is now in the woods the second time from Dr. Miller. He would sell for about 850 dollars here (well enough). 8
The household servants were treated better than the field hands. They usually had grown up with their masters and their children and were treated like members of the family. In many cases the servants had their church pews and grave plots in the same church and cemetery with their master. When one of the owner's children married it was ordinarily the custom for the parents to give the bride and groom the Negro servant that had attended them when they were children, or one that they had grown up or played with as a child. These servants remained faithful and tended their masters throughout their life time. The following passage shows the faithfulness of one of these servants:
Old Milly returned here this morning from Austin to attend on Fowler whose health is bad, The old negro is in fine health and I reckon a gladder person has not revisited Montgomery for so many years, and all the old settlers were glad to see her. She says the town has improved so she hardly knew it. 9
Many of the faithful servants were given their manumission papers when their masters died, for owners often provided in their
8 Letter of Jane Davis to Betty Davis, September 14, 1852, in Addison Collection.
9 Letter of Nat Hart Davis to Betty Davis, February 4, 1955, in Addison Collection.
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slaves should be freed at that time. At the beginning of the Civil War there were many freed slaves who had obtained their freedom by this means.
When the talk of secession began one of the most prominent leaders of Texas, Sam Houston, started campaigning bitterly against the idea and the men who instigated it. On October 15, 1859 the town of Montgomery gave Sam Houston a barbecue where he expressed his views in a speech before the citizens of Montgomery on the subject of secession and the impending crisis of a civil war. A synopsis of the speech is quoted as follows:
Gen.Houston said he cherished the kindest recollec- tions for Old Montgomery. The first barbecue he ever attended in the state, was in Montgomery, in 1841. She was ever in favor of organized government - ever gave a united vote in the early struggles for independence; from which circumstance he denominated her the "Tenth Legion. " He recurred briefly to his Kansas-Nebraska vote; said the people were beginning to see that it was a fraud upon the South, gotten up by Pierce and Douglas, for Presidential purposes; that Gov. Hammond of South Carolina, Jeff. Davis and Brown of Mississippi - the most ultra Southern men - had pronounced it a fraud and a cheat upon the South; that in voting with Seward and other abolitionists upon the Kansas Bill, he was, like old dog Tray, in bad company, but the sequel had shown he was right; that since the repeal of the Missouri Com- promise, Kansas had been lost, free-soilism had been extended four hundred and fifty miles South, and that all Southern territory was now open to the inroads of free-soilism.
As to the men who had called him an abolitionist and a traitor to the South, he would only say they were a set of perfect gentlemen; but if he were to tell them so,
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they would not believe it; that he had shed blood enough on Southern soil to wash away all such charges.
As to slavery he said nature had fixed its boundary - it would go where the climate, soil, etc., demanded it; he had never raised his voice against it; was not in favor of re-opening the African slave trade in order to christianize the negroes; re-open the trade, and cotton would fall to three and four cents per pound; the poor man would be injured by it in consequence of the reduc- tion of the price of labor. He was not opposed to it on his own account, but for posterity.
Ever since the days of Jackson there had been a dis- union, Southern Confederacy party. Their object was office. By the formation of a Southern Confederacy there would be more room for great men to come into office. We have so many great men that places can get three or four of them at a time. In case of disunion, what would become of the public money? the navy? the army ? -- could the South get them?
He spoke of the Houston convention -- wished they had called it another name. The nominees were in favor of re-opening the African slave trade; were ultra in their views, and were advocating doctrines that would lead to disunion and secession -- they were about to carry out a policy ruinous to the country. He was induced under the circumstances, though he was not again desirous of enter - ing public life, to obey the voice of the people, and ste p forth as a candidate for Governor. The people had in- dorsed him, though they had given him a very decent dubbing two years ago, which they had a right, as free men, to do, and for which he was not mad at them at all.
He spoke of Washington -- where was his parallel? He pointed to him as the political Moses, whose farewell address contained the prophesies of our country, which we must heed if we would preserv it. Love of the Union was the inspiration of Liberty; we should cherish it; we should remember it was the Fourth of July.
He paid a tribute to Jackson. He was of the old simon pure Democratic school, and opposed to this modern
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Democracy, which declares that you must vote for the nominees of a convention in any case.
He spoke of Seward. He was a resplendent abolition- ist. The South had justly denounced him. He regretted the necessity of voting in his company; but he thought the best interests of his country required it at his hands. It does not hurt a good man to go to church with bad men. Seward was a cold-blooded, cool, calculating, unexcit- able man. If you were to cut him to the center, it would draw no more blood than you could get from a lizard!
The editor of the State Gazette next received a severe castigation. John Marshall had been connected with a fire eating, disunion paper in Mississippi; had removed to Texas to carry out his ultra views. He (Marshall) had advocated a violation of the law by the juries of the country, as to the re-opening of the African slave trade. A man who would propagate such doctrines, ought not to be countenan- ced. He (Marshall) had stolen $20, 000 from the Public Treasury, as was reported. He (Houston) did not blame him, since it was his vocation! Yet Maj. Marshall was a perfect gentleman !
He denounced the Galveston News. It had always been his enemy. If, for fifteen years one could show him a single item that paper had said in his favor, he would form a more favorable opinion of it. It was an enemy in the days of the Republic, by publishing articles discourag- ing to the Texans, and comforting to the enemy. He could forgive the editor of the News, as far as he was personally concerned; "but an enemy to my country, I never can forgive !"
He denounced the abuses, intrigues and corruptions of conventions. He was glad to see the late evidences of regeneration of the nation in the independent spirit shown by the people. It was but the proud emotions of the hearts of freemen, rebelling against dictation and demagagueism. Van Buren was the first to go into a convention; Jackson refused to have anything to do with them.
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He thanked the ladies for their presence. 10 *
Sam Houston's speech was of no avail with the people of Texas, or with the South, because their problems had been brew- ing too long for them to listen to his advice. Many wanted to take his advice and felt that the Union should be saved at all cost, but it seemed that an impetuous force carried them along with the mass from which they could not shake themselves free.
Cn December 3, 1860 a committee at Austin prepared and published an address to the people of Texas for the purpose of calling a convention of delegates to meet at Austin January 28, 1861 to decide on the question of secession. 11 The citizens of Montgomery County, afraid of the outcome of this convention, on January 25, 1861 addressed the following petition to the legislature:
. The undersigned Citizens of Montgomery County
in said state beliving that our rights can be better secured and maintained in the Union than out of it, Pray the Legislature to take no steps tending to dis- union. 12
The petition was signed by two hundred and eight citizens,
which would indicate according to the 1860 census, that at least
10 News item in The Standard (Clarksville, Texas), October 15, 1859. *See Appendix A for a description of the Montgomery barbecue.
11 Dudley G. Wooten, History of Texas (Dallas: Texas History Company, 1889), p. 352.
12 Memorial Petition, January 25, 1861, in Texas State Archives, Number 169.
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one out of every sixteen persons in the county was against secession.
The secession convention met in Austin and on February 1, 1861, by a vote of the delegates Texas declared itself to be with the Confederacy. 13
Although Montgomery County had a high ratio of anti- secessionists, many turned loyal to the South when the call for troops came and eagerly joined the Confederate Army. Some stayed loyal to the Union, however, because official records show that there were nineteen hundred and twenty claiming to be from Texas who were enrolled in the Federal Army during the war. They were enrolled in two regiments and were organized at Matamores, Mexico. 14
Most of the men from Montgomery County who enlisted in the Confederate Army served in Company H, Fourth Texas Regiment, Hood's Texas Brigade. The majority of the men in Company H were from Montgomery County with some men in it from Grimes and Walker Counties.
Wocten, loc. cit.
Frank B. Chilton, Official Minutes of Hood's Texas Brigade, Monument Dedication and Thirty-ninth Annual Re-union, Together with A Hood's Texas Brigade History and a Confederate Scrap Book (Houston: Rein and Sons Company, 1911), p. 58.
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Around the first of May 1861 Proctor P. Porter, an attorney-at-law from the town of Montgomery, was appointed en- rolling officer to muster recruits from Montgomery County. He established his headquarters in the town, and when the enlisting there was exhausted he moved his headquarters to Red Top in Grimes County, where he consolidated his men with other squads organized by James T. Hunter of Walker Countyand Thomas M. Owens of Grimes County. 15
On May 7, 1861, while at Red Top, Company H was formally organized and officers duly elected. Procter P. Porter of Montgomery County was chosen Captain; James T. Hunter of Walker County was chosen First Lieutenant; Thomas M. Owens of Grimes County was chosen Second Lieutenant; Benton Randolph of Walker County was chosen Third Lieutenant. 16
Company H, in connection with the other companies that had been ordered for Virginia, left Red Top and proceeded by way of Brenham to Houston. There they were regularly mustered into the Confederate service for the duration of the war by Major Earl Van Dorn, and from Houston they took up the march for the seat of war in Virginia. 17
15 Ibid., p. 126 16 Loc. cit. 17 Ibid., p. 127.
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The following passage is quoted from a letter written by Corporal Zachariah Landrum of Montgomery who was one of the men in
Company H that left Houston for Richmond, Virginia. He wrote that:
. . . We left Houston on the 19th of August on the N. C. R. Road to Beaumont and down the Neches and up the Sabine to Niblett's Bluff where we remained a week before we could get wagons. I would have written from there but had no way of writing. We started in the rain for New Iberia all on foot. We were fourteen days get- ting to New Orleans. We had a very bad time getting over. It rained on us every day but one. We had to wade in the water from shoe mouth deep to waist deep all the time. It is a low flat country like the prairies about Houston and you can imagine how they would be after rain- ing 38 days.
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