A twentieth century history and biographical record of north and west Texas, Volume I, Part 13

Author: Paddock, B. B. (Buckley B.), 1844-1922; Lewis Publishing Co., Chicago, pub
Publication date: 1906
Publisher: Chicago, New York, The Lewis publishing co.
Number of Pages: 968

USA > Texas > A twentieth century history and biographical record of north and west Texas, Volume I > Part 13

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However, for nearly twenty years after the first contract was signed the Peters Colony question again and again forced itself upon the attention of the legislature and the people. The contract of January, 1843, expired by limitation on July I, 1848, and on that date therefore all the lands in the Colony which had not been appropriated and to which colonists had not acquired rights, in- stantly reverted to and became part of the vacant public domain. Thenceforth pre-emptions could be made on unclaimed land according to the gen- eral land law of the state, and as a result conflict- ing claims soon arose between the colonists and those who held their homesteads by state law. The

HISTORY OF NORTH AND WEST TEXAS.

legislature took up the matter, and by an act passed in 1850 a commissioner was appointed to issue land certificates to all colonists who had received their land prior to 1848 and during the existence of the colonial contract. Thus both the colonists were recognized in their rights by the state, and by the issuance of the certificates their holdings were guaranteed in the same manner as pre-emptions from the state. For four years the Peters Colony was without legal existencc, and its lands were on the same plane with other portions of the state. In the meanwhile the original con- tractors, who still held important interests in this portion of the state and whose claims against the state had not all been settled, had organized under the name of the Texan Emigration and Land Com- pany. This company went before the legislature seeking satisfaction according to the original terms of their contract. The result was the act of February 10, 1852. This measure provided that the Emigration and Land Company should relinquish all their claims in the Colony ; in re- turn for this release, when given by the company, the commissioner of the general land office was directed to issue certificates to the amount of seventeen hundred sections of land (at the nom- inal fee of three hundred dollars for the issuance of the certificates). These certificates the com- pany could locate upon any land in the original colony not already settled and secured by the law of 1850. Relative to those who made pre- emption in the Colony during the four years be- tween 1848 and 1852, it was declared that such persons as had located within the Colony, by vir- tue of headright certificate, land scrip, or bounty warrant, other than as colonists, could not "be placed in better or worse condition than they arc at present" by this act. Also, by a supplementary act of February 7, 1853, all locations or surveys legally made between July 1, 1848, and February 10, 1852, on land not already scctionized by the colony contractors, could not be interfered with.

With thesc exceptions, all the lands included within the Peters Colony during the period from 1843 to 1848 were again placed in reserve for the company, which reservation was to continue two and one-half years from the passage of the act. All the great extent of vacant domain was

practically withdrawn from occupation, and dur- ing its continuance this acted as one of the re- tarding influences which halted the movement of population toward the west. August. 10, 1854, the day when the reservation to the company ex- pired, must be regarded as an important date in the history of North and West Texas, for there- after the current of immigration flowed without legal or contractual obstruction and a new im- petus was given the growth of the country.

The Texan Emigration and Land Company met with numerous difficulties while endeavoring to carry out its disposal of the seventeen hundred sections of reserve. The feeling between colonists and settlers at times became so acute as to de- mand the attention of the state government. Gov. Bell, in his message to the special session of the legislature in January, 1853, calls attention to the state of affairs in this part of the state and states : "On July 16, 1852, the people seized upon the files of almost all the colonists, with many books and records of the agent, and by threats forced him to abandon his office and leave the country." The governor's message of 1857 mentions frauds in the issuing of headright certificates, and as a result of the confusion of titles incident to the settling of the land through colonial contracts, headright certificates, bounty warrants, and other various forms, an act was passed on February 4, 1858, appointing a board of three commissioners to examine the certificates of landholders, and no such certificates issued since February 1, 1855, were valid unless approved by this board. The further legal phases growing out of the various methods by which this part of the state was set- tled, are not to be discussed here, inasmuch as they have only individual interest.

MARCUS L. WEBSTER'S career has been filled with unusual experiences. He volunteered in the service of the United States during the Mexi- can war, serving during 1847-49, and it was at Johnson's Station in Tarrant county that he was mustered out. He served as the first sheriff of Cooke county, and at a later period was the first mayor of the town of Whitesboro in Grayson county. He was in California from 1850 to 1860,

HISTORY OF NORTH AND WEST TEXAS.

and returned to Texas in time to take part in the war between the states, his services being on the Texas frontier. For a time in 1849 he was in the service of the Mexican state of Chihuahua in an Indian war, so that he has the unique dis- tinction of having served in three different wars and under three different flags. While camped with his company at Johnson's Station in 1848, the Indians raided the neighborhood and ran off some horses, and as a member of the pursuing party which finally overtook the Indians near Jacksboro and recovered all the stolen horses but one, he passed over the site of Fort Worth, which had not yet been laid out as the military post.

This old Indian fighter and Texas pioneer de- lights in the relation of anecdotes concerning his checkered past, and for the items of historical value which some of them have we quote the fol- lowing: "April 29, 1849, I started from Cooke county for California, being a member of a party of one hundred with a similar destination. Passing over practically the entire width of Texas we finally reached the town of Franklin, where the city of El Paso now is, and where eight or ten of us stopped. About two weeks after our arrival the Apache Indians made one of their periodical raids and drove off two hundred mules, killing five of the Mexican herders. The mules belonged to Americans, and I was one of a posse of twenty who set out in pursuit. Following the Rio Grande to Donano, about sixty miles from Franklin, we were there joined by Captain Stein with thirty United States' dragoons, and after continuing the chase two days overtook the Indians about thirty miles northwest of Deming, N. M. Then ensued a running fight from four o'clock to sundown. Captain Stein and Sergeant Snider were badly wounded at the outset, and Corporal Norwood, who then took command, was killed while lead- ing a fierce fight up a narrow canyon. At night- fall we retreated, having got back about a hundred of the mules, and managed to bring away both the wounded men, although Snider died. I did my part in shooting at the redskins and also had a very narrow escape from an arrow which whistled very close to my head. Unless their feather-tipped missiles were fired at you from a close range of ten or fifteen yards, it was usually

possible to dodge them." Concerning his experi- ence as a soldier of Chihuahua he relates the fol- lowing: "About September, 1849, a lot of the ex- soldiers of the Mexican war had drifted to the city of Chihuahua. The Apaches were then mak- ing raids on ranches in that state, especially old Chief Gomas from the Texas side, driving off . stock, killing and making prisoners of the natives. Gomas had about six hundred men, women and children in his village. The governor of Chihua- hua offered the Americans a bounty of $150 for each Indian scalp, and $200 for each Indian pris- oner delivered to him. This seems grewsome business to the people of the present age, but it was a war necessity in the days of '49, and I was one of a party of twenty-four Americans who or- ganized under Captain Gillett, and set out for a scalp-hunt. Traveling northeast from Chihuahua, at noon of the fifth day we reached the river, where we awaited nightfall. Proceeding under cover of darkness, by 3 a. m. we got within half a mile of the Indian village. Dismounting and leaving our horses with our Mexican guides, we crept up as close as was safe and waited for day. We began the fight by shooting the first brave that stepped out of his wigwam to enjoy the morning scenery, and during the next thirty or forty minutes our guns kept popping away at the confused Indians till some thirty of them were dead and we got the scalps of thirteen. We also got away with about one hundred mules and horses of the Indians. All the cap- tured stock, according to our contract with the governor, belonged to us, and we afterward sold them at $17 apiece, so that, with our scalp money, we had a tidy sum of prize money to divide. Some of our party then went on to the Mexican town of El Paso, across the river from Franklin, and later took part in another Indian hunt, but this time we got only one scalp. Did I ever scalp an Indian? Well, that is a part of un- written history."

The late COL. JOHN C. McCoy, of Dallas and one of the best known men of all North Texas, was intimately associated with Peters Colony af- fairs and with the early settlement of this part of the state. Born in Indiana, in 1819, of pioneer

HISTORY OF NORTH AND WEST TEXAS.

ancestry and inheriting the pioneer spirit, he early began the study of law, and, barring his many engagements with more material affairs, he gained a brilliant carecr as a lawyer and in public life. But, to illumine the Peters Colony history by biography, we quote here that part of his history which bears upon the colony. ,

His friend, Capt. Charles Hensley, having been appointed the agent of Peters Colony, offered him the position of sub-agent and surveyor for the Colony, which he readily accepted. Dec. 12, 1844, he embarked for New Orleans, en route for the scencs where his efforts have been expended. On New Year's Day, 1845, the party disembarked from the steamer New York at Galveston, and at once began to prepare for their journey to the in- terior country. Mr. McCoy and his friends had chosen this route in the hope that they might find means of transportation to the northern portion of the Republic by way of Trinity river ; but meeting with disappointment, the party embarked on a Buffalo Bayou steamer, and were landed in the city of Houston. Here, happening to meet Mr. Dunlap, who was in the city with a couple of wagons, they negotiated with him for the use of his teams, and early in January this little party took up its march for "the Three Forks of the Trinity," expecting to find Dallas a well built town, such as the maps and charts of Peters Colony represented it to bc. When they reached Cincinnati, on the Trinity, their contract with Mr. Dunlap was at an end; but these inexperienced but determined pioneers set themselves to work, and in a few days had constructed a flatboat, six and a half by thirty-six feet in dimensions, and placing their wares upon this novel craft came up the river to Fort Alabama, making such progress as their strength would permit in their pushing and pulling the vessel along, and often they were compelled to unload and pack their cargo around the shoals and shallows that appeared in the strcam. At Fort Alabama the boat was abandoned and having secured two ox teams at Mustang Prairie, a much easier progress of the journey was made to Fort Houston, where a part of their supplies were left, and having purchased two ponies at this point, Mr. McCoy and his friend, Capt. Hensley, pushed on in advance of their

party, following the Caddo trace as far as Gos- sett's in Henderson county. From Gossett's they proceeded alone and entered the 'confines of Peters Colony near Harwood's Prairie, a short distance from the Raft on Trinity river.

The next day the hospitable home of Mr. John Beeman (mentioned elsewhere) was reached in time for dinner, and pressing forward on their journey Mr. McCoy and his companion rode into Dallas a little before dark and found Col. John Neely Bryan comfortably established in his little log cabin, 10 by 12 feet in dimensions. From the northeast corner of this house a little rail fence extended westwardly, describing a semi- circle and connecting again at the southwest corner, enclosed the yard in front of his residence. The travelers were cordially received by Col. Bryan, whom they found dressed in buckskin leggings, his feet encased in moccasins, and his body protected from chilling winds by a red and black plaid blanket coat cut after a fashion known in those days as "the high water style." After our friends had partaken of the contents of the in- evitable Spanish gourd and spent an hour or two discussing the potations, they remounted their ponies and proceeded to Cedar Springs, where two or three families had established themselves. On the following day they went on to Keenan's, then living on Mustang, but now known as Farmer's Branch, where they made arrangements for the reception of their friends and supplies which had been left at Fort Houston. In March, 1845, the party of engineers of which Mr. McCoy was a member started from Mr. Keenan's house on the survey for which they had been engaged by the Peters Colony proprietors. While employed on this work he never failed to make periodical visits to the landlord of Dallas city, who was not only his warm personal friend, but postmaster be- sides, and to him was entrusted the delivery of the semi-monthly mails that came from Bonham by "pony express," and usually consisted of one or two letters with now and then a stray news- paper that found its way through the courtesies of the postoffice department to this far-off region. Mr. McCoy soon succeeded to the absolute con- trol and management of the Peters Colony, Cap- tain Hensley being called away to Kentucky, and

HISTORY OF NORTH AND WEST TEXAS.

as such he continued until June, 1846. In that year Dallas county was organized, and Mr. McCoy, having assisted in that work, was elected the first district clerk of the county.

Among the first comers to the country con- tained in the Peters Colony was the family of Throckmorton, afterward made famous by Gov- ernor J. W. THROCKMORTON, the first governor after the restoration of federal rule and one of the strongest men who ever sat in the gubernatorial chair. Born in Sparta, Tennessee, February I, 1825, he grew to manhood in that state, Ilinois and northwest Arkansas. He received a good education, studied medicine with success, and maintained a good practice in that profession until his career became directed to the law and public life. He was a surgeon in Major Mike Chevalie's Texas Rangers during the Mexican war. His father was Dr. William E. Throckmorton, a fine physician, a sterling citizen, and an early im- migrant of Collin county, where he died respected and lamented. Some years afterward, in respect to his memory, the county of Throckmorton was named.

James W. Throckmorton came to what is now Collin county in 1841. In 1844 he went to Tennessee on business, thence to Princeton, Ky., where he studied medicine under his uncle, and after the Mexican war he relocated in Collin county and practiced until 1859. In 1851 he was elected to the legislature, and re-elected in 1853 and 1855. In 1857 he was chosen to the senate for a term of four years. From the beginning he took a decided stand in favor of all measures for the protection of the frontier, for the adjustment of the endangered, land titles of the settlers in Peters Colony, in which he lived, as well as in other portions of the state, and in favor of giving encouragement to the construction of railroads, and the establishment, through grants of public lands, of a grand system of public schools. All the legislation of Texas on these subjects, for ten or twelve years, bears the impress of his genius, his patriotism and his unflagging industry. It is said that to no legislator or citizen of the state are the people of Texas more indebted for the

present developments in internal improvements than to James W. Throckmorton.

He was reared with Whig proclivities, and was on the Scott electoral ticket in 1852, but when the American or Know-nothing party came into ex- istence in 1854 he could not be persuaded to join in a restrictive warfare upon the rights of foreign- born citizens or men of a particular religious creed. On such fundamental questions he was strictly Jeffersonian ; and when the issue came, he obeyed the dictates of his own conscience by join- ing the only party, as he believed, that then stood in defense of those great principles without which our republic would be a reproach and a mockery. Hence in 1855, and again in 1857, he was elected as a Democrat, and thereafter was a steadfast though conservative member of the party. He opposed secession as a means of redress of griev- ances, being in harmony with Houston and many other noble Texans, but, like them too, when the state seceded, he obeyed the dictates of the major- ity and stood loyally by his state throughout the war. He commanded a company in the movement to capture Forts Washita and Arbuckle on the frontier, and later did service in the Missouri cam- paign and other portions of the Mississippi valley, until failing health compelled him to resign as major of his regiment, and then he acted as brig- adier general of the state troops.

In 1866 he was elected to the reconstruction constitutional convention under President John- son's proclamation, and when that body assem- bled, was chosen its president. When the election came on for state officers under the new consti- tution, he was elected governor of the state by a vote of nearly four to one, and was inaugurated August 8, 1866. Texas never had a more faith- ful executive. His acts were wise, just and con- servative, embracing every effort to restore peace to the country and renewed friendship between the north and the south. But such did not seem to be the desire of the then dominant power con- trolling the federal government, and on August 9, 1867, though the chosen executive of a sovereign state, he was deposed by three lines of pen marks from an officer of the U. S. army, then tempor- arily in command of military affairs in Louisiana and Texas. Thence until 1874, Gov. Throckmor-

HISTORY OF NORTH AND WEST TEXAS.

ton remained in private life, being most of the time, in common with thousands in Texas, dis- franchised from even the right to vote. But in the latter year he was elected to Congress and re- elected in 1876, serving four years. He looms large in the public life of Texas, especially during the troublous times of reconstruction, and North Texas is proud of his distinguished career.

The late HON. JOSEPH BLEDSOE, of Sherman, was at one time chief engineer of the Texan Emigration and Land Co., and furthermore one of the very prominent men of North Texas. Of Revolutionary ancestry, of Virginia stock, he was grandson of a Kentucky pioneer of 1802, his father, Hiram Bledsoe, being a very small boy at the time of the removal to Kentucky. Hiram Bledsoe was a wealthy farmer and later a min- ister of the Christian church, being converted to the doctrines of Alexander Campbell from those of the Baptist church in which he was reared.

Judge Joseph Bledsoe received his early educa- tion in a little log schoolhouse in Kentucky, where his advantages were rather meager, and

after the removal of the family to Lafayette county, Missouri, in 1839, he had better ad- vantages in that state, attending the high school at Lexington, and later the Bethany College of West Virginia, of which Alexander Campbell was president, graduating in that institution in 1850. In that year also, having studied law, he was admitted to the bar. After teaching school one year in Hinds county, Mississippi, he ac- cepted the position of chief engineer of the Emi- gration and Land Company and came out to the wild country about the Brazos river, where he was engaged in the rough life of the frontier be- fore any settlements had been effected. He was then engaged in the practice of law at Austin until 1858, resided two years at Denton, and then at McKinney, where he was at the outbreak of the war. He served throughout the war, rising to rank as captain, and then returned to his law practice at Mckinney, where he lived until he moved to Sherman in 1870. Here he led a career of unusual prominence, serving as district judge, and is one of the able characters that deserve mention in the history of his section of the state.

CHAPTER II.

THE INDIANS AS AN ADVERSE FACTOR IN THE SETTLEMENT OF NORTH AND WEST TEXAS-THE CONTEST BETWEEN CIVILIZATION AND BAR- BARISM-MILITARY POSTS, INDIAN ANNALS FROM 1840 TO 1881.

In outlining the history of Peters Colony the first chapter in the progress of civilization into North Texas has been told, and the first im- portant influence in directing immigration into this district has been described. It is now proper to consider the barriers which barbarism opposed to this advance, and opposed almost constantly and relentlessly for a period of thirty-five years, slowing up the march of progress more than all other obstacles combined. Nowhere has the con- test between the Indian and the American been waged more stubbornly than in the state of Texas, nowhere has the barbarian surrendered his happy hunting grounds with greater re- luctance and with greater cost to the white man. The Indian annals of Texas, if complete, would fill a library; many volumes would not hold the record of troubles as they befell in North and West Texas. Obviously, then, this history must omit from its pages the specific tragedies and wars and the trail of blood which the red man has caused; the process of explication goes far enough in recounting the synopsis of deeds by which he constituted himself the demon of op- position to the white man and his institutions, and in describing the general system of defense and subjugation which the latter was compelled to adopt.

"The native tribes of Texas consisted of two classes, the agricultural and the nomadic," says a recent contributor to the Texas Historical Asso- ciation Quarterly. "Twelve of the agricultural class belonged to the Caddo family, and inhabited that part of the state lying east of the Brazos

river, while the range of the class that depended on the chase for a subsistence was found in the western portion. The Caddoes were more ad- vanced toward civilization than any tribes north of Mexico, living in villages of good tents, wear- ing dress and ornaments, and cultivating the ground, producing crops of corn, melons, pump- kins, etc., which they providently stored for winter use.

"The nomadic tribes of Texas were the Karan- kawas, Lipans, Tonkawas, Kiowas, Apaches and Comanches. The Franciscan missionaries who had labored in Texas during the preceding cen- tury to civilize the more interesting and kindly disposed agricultural tribes had not been neglect- ful of these more ferocious denizens of the prov- ince, and had established missions for some of them. The Karankawas, at this period, had en- tirely disappeared. The Lipans ranged from the Brazos to the Mexican frontier along the foot of the mountains. The Tonkawas ranged be- tween the Brazos and the Nueces from the coast as far inward as the upper Colorado. The Apaches, whose village was at Bandera Pass, were a ferocious tribe that devastated the south- western frontier from the earliest settlement of it by the Spaniards. After annexation, the Apaches, on account of the protection given their habitual range by the United States forts, had fallen back into New Mexico. The Kiowas claimed the Panhandle of Texas for their range. The numerous and powerful Comanches were in three divisions, and the band which was the dreaded foe of the Texan frontier was the

HISTORY OF NORTH AND WEST TEXAS.

Southern Comanches, for whom the Comanche Reserve on the Clear Fork of the Brazos was established."

In the Peters Colony during the Republican period the line of settlements had advanced too little to create serious friction between the natives and the whites. Old settlers agree in stating that the Indians in their respective neighborhoods were generally friendly, and the only fear that their presence inspired was for movable property, since the red men, it seems, were never averse to stealing anything they could carry away without detection. Although Indian raids were not infrequent during this time, and there were many lives lost on both sides, the ragged line of settlements was generally able to hold its own without the assistance of the regular mili- tary forces of the Republic. Finally, in 1843, only a short time after Peters Colony was opened for colonization, peace commissioners from President Houston came to the Upper Trinity and invited the surrounding tribes to a confer- ence. Eleven tribes met in council on the banks of the Trinity in what is now Wise county. This council was preliminary to the final peace con- ference that took place at Bird's Fort in Tarrant county in September, 1843. From this resulted the first approach to a definite line of separation between the natives and the whites in North Texas. The boundary line is roughly defined by the trading houses which were to be established, one being designated at the mouth of the Clear Fork of the Trinity in Tarrant county, another at Comanche Peak on the Brazos in what is Hood county, and one at old Fort San Saba.

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A twentieth century history and biographical record of north and west Texas, Volume I, Part 13

Author: Paddock, B. B. (Buckley B.), 1844-1922; Lewis Publishing Co., Chicago, pub Publication date: 1906 Publisher: Chicago, New York, The Lewis publishing co. Number of Pages: 968

Author: Paddock, B. B. (Buckley B.), 1844-1922; Lewis Publishing Co., Chicago, pub
Publication date: 1906
Publisher: Chicago, New York, The Lewis publishing co.
Number of Pages: 968