USA > Texas > History of Texas : from 1685 to 1892, volume 1 > Part 11
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Haden Edwards and his brother visited the American set- tlers on and beyond the Attoyac, to arouse them and secure their co-operation in organized resistance to robbery and oppression. A report met them that a Mexican force from San Antonio was near at hand. B. W. Edwards with only fifteen men, under an improvised flag, hurried back to Nacog- doches, where he arrived on the 16th of December and found that Ellis P. Bean,1 with thirty-five Mexican soldiers from San Antonio, had advanced to within a few miles of Nacog- doches ; but, on learning the state of feeling, had retired to some point west of the town to await reinforcements.
The Americans assumed the designation of Fredonians, and on the 18th mustered two hundred fighting men. Martin
1 Ellis P. Bean, as elsewhere shown, was one of the Nolan party captured in 1801, imprisoned in Mexico until 1812, then a soldier in the patriot army till 1814, then a messenger to the United States and again a soldier in Mexico till 1818, when he returned to the United States, married in Tennes- see, moved to Arkansas, and, when he heard of the success of the Mexican revolution in 1822-3, settled at Mound Prairie, in East Texas.
In 1826 he went to Mexico, received a grant of land for his services in the revolution, a commission as nominal Colonel in the Mexican service and was appointed an agent to the Cherokee and other Indians in East Texas. At that time, John Dunn Hunter was in the city of Mexico in behalf of the Cherokees and aided by Ellis P. Bean sought a grant in their favor. Hunter was told that they could settle as other colonists, but could not have a separate tribal grant.
Hunter was a remarkable man. He claimed to be an American captive to the Indians when a child, but knew not his name, age or birthplace. He visited in early manhood, the eastern cities and Europe, became quite a scholar in English, and then returned to live among the Cherokees in East Texas, over whom he exerted great influence.
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Parmer 1 was elected to the post of command, and the work of organization vigorously prosecuted.
On the 20th of December Hunter, Fields and other chiefs, representing the Cherokees and associated tribes, arrived to perfect the alliance verbally agreed upon. Deliberations lasting for three days resulted in the signing of a treaty em- bodying a solemn league between the American colonists and the Indians. It was signed on the part of the Fredonians, by Haden Edwards and Harmon B. Mayo, and on the part of the Indians, by John Dunn Hunter and Richard Fields. It was ratified December 20, 1826, for the Indians, by Hunter, Fields, Ne-ko-lake, Kuk-to-ke and John Bags; and for the Americans by a Fredonian legislative committee, or council, consisting of Martin Parmer, president ; Haden Edwards, Harmon B. Mayo, Benj. W. Edwards, Joseph A. Huber, Burrill P. Thompson, John Spron and W. B. Ligon.
The objects had in view in the formation of this league were a declaration of independence from Mexico and the establishment of a Republic to be called Fredonia. The ter- ritory of Texas was divided into two parts by a line north of Nacogdoches, running east and west, across the country. All
1 Parmer was a Virginian by birth; had lived and married in Tennessee and in 1818 went to Missouri and settled in what is now Clay County, in proximity to the Sioux, Iowa and Osage Indians, with whom he had encoun- ters about which various apochryphal stories were afterwards related, some of which are too incredible to be considered historical. He was a man of physical courage, strong mind and rough exterior, delighting in the exhibi- tion of grotesque eccentricities, and not very scrupulous as to the means of accomplishing ends. He sat in the senate of Missouri in the session of 1824-5 with James Kerr, who represented the district of St. Genevieve, St. Francois and Perry. At the close of the session, both resigned and came to Texas. Parmer settled at Mound Prairie in the northeast, and Kerr about four hundred miles distant in the extreme southwest. They met again in the councils of the country, not only in the Fredonian troubles, but in the conventions of 1832-3 and 1835-6. Parmer signed the declaration of independence. Kerr was a member of the convention, but was absent, removing his family from the frontier to escape the advancing Mexican army.
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north of the line, it was specified, should belong to the Indians ; all south to the Americans. The war was to be prosecuted until the achievement of independence.
The Edwards 1 party indulged the delusion that the Ameri-
1 The brothers Edwards were natives of Kentucky, but at this time residents of Mississippi and wealthy planters. They belonged to a family, members of which had been, or have since been, distinguished for talent and public services in Virginia, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri and Texas. Benjamin seems to have been the leader in the Fredonian trouble, after which he returned to Mississippi, where he died about 1845. Asa and Gus- tavus, two other brothers, settled in central Texas. Haden Edwards, as has been shown, had met Austin in Mexico in 1822-3. He had thirteen children, who (excepting some of the elder ones who left with him on the failure of his enterprise) remained permanently in Nacogdoches. His daughter, Susan W., wife of Frost Thorn, already in Nacogdoches, as is shown in De Witt's letter to Kerr in 1825, remained there and had charge of her younger brothers and sisters, of whom Haden H. Edwards, then a youth of thirteen years, became and long remained a prominent and useful citizen. He was a soldier in 1835-6 and married Sarah M., daughter of Colonel John Forbes. He was a member of the first legislature in 1846, and later (1859-1863) a senator and a member of the secession convention. He was the chief originator and President of the Sabine Pass and East Texas Railway Company, and died in Cincinnati, in August, 1865, en route to New York. His only living son is the Honorable Peyton Forbes Edwards, an ex- senator and ex-district judge at Nacogdoches and now of El Paso, whose only son, Peyton J., yet in his minority, is the only other living male descendant, being a great-grandson of Haden Edwards. Haden Edwards also had two other sons, Asa and John. Asa escorted the Mexican Colonel Piedras, after his surrender in August, 1832, to New Orleans, and later died unmarried. John married, and died in 1846, his two sons afterward losing their lives in Harris County, one by lightning, the other from exposure searching for bis missing brother. Mrs. Harrison, one of the daughters of Haden Edwards, returned to Louisville, Kentucky, and became a widow. She subsequently married Mr. Reeves and became the mother of Haden Reeves, now of Texas. Jane, another daughter of Haden Edwards, living with her sister, Mrs. Thorn, married Benjamin Davenport, son of Samuel Davenport, who was a merchant in Nacogdoches in 1790, and who figured otherwise as a settler in that country in 1805 and 1812-13, Angalie, a daughter of this union, married Louis, a son of John Durst, who, in 1833 and there- abouts, figured in the John T. Mason eleven-hundred-league purchase from the State, which was outlawed as a fraud by the constitution of the Republic of Texas in 1836, John Durst being at the time of this gigantic purchase a member of the legislature of Coahuila and Texas. Mrs. Chapin, another
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cans scattered over East Texas, and volunteers from the United States and the colonists of Austin and De Witt would flock to their standard. The colonists of the west, most of them at the moment newly arrived, without even cabins to shelter their families, and exposed at all times to attacks from alert and hostile savages, realized the madness on their part of plunging into war with Mexico.
Various collisions, too insignificant to narrate, occurred at and in the vicinity of Nacogdoches. A delegation from Austin and De Witt's colonies, was sent by Austin to frater- nally remonstrate with the Fredonians. James Cummins, from Austin's colony, and James Kerr from that of De Witt, were members of the delegation. The delegation failed to accom- plish the object intended.
About the 20th of December, two hundred Mexican troops, under Colonel Mateo Ahumada, left San Antonio for Nacog- doches and reached San Felipe early in January, 1827. The Political Chief, Jose Antonio Saucedo, accompanied them to give direction to affairs and halted at the capital of Austin's colony for some time. On the 22nd of January Austin issued the following address:
To the Inhabitants of the Colony :
The persons who were sent on from this colony by the Political Chief and military commandant ( Austin) to offer peace to the madmen of Nacogdoches, have returned - re- turned without having affected anything. The olive branch of peace which was held out to them has been insultingly returned, and that party have denounced massacre and desola- tion to this colony. They are trying to excite all the north- ern Indians to murder and plunder, and it appears as though they have no other object than to ruin and plunder this coun-
daughter of Haden Edwards, wife of the man who was counted out of the alcaldeship in 1826, remained in Natchitoches, Louisiana. This constitutes a partial summary of the family history of Haden Edwards.
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try. They openly threaten us with massacre and the plunder of our property.
To arms, then, my friends and fellow-citizens, and hasten to the standard of our country !
The first hundred men will march on the 26th. Necessary orders for mustering and other purposes will be issued to commanding officers.
Union and Mexico.
S. F. AUSTIN.
San Felipe de Austin, January 27th, 1827.
That Austin and his colonists, as well as the colonists of De Witt, were right in opposing the Fredonian movement, all parties then conceded and all writers of Texian history since, agree. But the utterances in his address quoted above in italics were then and have since been severely criticized. No sane man at that day, unless unduly excited by wild rumors, could have believed that educated and honorable American gentlemen, as the Edwards brothers are admitted to have been, dreamed of inflicting " massacre and desolation " on their countrymen in Austin's colony ; or that they were trying to excite the northern Indians to murder and plunder them; or that they openly threatened them with Indian massacre and plunder of their property. Such assertions by a man of Aus- tin's usually conservative and cautious mind, can only be explained on the ground that he was grossly deceived by false and exaggerated reports, ever incident to such times, and that these reports were rendered doubly irritating to him by the im- possibility of speedy communication through the wilderness. After a sober analysis of these events, when quiet was restored, the conviction remained in many minds, that a permanent voluntary union of Anglo-Americans, with a Mexican popula- tion of mixed blood, born and reared in ignorance, and accus- tomed to despotic rule, was impossible.
When the Fredonians became aware that the Mexican troops
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under Ahumada, accompanied by Saucedo, were on the march from San Felipe to Nacogdoches, they sent runners to the Cherokees calling for assistance. Too late. Bean, by promis- ing them, in the name of the Mexican government, all they asked, had induced them to repudiate their covenant and array themselves against their two most able and faithful chiefs, Hunter and Fields. These two men, who had sacrificed much to serve them (both in Texas and Mexico), were foully murdered by the Indians when they urged adhesion to the terms of the treaty. The Fredonians also appealed to the settlers on Ayish (sometimes written Aes ) Bayou for help, but Bean's emissaries, by various promises of pardon, lands, etc., had quieted them.
The Indians were already flocking to swell the ranks of the Mexicans, who (on the day that Austin's first company, yet to be raised, had been ordered to leave San Felipe), were within a few miles of Nacogdoches. This was on the 26th of January. The Mexicans halted two or three days for the Indians to join them, and this gave the Fredonians time to survey the situation and realize their abandoned and defenseless condition. On the 31st, having previously sent off such families as desired to leave, they abandoned Nacogdoches and retired across the Sabine into Louisiana.
Fortunately for the cause of future harmony in the country, no armed Americans from either western colony joined the Mexicans, but a number of prominent western colonists were present when the Mexicans entered Nacogdoches, and suc- cessfully intervened for the protection of all who yet remained in the town and surrounding country.
Thus began and thus terminated the Fredonian emute, and peace reigned for some years in that portion of Texas. Austin was justified in his course, but not in his denunciations.
CHAPTER XVI.
Boundary of Austin's first Grant - A State Constitution proclaimed - Dif- ference between the organization of the State and Federal Governments of Mexico and those of the United States - More about De Witt's Colony - Letter from William C. Mckinney giving some Personal Reminiscences of Ben R. Milam - Burnet's tribute to the character of Milam.
It must be borne in mind that on the 7th of May, 1824, the Mexican Congress passed an act temporarily combining the Provinces of Coahuila and Texas into a State. They pro- visionally organized almost immediately, by electing a State Legislature, and Don Rafael Gonzales as Governor, but the formation of a constitution for the new State was yet to occur. While in this provisional condition, on the 24th of March, 1825, the Legislature and Governor promulgated a State colonization law, under which, in the succeeding month of April, as heretofore stated, contracts were awarded to De Witt, Leftwich and Edwards.
On the 20th of May, under this new law, Austin was awarded by the government a contract to settle five hundred additional families within the boundary of his former grant, the bound- aries of which for the first time, were fixed on the 7th of March, 1827, as follows : beginning on the west bank of the San Jacinto River (ten leagues in a direct line from the Gulf of Mexico) thence up the west bank to the source of that stream ; thence due north to the road leading from Nacog- doches to San Antonio de Bexar; thence following that road (westerly ) to a point due north of the source of the Lavaca River; thence (south to and down the Lavaca River ) to within ten leagues of the Gulf of Mexico ; thence easterly, parallel to and ten leagues from the coast, to the beginning.
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On the 11th of March, 1827, more than two years after the institution of the State provisional government, the legisla- ture proclaimed a State constitution. To a citizen of the United States, familiar with the history of his country and the genius of its institutions, the adoption of a constitution as a sequel to, instead of a precursor of, State sovereignty, is anomalous ; and doubly so, when it is remembered that the American union of States, as a Federal Government, was created by pre-existing free States, they being the creators and the Federal union, or confederation, the creature. The Federal government of Mexico, its garments yet stained with the blood of patriots, who had called it into being, created the State governments by its fiat, instead of being created by them.
Thus we have arrived at the year 1827. Austin's colony was prospering and increasing in numbers and Americans, only temporarily checked by the Fredonian emeute, were seeking homes in East Texas.
De Leon's Mexican colony, with a considerable American element adding to its strength, and quite a concourse assembled at the Lavaca station ready to locate.
DE WITT'S COLONY.
De Witt's colony, to which we now return, with the remark that during the year Surveyor-General Kerr and his deputy, Byrd Lockhart, prosecuted the survey of lands as rapidly as possible around the still unoccupied capital of Gonzales and elsewhere. About the first of October, De Witt arrived at the station with his family, excepting his daughter Eliza, who remained at school in Missouri. She came out two years later and afterwards became the wife of the sturdy patriot, Thomas' J. Hardeman, a well known planter of Bastrop County.
During the succeeding winter De Witt, with his own and nu- merous other families repaired to Gonzales and its vicinity, and
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then, with the opening of the year 1828, began the permanent settlement of that region1 destined to become the Lexing- ton of Texas in the revolution of 1835; to be abandoned upon
1 The following, though not a complete, is an approximately correct list of immigrants into De Witt's colony from 1828, when its permanent settle- ment was resumed to the close of 1833-4, including those that were there with Major Kerr in 1825-6 and temporarily broken up, viz. : John M. Ashby, Wm. W. Arrington, Arthur Burns, Squire Burns, George Blair, David W. Brandt, Kimber W. Barton, Henry S. Brown, William Bracken, Simeon Bateman, David Burkett, Valentine Bennett, Francis Perry (1825), Josiah D. Clements, Jonathan Cottle, George W. Cottle (killed in the Alamo), Richard H. Chisholm, Abram M. Clare, Mathew Caldwell, Miles J. Dikes, Zachariah Davis, James C. Davis (killed by Indians), Daniel Davis, Abner C. Davis, George W. Davis, John Daly, Jacob C. Darst (killed in the Alamo), Bazil Durbin (from Cambria County, Pennsylvania, with Major Kerr, in 1825) ; William Dearduff (killed in the Alamo), Almeron Dickinson, (killed in the Alamo, and father of the Babe of the Alamo), Edw. Dickinson, Benjamin Duncan, Wm. Fishbaugh (killed in the Alamo), Benjamin Fuqua, Silas Fuqua, John Fennell, Michael Gillam, James George (killed in the Alamo), John E. Garwin, (killed in the Alamo), James Gibson, William Hill, Geron Hinds (with Major Kerr in 1825), James Hinds, John Henry, Will- iam House, Richard Heath, Samuel Highsmuth, Thomas Jackson (killed in the Alamo), Phineas James, James Kerr (surveyor-general of the colony, 1825), Andrew Kent (killed in the Alamo), George C. Kimble (killed in the Alamo), John G. King (his son, William King, killed in the Alamo), the brothers, Andrew, Byrd and Charles Lockhart, James Musick (with Kerr in 1825), Daniel McBay, John McBay, Sr., John McBay, Jr., Joseph McBay, Jessie McBay (killed in the Alamo), Samuel McBay, John McCrabb, Albert Martin (killed in the Alamo), Spencer Morris, Stephen[B. Morrison, Samuel P. Middleton, Thomas R. Miller (killed in the Alamo), Elihu Moss, George Monoghan, Milsap (killed in the Alamo), Bartlett D. McClure, William A. Mathews, John A. Neill, Ira Nash, John Oliver (1825), William Page, James B. Patrick, William Ponton (killed by Indians, in 1834), his sons, Joel and Andrew, Philander Priestly, Alexander Porter (killed by Friley in 1830), Nicholas Peck, (from Bristol, Rhode Island), Jesse Robinson, Stephen F. Sanders, Solomon Seale, William St. John, Erastus (Deaf) Smith (with Major Kerr in 1825), John, William A. and Lewis D. Sowell, William Smothers, John Smothers, Jonathan Scott, Stephen Smith, Claiborne Stin- nett, Hepzebeth Taylor, William Taylor, Felix Taylor, Elijah Tate, James Thompson, Winslow Turner, Sr., Winslow Turner, Jr., David C. Littleton, John, James, Joseph and George Tumlinson, Malkijah Williams, Ezekiel Williams, Isaac Welden, John Wightman (with Major Kerr in 1825, killed by Indians July, 2, 1826), Adam Zumwalt, Sr., Adam Zumwalt, Jr., and
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the approach of the advancing armies of Santa Anna in 1836; to be again peopled the same year, and at all times to furnish its full quota of brave and gallant defenders of liberty and the homes of the settlers against marauding savages.
The men of De Witt's colony at all times, under all circum-
Abram Zumwalt. Another man, called Black Adam, came later. Besides these were the sons of many of those named and other young men. The empresario De Witt's family settled at Gonzales early in 1828, and consisted of himself, wife, two little sons (Christopher C. and Clinton E.), and four daughters, of whom Eliza married Thomas J. Hardeman; Sarah, Wm. A. Mathews; Eveline, Charles Mason, and Minerva (born in the colony), Isham G. Jones.
In 1830 an event occurred at Gonzales deplored by all good citizens. A. man named Friley killed Alexander (commonly called Esquire) Porter, under what were considered wholly unjustifiable circumstances. Friley was a reckless and Porter a worthy man. Friley fled to the river bottom and was there concealed some time. On a prior occasion when sick, disabled and unable to travel in the mountains, in retreating from Indians, Captain Henry S. Brown would have been left alone to perish had it not been for Friley, who remained with, nursed and saved him. Friley, from his concealment, conveyed a message to the Alcalde offering to surrender to Captain Brown and accompany him to San Felipe (the proper place) for trial, but saying that he would not risk mob violence in Gonzales. This was agreed to by the Alcalde and the people. At that time five citizens of Gonzales, unaware of these facts, were returning from San Felipe, and halted at noon on the Lavaca. They were overtaken soon and joined by three strangers, looking at the country, who accepted their invitation to dinner. A little later Cap- tain Brown and Friley approached from the west. The Gonzales men seized their guns and avowed their intention to capture or kill Friley. Captain Brown tried to explain, but they would not hear him, whereupon he sprang from his horse behind a tree and declared he would kill the first man who fired at Friley. One of the strangers sprang between the parties, calling out, "Hold, men," and demanded an explanation. Captain Brown gave it, including Friley's service to him, saying he was a friend of Porter and lamented his death, but that he was paying a debt of gratitude, that he was acting under his pledged honor and would die or lodge Friley in the San Felipe jail. " We," said the stranger, " will stand by you," and the trouble stopped. The stranger was the afterwards distinguished General Edward Burleson. His companions were John Caldwell, so long senator from Bas- trop, and Thomas H. Mays, who died an old and honored citizen of that town. Friley subsequently escaped from jail and was killed near Bastrop.
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stances, found fearless coadjutors in the people of Bastrop and in the valleys of the Colorado and Lavaca. Nor should the colony of De Leon be omitted, for its population, under the leadership of Placido Venabides and Silvestre De Leon, con- tributed much toward repelling the inroads of the hostile red men and, to some extent, in opposing the Mexican invad- ers. In the same period of time the people of the Brazos, the Trinity and East Texas, were equally worthy co-defenders in the same field of hardihood and heroism.
And in all those years of sacrifice and bloodshed, the spirit of truth justifies the declaration, that no set of men, under similar surroundings, were ever cheered and solaced by purer or more self-sacrificing and patriotic women. Many of these early wives and daughters were not only superior types of pioneer American womanhood, but were educated and gifted in in- tellectual endowments.
In 1827 also came, with the liberal accession to numbers, various persons who became useful and prominent in public affairs. In the first month of the year, as has been stated, Henry Smith, destined to become the first Governor of Texas under American auspices, and in the last month Dr. George M. Patrick, who ate his first dinner in Texas on Galveston Island on Christmas day, 1828, and died in Grimes County sixty-two years later, in 1888.
Among the noble men who were distinguished for enterprise and the highest order of patriotism in the years now being reviewed, none had a stronger hold on the affection and confi- dence of the pioneers than Colonel Ben R. Milam, a son of Kentucky, whose career had been full of adventure and hazards, and whose name is forever enrolled among the martyrs to Texian liberty. He was associated with Arthur G. Wavel, an Englishman, in his colonial grant on Red River, on which he bestowed considerable time and money, to no ulti- mate purpose ; but in the meantime, on the 12th of January, 1826, he received a grant in his own name, as evidenced in
10
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the power of attorney below,1 the original of which is in my possession, as written by David G. Burnet.
It will be seen that this colony of Milam embraced all of Hays County, the eastern part of Comal, the western half of Travis, the northwest part of Bastrop, small parts of Cald- well and Blanco and a considerable portion of Kendall, an area of about three thousand square miles, bounded on the south by the colonies of DeWitt and Austin. It seems that Milam dissipated his powers by engaging in enterprises widely asunder and separated by a trackless wilderness of four hundred miles. It is understood that he sold this western grant to Baring Brothers, London, before a single settler could be placed on it by his agent and it was forfeited by the lapse of six years under the colonization law.
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