USA > Texas > Indian wars and pioneers of Texas, Vol. 2 > Part 21
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Richard, the subject of this notice, was but eight years of age when his parents reached Texas,
and had but meager schooling, and with his father waged the battle for bread on the family farm in what was then a frontier country, and on the open cattle range. He soon acquired a taste for and a broad experience in the saddle, and recalls many interesting experiences on the range and in pursuit of Indians.
Mr. Kott has been an active and sueeessful busi- ness man, turning bis attention, at various times, to freighting, merchandising, speculat- ing, cte. Some time since he built, and is now running, the Kott Hotel, at Comfort. He married, in 1869, Mrs. Johanna Heim, widow of Antone Heim. Her maiden name was Miss Allar- kamp. She had two daughters, Matilda and Antone Heim, by her first marriage. She has borne Mr. Kott three sons : Hermann, Ernest, and Hugo. Mr. Kott is an enterprising, progressive and intelligent citizen. He has given his children excellent schooling privileges, and they are all well settled in life.
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WILLIAM ELLIOTT,
SAN ANTONIO.
William Elliott, a pioneer of Texas in 1839, and well known in his day as an energetic and success- ful business man of San Antonio, was a native of Ireland, born in the year 1799. His father was a merchant in a small town and apprenticed him to a seven years' service with a mercantile house in Dub- lin. Here he received thorough disciplining in and a thorough knowledge of business methods. At twenty-one years of age (in 1820) he came to America and engaged in merchandising and mining in Mexico. It is known that he was embarked in business at Matamoros, Mexico, in 1836, and in 1839 came to Texas and located at San Antonio, where he formed a copartnership with Edward Dwyer and opened a mercantile establishment in a storehouse situated on the site of the present How- ard Block on Soledad street. This connection con- tinued but a short time. Mr. Elliott remained suc- cessfully engaged in trade until the time of his
death, which occurred in New Orleans while on a trip, May 12th, 1847. He was a thrifty merchant, and had business relations with both the Castro and New Braunfels colonies.
He married Miss Eleanor Cornolly in New Or- leans in 1835. She also was of Irish birth, and at two years of age came to this country with her parents. Her father was a well-known wholesale merchant at New Orleans.
Mr. and Mrs. Elliott had three children : Will- iam H. Elliott (deceased in 1889), who served as a Captain in the Confederate army, and left a widow and three children surviving him; John B., also & soldier in the Confederate army, who died at Brownsville, Texas, in 1864; and Mrs. Mary Ell- iott Howard, a most refined and cultured lady, who resides at San Antonio.
Mrs. Elliott died at San Antonio, Angst 27th, 1885.
JAMES COLE,
BURNET.
James Cole, of Burnet, was born in Maury County, Tenn., in 1828, and accompanied his parents to Texas in 1845. His father was William Cole, and his mother before marriage was a Miss Joplin, the father being a native of Virginia and the mother a native of Tennessee. William Cole was in the War of 1812; settled in Tennessee in 1818; moved thence to Mississippi and thence to Texas, settling in Fayette County, where he died in 1850, at the age of 65 years. His wife, mother of the subject of this notice, had previously died in Mis- sissippi. The father was accompanied to Texas by his two sons, William and James, the former re- turning to Mississippi soon after coming to this State, and dying there.
James Cole was in his seventeenth year when he came to Texas. Ilis youth was spent in Fayette County. In 1861 he enlisted in the Confederate army as a soldier in the Sixteenth Texas Infantry (Flornoy's Regiment), McCulloch's Brigade, and
served during the war in Arkansas and Louisiana, taking part in most of the military operations in that section, notably those incident to Banks' Red river campaign. His regiment was a part of Walker's Division, which did such gallant service at Mansfield, Pleasant Hill, Yellow Bayou and other engagements. From 1865 to 1883 Mr. Cole farmed in Fayette County. Then, on the recommendation of his physician, he moved to Bryan County for his health, making his home at the town of Burnet, where he has since resided.
He married Miss Mariame, a daugliter of David Shelby, who came to Texas as one of Stephen F. Austin's first three hundred colonists, and settled at Richmond, in Fort Bend County. He was in the frontier service for many years -- in the army during the early days of the revolution (1835-6), and was, as long as he lived, a respected citizen of the county, dying in Austin County in 1872, after having passed the three-score years and ten allotted
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to man. Mrs. Cole was born in Austin County. Her brother, James Shelby, was in the frontier ser- vice of Texas and was murdered by Indians while on the frontier some time during the " forties."
Mr. and Mrs. Cole have three daughters: Mrs.
Cora Hamill, Mrs. Lela Hill, and Thula, un- married.
By industry and good management Mr. Cole has accumulated a competency and is spending his declining years in ease.
ISAAC VAN ZANDT,
MARSHALL.
The subject of this memoir was born in Frank- lin County, Tenn., July 10, 1813. His parents were Jacob and Mary Van Zandt. His father was a native of North Carolina, the youngest son of Jacob Van Zandt, who, about the beginning of this century, moved out of the Moravian settlement in that State, and established himself as an agricul- turist in Franklin County, Tenn. His mother's father, Samuel Isaacs, about the same time migrated from South Carolina, and settled in Lin- coln County, Tenn., an adjoining county to that of Franklin. On both sides he came of revolution- ary patriot ancestry. His grandfather Van Zandt participated in several of the batles that won our independence of the British Crown, and his grand- father Isaacs, all through the war, was a zealous and active follower of the fortunes of Marion in all of his dashing and hazardous raids against the English foemen, and their home allies, the traitor- ous tories.
All through his boyhood and youth Isaac Van Zandt was a victim of ill-health, and for this rea- son his attendance at school was desultory, and not as fruitful of educational benefit to him as it would otherwise have been. But his enforced absence from the school room gave him an opportunity to indulge at his home his relish of good books. He read with an ardent yearning to acquire a knowl- edge of the subjects treated of in the volumes he perused, and thus, perhaps, he fully compensated himself for all the loss he sustained by being com- pelled to forego scholastic instruction. With Eng- lish literature and general history he became quite conversant.
At the age of twenty he married Miss Fannie Lipscomb, a relative of the late Chief Justice Lipscomb, of Texas, and commenced merchandising at Salem, in his native county, having his father for a partner. This business, however, continued only for a few months; for, his father dying in
1834, the concern had to be wound up so as to facilitate a speedy distribution of the paternal estate among the heirs. As soon as this had been effected, Isaac Van Zandt promptly sold for cash his portion of the estate, consisting mainly of land and negroes, and in 1835 went North and invested the proceeds of his patrimony in a stock of goods. This stock he shipped to Coffeeville, Miss., and there resumed the mercantile bus- iness, expecting to be a life-long merchant and nothing else. This was the flush time in Missis- sippi. Bank paper was abundant ; everything vendible was bought and sold at high valuations ; the credit system was in vogue and everybody went deeply into debt. At length the bubble burst and the culmination came in the shape of broken banks, bankrupt tradesmen and a financially ruined people. Having invested all he was worth in the Missis- sippi mercantile adventure, when the crash came, in 1837, Van Zandt found himself well-nigh peuni- less. He struggled for a time against the tide of ill fortune, made every possible effort to collect the debts due him, and pay off those he owed, but his debtors, in most cases, neither by persuasion por court process could be induced to meet his de- mands against them, and this failure to meet their obligations to him made him impotent to meet his creditors. Even bedding woven by the wife was sold to meet the debts of the husband. As long as he had anything that could be turned to the credit side of his indebtedness, it took that direction and he had the proud consciousness of knowing that he had held back nothing to which, either by the law of the land or that of moral obligation, his cred- itors had a rightful claim. While residing at Coffeeville, his talent for public speaking was first developed. He became a member of a debating club, consisting of the young lawyers and others of the little town, and to his own surprise, as well as that of others, he soon displayed a rare readiness
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of speech and unusual acuteness of argument in the discussions that occurred. This almost purely accidental discovery of a latent, and hitherto unused talent, determined his future career in life, for, shorn of all his property, he had no resource but his native gift of intelleet. He determined to turn his attention to legal studies, took up the ele- mentary books on English law, and by assiduous ap- plication to a perusal of them, in somewhat less than a year, so far mastered their contents as to obtain, on due examination, admission to the bar. In this manner his reverse of fortune proved to have been a blessing in disguise, his commercial disaster leading him to a pursuit for which his natural abilities eminently fitted him. By this change of vocation he speedily won back more than he had lost pecuniarily as a merchant, and at the same time achieved an honorable distinction among his fellow-men, far surpassing that which ordinarily comes to the most successful follower of mere trade. This success came to him in Texas, whither he migrated, carrying with him his family, in 1838. His first home in the young Republic was in Panola County, at that time but lately organized and very sparsely settled. An humble, lonely log cabin there sheltered him and his loved ones for some months. He did not locate himself in that county with the intention of abiding there permanently, but for economic reasons, and that, before offering himself as a general practitioner of the law, he might have a quiet retreat, where he might, by private study, make himself familiar with the stat- utes of the Republic, and the modes of procedure in its courts. During their residence in that county, the hardships and privations of frontier life in their sternest forms were the daily experi- enee of himself and his family ; but his wife, who, as well as he, had been nursed in the lap of plenty, met the severe allotment with fortitude, and so cheerfully bore herself through the ordeal of want and discomfort, that no sense of discouragement ever oppressed him. She was, verily, a helpmeet to him in those days of adversity, and to her ummurmuring accommodation of herself to her changed circumstances, and the words of cheer and hope that came to him from her lips, he was greatly indebted for the after success that crowned his struggle with adverse fortune. Had a querulous, discontented spirit influenced his life beneath that lowly roof in Pavola County, the energies of her husband might have been sapped, and the outcome of his career might have been very different from what it was -- an outcome that she now looks baek upon with just pride and pleasure. She richly merits the quietude and affluence she now
enjoys in the evening of her days, underneath the shade of the tree she helped her husband to plant, during the dark time of their earlier Texian life.
In 1839 Isaac Van Zandt moved to Marshall and engaged in the active practice of the law. Success attended him from the start, and he rose rapidly to the front among his legal competitors. Soon the minds of the people around him turned upon him a's a suitable man to represent them in the Congress of the Republic. To the sessions of 1840-41, with great unanimity they sent him as their delegate to the lower house of that legislative body, and the zeal he manifested in this new sphere of action, not only in behalf of the interests of his immediate constituents, but of those of the people at large, endeared him to the whole country, and the ability he displayed in the committee rooms and on the floor of the House, commanded the respect and ad- miration of his co-legislators. He speedily became a marked man both at the bar and in the halls of legislation.
His next official position was that of Charge d'Affairs to the United States, which was conferred upon him by President Houston, in 1842. During the two years that he resided at Washington City, as the diplomatic agent of the Republic, he labored assiduously with the government to which he was aceredited, to bring about the annexation of Texas to the United States, and when this measure had become a certainty in the near future, he resigned the office and returned home.
In 1845 he was a delegate to the convention that completed the work of annexation, and framed the first constitution of the "Lone Star" State. In that body there were many brilliant intellects, and in the galaxy his was an orb of no mean magni- tude. Some of the members were far older than he, and among them, no doubt, could have been found a profounder jurist than he as yet had had time to become; but on questions of State policy, and of what was needful as component elements of the organic law they were framing, he displayed a wisdom that left its impress upon the instrument that came from their hands, and won for him the prestige of unusual statemanship.
In 1847 he was before the people of Texas as a candidate for the office of Governor, and while making an active, and what promised to be a suc- cessful eanvass of the State, he was stricken down by yellow fever, at Houston, and died there on the eleventh day of October. In fact, during the canvass his election was recognized as a certainty. His remains were transferred to Marshall, and by loving hands laid in the city cemetery, where to his memory they have reared a monument that will tell
MRS. ISAAC VAN ZANDT.
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to the stranger where sleeps a man whom all Texians of his day delighted to honor.
In person he was above the average stature, erect and well proportioned. His head was covered withi abundant locks, that were as black as the raven's plumage. His face was comely and attractive in a marked degree ; his dark gray eyes sparkled with intelligence, and his look habitually wore the im- press of frankness and benignity. His carriage was easy, graceful and dignified, and his manners were urbane and courteous. In a word, none could come near him and not feel that they were in the presence of a true gentleman.
This sketch would be incomplete witlr no mention of the fact that Isaae Van Zandt was a Christian. From his early yonth he had been a member of tlie Baptist Church, and his exemplary walk in life indicated that revealed truth had been heartily ac- eepted by him, and been allowed to mould his heart and character. The serene composure of his dying hours, and the devout expressions of Chris- tian hope and resignation that characterized them. grandly witnessed that :
" The chamber where the good man meets his fate, Is privileged beyond the common walks Of virtuous life - quite on the verge of Heaven."
MRS. F. C. VAN ZANDT,
FORT WORTH.
Mrs. F. C. Van Zandt was born in Louisa County, Va., March 4th, 1816. Her parents, William and Ann (Cooke) Lipscomb, were both Virginians. In the fall of 1826 she, with the other members of her father's family, moved to Franklin County, Tenn. Her life here for the next seven or eight years passed quietly and pleas- antly. The State then afforded few opportunities for the acquisition of that education acquired through schools; but, despite this disadvantage the years of her girlhood, passed in the society of a sainted mother, were by no means devoid of broadening, educating influences. Even then she began to evince that sweetness of disposition and remarkable strength and force of character that have all through life distinguished her; that rare blending of the clear foresight and cool judg- ment of a man with the quick intuition and warm, tender sympathy of a woman.
In December, 1833, she married Isaac Van Zandt, 'afterwards such. a prominent figure in Texas history, and then barely upon the threshold of manhood. Those older Texians now living who re- member him, remember him as a man of noble and commanding presence. Even as a youth his fine, intellectual countenenee, indicative of sensibility, thought and purpose ; the grace and dignity of his carriage and his polished and genial manners, gave to him an air of distinction and inspired respect an l confidence.
Upon his death Mrs. Van Zandt was left with five children, the oldest of them twelve years of age.
She had loved her husband with a strength and depth of devotion that would have been impossible in a woman of a less noble spirit; but, now alone, she calmly took up the work that the two had begun and set herself first of all to the task of raising and edueating her children, The friend to whom she looked for advice and help during the early years of her widowhood was Mr., afterwards Colonel, J. M. Clough, who had been her husband's partner, and who later married her oldest daughter, Louisa. Col. Clough relieved her as far as possible of all business troubles and aided her no little in the direction of her children. Mrs. Van Zandt had joined the Primitive Baptist Church soon after her marriage, but later became much interested in the meetings of Alexander Campbell, and, convinced that his views in regard to the Bible and the Church were correct, in 1852, at the first opportunity offered her, united with the Christian Church. Four years later she took her younger children to Tennessee to put them under the teaching of Mr. Tolbert Fanning, at Franklin College. Her princi- pal objeet in selecting this instructor and institu- tion was to have them properly taught the Word of God, for, above all things else, she desired them to be Christian men and women. They returned to Marshall when this school work was finished, and there her children were married. To-day all of them live in Fort Worth: Mrs. Clough, whose husband, gallant Lient .- Col. J. N. Clough, of the Seventh Texas, was killed at Fort Donelson ; Maj. K. M. Van Zandt, Dr. 1. I .. Van Zandt, Mrs. E. J.
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Beall (with whom her mother makes her home), and Mrs. J. J. Jarvis.
. Mrs. Van Zandt is a woman remarkably young for her years, which now number nearly four seore. She lives surrounded by her chil- dren and her children's children, and finds re- newed in them her own youth. An earnest, de- voted Christian, one may see her in her accustomed seat in chureli on almost every Sunday of the year. Her faith is one of works, too, as well as prayer, and all love her for the kind word and helping hand so often given in time of trouble. Her only wish
has been realized - all of her children having grown up to be active Christian men and women, honored for their integrity and their adherence to what they believe to be right, Their mother, with her un- swerving faith in the Bible as an all-sufficient guide, with her untiring earnestness in every good work, and with her unfailing cheerfulness in every time of trouble, is to them and their children a continual inspiration to lead useful and worthy lives. Truly that saying of her Master, than which there can be no higher praise, may be spoken of her also: "She hath done what she could."
ALBERT E. DEVINE,
SAN ANTONIO.
Albert E. Devine, youngest son of the late.Judge Thomas J. Devine, was born March 28th, 1862, in San Antonio, Texas, where he received his early schooling. He took a literary course of study at Roek Hill College, Maryland, and after making a tour in South America and Africa attended Cum- berland University, Tennessee, in 1883, from the law department of which he graduated the year fol- lowing. He then visited the Pacific Coast eities, returned to San Antonio and engaged in stock rais- ing in which he has excelled as a breeder of fine registered and standard bred horses. At San Antonio in 1882 was organized the banking firm of
Smith & Devine, of which he became a member. Ile married, in 1890, Miss Bessie Weil, of San Antonio, a daughter of Henry Weil, a well-known stock-raiser of Southwestern Texas, long identified with the best interests of that section.
One child has been born of this union. Mr. Devine has never engaged in politics but under Gov- ernor Culbertson served as a member of the Board of Directors of the West Texas Insane Asylum.
Hle is a wide-awake, progressive and able man, thoroughly in sympathy with all movements that promise the promotion of the welfare of his people and State.
JAMES H. ASTIN,
HEARNE,
James II. Astin was born in Marion County, Ala., in November, 1833; came to Texas in 1854; shortly thereafter went to California, where he fol- lowed the life of a miner until 1859; returned to Texas; entered the Confederate army at the open- ing of the war between the States as a soldier in Company I., Fourth Texas Cavalry, Hood's Brigade, with which he served until severely wounded at the battle of Chickamauga ; returned to Texas and settled
in Navarro County; in 1864 married Miss Celia Allsbrook in that county, and a year later moved to Bryan; followed various occupations for two or three years and then rented a piece of land and moved into the Brazos bottom; his sole earthly possessions at that time were a wagon and a team and ten dollars in money and a family consisting of a wife and baby; rented for ten years and then in 1877 made his first purchase ; has bought land from
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time to time since and now owns 7,000 acres, 6,000 of which are under cultivation ; raises about 5,000 bales of cotton annually and is considered one of the wealthiest planters in his section of the State.
His wife died in December, 1874. She left him four sons, James Robert, now an attorney at law at Dallas ; William E., a planter in Robertson County ; John E., on the farm with his father, and Joseph P., bookkeeper in the Hearne National Bank.
In 1878 Mr. Astin married Miss Ona Ward, at Bryan, Texas. The issue of this union has been three children : Irwin, Daisy, and Roger Q. He is a man of unbounded energy and exceptionally fine judgment and is thorough-going in his business
methods. He has grown wealthy, as he expresses it, "by hard knocks."
He is a representative of the Southern gentleman and dispenses that hospitality which has rendered his section famous from time immemorial.
While feeling a deep interest in the cause of popular government and all that affects the destiny of. mankind, he has never sought nor desired, nor would he accept, office. He is content to follow out the lines of life that he has laid down for him- self. He was one of the original projectors of the Hearne & Brazos Valley Railroad, and is now a stockholder in the company. Charitable, generous, and public-spirited, he has been a potent factor for good in his section of the State.
EMIL VOELCKER,
NEW BRAUNFELS,
A son of the late lamented pioneer, Julius Voelcker, was born on his father's farm near New Braunfels, July 24th, 1859 ; enjoyed the advantages of a good business training ; pursued farming until 1890, and then established himself in the furniture business in New Braunfels, in which he has siuce continued.
He was elected to the City Council in 1893, and re-elected in 1895.
He married, in 1872, Miss Caroline Zuehl, daugh- ter of William Zuehl, a farmer of Guadalupe County.
They have two children : Louise and Herbert.
DR. CHARLES T. SIMPSON,
TEMPLE,
Was born in Macon County, Ala., October 15, 1853. His parents were E. G. and A. W. Simp- son, of Macon County, Ala. His father died at the old home about eight years ago, and his mother two years since (1893) at Temple, Texas. They had four children, none of whom arrived at maturity except Dr. Chas. T. Simpson, the subject of this notice. Dr. Simpson completed his literary education at the University of Georgia ; graduated in medicine at the Alabama College, at Mobile, Ala., in 1876; moved to Texas the following year (1877), and settled in Bell County, near the pres- ent site of Temple, where he has since made his
home, except during a period of three years, in which he lived in San Antonio, where he moved on account of ill-health in his family. He practiced his profession while there, meeting with much suc- ccss.
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