USA > Texas > Indian wars and pioneers of Texas, Vol. 2 > Part 4
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Dr. Evans has been twice married, first at High Grove, Ky., in 1884, to Miss Hattie Harris, who died in 1887; and second, in 1891, to Miss Lulu Burke, a daughter of T. S. Burke, M. D., of Cor- pus Christi, Texas, a lady of fine domestic tastes and social culture. Dr. and Mrs. Evans have one child, a daughter, Lulu. Dr. and Mrs. Evans are communicants of the Church of the Redeemer ( Epis- copalian ) and valued and influential members of the society circle of the city. Dr. Evans stands highi in his profession and is esteemed as one of the most energetie, enterprising and useful citizens of Iris city. He possesses great energy and is a tire- less worker. Withal, Dr. Evans is a practical bnsi- ness man and successful financier and is regarded as one of the substantial citizens of Eagle Pass.
L. E. GRIFFITH, M. D.,
TERRELL.
Dr. L. E. Griffith, Sr., was born at Clarksburg, Montgomery County, Md., January 2th, 1813. Ilis parents were Rev. Alfred Griffith, a native of Mont- gomery County, M.d., and Miss Catherine Griffith, nee Miss Catherine Scholl, a native of Maryland. The subject of this notice left his home in the spring of 1836 and came to Texas and located at San Augus-
tine, nine days after the battle of San Jacinto, and there practiced his profession until 1842, in which year he removed to Paris, in Lamar County, Texas. He remained there but a short time, as the country was so sparsely settled that there was not much business for physicians. Paris at that time con tained but two log houses. In the larger one of
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these were kept the county records, together with groceries, general merchandise and whisky, which was a leading article of traffic and untaxed. It was a rare thing to see a drunken man, notwith- standing nearly every body drank liquor, it being considered a great medicine and preventive of chills. In the other building was a blacksmith shop. The same year he went to Clarksville, Red River County. In the winter of 1846 the Doctor removed to Sabine County, near Milam, the then county seat, where he practiced medicine for about twelve years, removing to Nacogdoches in January, 1857, where he remained about twenty-seven years, engaged in the practice of his profession and merchandising. In the spring of 1883 he removed to Terrell, Kaufman County, Texas, where he has since resided.
He was an active practitioner for upwards of fifty years and was familiarly acquainted with nearly all of the noted men of Texas of early days. Gen. Sam Houston was his first patient in Texas, the Doctor attending him after his return from New Orleans, where the General had gone to receive
medical and surgical attention after having been wounded in the battle of San Jacinto. For a time during 1846, while the Mexican War was in pro- gress, Dr. Griffith was in charge of a field hospital at San Antonio.
Eight children have been born to him, four of whom, three boys and one daughter, are living. His wife dying some years since, his maiden daugliter has charge of the household and is caring for him in his declining years. One of his sons, L. E. Griffith, Jr., is in the drug business at Terrell ; another son, Dr. W. C. Griffith, is a practicing physician at Terrell, Texas, and the third son, T. B. Griffith, is engaged in the Land, Loan and Insur- ance business at Terrell, Texas.
Although Dr. Griffith is quite a small, spare man, his general health is much above the average, and he bids fair to reach the one hundred years mark.
Rather retiring in disposition, he is very jovial and talkative when once interested and can relate anecdotes and reminiscences of early days in Texas which are very interesting.
D. H. TRENT,
GOLDTHWAITE.
Daniel Henry Trent was born near the town of Fayetteville, Washington County, Ark., in 1842. Ilis father was John Trent, and his mother bore the maiden name of Jane Conner, natives, prob- ably, of Tennessee or Kentucky, but early settlers in Arkansas. The father was a type of that class of men common on the Western frontier fifty years ago, whose memory has survived to this generation only in the fireside stories of a few of their number of exceptional prominence like Boone, Crockett, and Carson. Such men cared but little for wealth and less for the applause of the world. Their home was in the forest ; their pursuits those of the chase, which yielded them both the necessities and the luxuries of life. John Trent moved with his family to Texas in 1850, and was a resident, suc- ressively, of Bastrop, Williamson, Burnet, and Llano Counties.
Growing up on the frontier, where the training of the young was restricted to a desultory sort of drilling in domestic duties, far from any schools worthy of the name, the carly years of Daniel II.
Trent were passed in a manner exceedingly unfav- orable to future success. His entire schooling did not amount to two months, and he had no oppor- tunities to neutralize thesc disadvantages in any industrial or commercial pursuits. Still, fortune favored him with a liberal endowment of energy, application and force of character, which qualities bore good fruits in after years. When about fifteen he began to "work out" at twenty-five cents a day, and soon coming to have a little money he was fired with an ambition to accumulate a fortune and become independent. He was, even at that early age, the chief dependence of his father's family, to discharge his duty to whom he obtained permission to hire himself out on con- dition that he turn over the bulk of his wages to the family, being allowed to retain the balance for his own use. He hired to one Eldredge, then engaged in freighting between Port Lavaea and the town of Burnet, for fifteen dollars a month, ten of which was to be paid to his father. He worked for Eldredge for six months, earning $20, thirty of
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INDIAN WARS AND PIONEERS OF TEXAS.
which fell to his share, $60 going to his father. This $30 he invested in a sow and pigs, and adding to the number others which he purchased with his meager earnings, he fattened the lot and drove them through to Washington County, where he sold them for something over a hundred dollars. About this time occurred one of the carly Indian raids into Llano Couuty, and a demand being created for firearms, young Trent went to Austin and invested the proceeds from the sale of his hogs in six shooters, which he readily sold at a good profit among the settlers of Burnet and Llano Counties. Ile then invested what money he had in two cows, which had running with them their
could find bearing his brand and purchasing others, got together a hert of about 1,500 head. These he moved to Coleman County, then on the extreme western limits of the settled portion of the State. Later, establishing himself on the Clear Fork of the Brazos, in Fisher and Jones County, he de- veloped a large ranch, staying by his interest through all its ups and downs until 1882, when the cattle boom being at its highest, he sold his ranch and brand to Steptoe and Stephens, of Abilene, for $100,000, the property a short time afterward passing into the hands of S. P. Moore, of Chicago, at an advance of $10,000. Mr. Trent was wise enough to see that the cattle business had reached
D. H. TRENT.
calves, and a heifer, and with these began his career as a " cowman." The war coming on a short time afterward the cattle business, in com- mon with all other kinds, was practically broken up, and Mr. Trent followed it in only a desultory sort of way, his time being chiefly occupied in helping to defend the frontier against the Indians, who began to be especially troublesome with the opening of hostilities between the North and South. The years from 1861 to 1865 are memor- able in the history of the State, for the trials and hardships which they brought to the people of the frontier, in all of which Mr. Trent shared, bearing his part of the' common burden, and promptly responding when duty called him to the field of action.
After the war he gathered up what cattle he
high-water mark in 1882, and disposed of the bulk of his holdings before the fall in prices. He con- tinued in the business, however, establishing another ranch in the same locality which he still owns, and acquiring title to other brands. Later he has engaged some also in the horse business.
Seeking new fields for investment he, in 1886, bought 848,000 of the $75,000 stock of the First National Bank of Brownwood and increasing the capital to $100,000 was made president of that institution, which position he has since held. Two years later he established a private bank at Gold- thwaite on a capital of $25,000 and conducted this as a private concern till January, 1892, when the stock was increased to $50,000 and the bank nationalized, becoming the First National Bank of Goldthwaite, of which he was made president, and
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SAMUEL H. SMITH.
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INDIAN WARS AND PIONEERS OF TEXAS.
holds that position now. For the past eight or ten years, although retaining some ranching interest, Mr. Trent has devoted his attention mainly to banking. His home is at Goldthwaite, where he settled in 1887, shortly after the town was laid out, and he spends his time between that place and Brownwood.
Such is a brief outline of what has been an ex- ceptionally active and, in some respects, eventful career. Mr. Trent has not been a public man in any sense of the word, but the value of his ser- vices to the State is not to be measured by the standard applied to public men. He has rather occupied the position of scout to the advancing army of civilization. The contests in which he has been concerned have been the hand-to-band sort where the issue has turned on the personal merit of the contestant. Beginning his life as a cowboy on the range, when his only companion was his pony, his best defense against hostile Indians a pair of six shooters, his bed at night the earth, and his eovering the sky, with a chorus of coyotes to lull him to slumber, he has followed the cattle business through all its evolutions, experi-
encing its hardships and its pleasures, its alternating hopes and disappointments; and now after a third of a century so spent he is one of the few " cowmen " of Texas who have practically retired from that business with a fortune. The snecess of such a career argues the possession of a combination of qualities that is as rare as those which illumine the supposedly higher walks of life with their aebievements and fill the pages of his- tory with more or less renown. Yet Mr. Trent is far from making any boast of his success. It is
doubtful, in fact, if he fully realizes the significance of what he has done. He has been so absorbed in the labors which he has assumed that he has never stopped to consider the magnitude of the obstacles he has encountered or to weigh the effort required to overcome them.
As a citizen he has actively interested himself in the preservation of law and order and has thrown the weight of a strong personal example in favor of whatever is calculated to stimulate industry or improve the country in which he makes his home. He feels an especially friendly interest in education, for knowing from experience the disad- vantages under which one labors who has not had the benefits of schooling, it is his wish that the rising generation may not be so hampered in the racc of life. He is a member of the Masonic order, Lodge No. 694, of Goldthwaite, in which his social instincts find proper expression. Steady, temperate and economical in habits, his private life meets the demands of good citizenship. He is quiet and retiring in disposition, but thinks and acts for himself.
Mr. Trent has been three times married and is the father of seven living ebildren. His three eldest, issue of his first marriage, are grown, these being Mrs. Emily Lindsey, wife of F. II. Lindsey, of Abilene, Texas; Mrs. Mary Ellen Thompson, wife of William H. Thompson, assistant cashier of the First National Bank of Brownwood, and William H. Trent, cashier of the First National Bank of Goldthwaite. His four remaining chil- dren are small, these being Ida Belle, issue of his seeond marriage, Alma, Letricc and Daniel Albert, the last three being offspring of his last marriage.
SAMUEL H. SMITH,
ROCKPORT.
Maj. Samuel H. Smith was a substantial citizen of Rockport, a large property holder, and identi- fied with the development of the material resources of the Gulf region of Southwest Texas.
He was born near the town of Montgomery, in Montgomery County, Texas, May 25, 1839, and was the oldest of four children born to John and Catherine (Gillette) Smith, the former of whom was a native of Virginia and the latter of Missouri. Mr. John Smith was one of Stephen F. Austin's
first colony of 300, and located his headright on the Nueces river near Rockport. He was a relative of Governor Henry Smith, Provisional Governor of Texas during the Texas Revolution of 1835-6. IJe served as a soldier through the Texas Revolu- tion, took part in the battle of San Jacinto and was a participant in the expeditions against Mexico. After living for a time in Montgomery County, he removed to Grimes County, where he died in 1848. He was an especial friend and supporter of Gen.
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Sam Houston. Hle was the first sheriff of and built the first cotton gin in Montgomery County.
Samuel Il. Smith grew up in Montgomery, Grimes and Guadalupe counties and in 1857 moved to Bee County and engaged in stock raising. In 1861 he espoused the Confederate cause and joined Downley's company, First Texas Cavalry. IIe was made Lieutenant of the company, then Assist- ant Quartermaster, later Captain and finally Major. He also served through several campaigns as Com- missary of Buschell's brigade. At the close of the war he returned to Bee County, where he en- gaged in raising, buying and shipping cattle. He was one of the chief promoters of the enterprise that resulted in the establishment of a meat-packing house near Rockport, which for a time did a laige business. In 1867 he located in Aransas County, in order to secure beef cattle for this packing house. His operations in stock were on an exten- sive and successful seale and he built up a consid- erable fortune in ranch lands, cattle and real estate in and about Rockport, of which thriving little city he was thereafter (until the time of his death, which occurred at Rockport, April 25th, 1895), an esteemed and influential citizen.
He took, also, a prominent part in securing harbor improvements at Aransas Pass and was an officer of the first company organized for that pur- pose.
September 15th, 1874, he married Miss Clara Hynes, daughter of Judge John Hynes, a pioneer who came to Texas with his father from Ohio, in 1836 and located on Hynes Bay, in Refugio County, where he was one of the first white settlers. He served as County- Judge of Refugio County and was for many years an honored and exemplary citizen of that county, dying there at his home on Hynes' Bay, in 1887, at sixty-three years of age.
Mrs. Smith was born in Corpus Christi, Texas, December 29, 1854.
She has seven children: Tiny, Jobn H. and James HI. (twins), William II., and Samuel H. (twins), Grace and Hynes.
Maj. Smith was for two terms Mayor of the city of Rockport and was vice-president of the Aransas Pass First National Bank.
The family are all members of the Catholic- Church. Maj. Smith embraced that faith before- his death.
ROBERT M. WILLIAMSON,
("THREE-LEGGED WILLIE.")
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Was born in Georgia; in carly life was afflicted with white swelling, which stiffened one of his knees; moved to Texas and located at San Felipe in 1827 and engaged in the practice of law; was Alcalde in 1834; was Captain of & company that served against the Indians in 1835, and was a mem- ber of a Committee of Safety at Bastrop, where he then lived; served in the General Consultation of that year ; was District Judge in 1836; was elected to the Texas Congress in 1840 and until annexation was re-clected to that body from Washington County ; and for several years represented that county in the State Senate after annexation. In 1857 he had a severe attack of sickness, which seriously affected his intellect. " The death of his wife," says Thrall, " a daughter of Col. Edwards, of Wharton County, occurred shortly afterwards. From these combined shocks his mind never entirely recovered, until the time of his death, which tran-
spired peacefully and calmly on the 22d of Decem- ber, 1859, in Wharton County."
Allnding to the one fault, or failing, that he pos- sessed, one of the " fears of the brave and follies of the wise, " which was to be ascribed to the temper of the times in which a large portion of his life was spent, the wild and disorderly state of society then existing, a biographer in recording his demise closes the notice with the following sentence : ---
" May I supplicate for Robert M. Williamson (who, if he was a great sinner, was also a great sufferer) the kind charity of all Christians, and elose this article with the following lines, from the Light-House, which no voice sang so sweetly as his OWD : -
"' In life's closing hour, when the trembling soul flies And death stills the heart's last emotion, Oh! then may the seraph of mercy arise, Like a star on eternity's ocean.' "
,
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The following are extraets from a speech deliv- ered by Hon. George Clark, of Waco, before the Texas Senate, the night of March 21, 1891, pre- senting a portrait of Judge Williamson, which has since adorned the walls of the Senate chamber. Lieutenant Governor Pendleton's speech in reply was equally felicitous :-
"MR. PRESIDENT AND SENATORS : This picture is a true and life-like portrait of one of the old fathers of Texas, a member of Austin's colony,
together in Texas from the four corners of the carth an array of giants to do His work, for indeed may it be truly said 'there were giants in those days.' Few in numbers, but with a resolution of purpose that recognized no such word as fail, they came upon this fair land as the vanguard of a mighty civiliza- tion. *
." Soldiers never make States. This is the work of a different order of men. * * * I have some- times thought that we have done an unintentional injustice to the fathers of Texas. We often think
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"THREE-LEGGED WILLIE."
the friend of Houston, the compatriot of Jack and of Archer and Wharton, the trusted counselor of Milam, the intimate associate of Travis and of Jolinson; the Mirabeau of our revolution, a man whom it were base flattery to call . the noblest Roman of them all,' for Rome, even in the palmiest days of her grandeur, never had such a man. This is a true picture of Three-Legged Willie, painted as be would have had himself painted in life - just as he was.
". As we gaze upon that face and recall again the carlier days of our most romantic history, it would seem that Providence in the exercise of His benefi- wenee to man had purposely raised up and gathered
of their prowess as soldiers, and never weary in recounting to our children their deeds of heroism. But we are prone to forget that this was the smallest part of their contribution to civilization and to humanity. San Jacinto might have been won by barbarians, for even barbarians love liberty. but Texas could only have been made by patriots and statesmen. The men who fought there knew that victory meant only the beginning of their task, and the echoes of the 'twin sisters' had scarce died away before they set themselves to the grand work of laying the foundations and erecting the frame- work of a great State.
"Hitherto the boast of the English-speaking
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people that every man's house was his castle, into which even the king could not enter except upon invitation, had been only partially true. The king, perhaps, could not cross the sacred threshold, but his sheriff could and, after entrauce, seize upon the household goods and household gods of the uufor- tuuates and drive their loved ones out into the cold world without shelter, food or raiment. How queer it is that this barbarism was first arrested by the old fathers of Texas, who sat and deliberated in a log hut for a capitol. It seems strange now, as we look backward, that no other civilized people detected a wrong in the merciless seizure of the home by the officer of the law, and that it remained for the pioneers of Texas to establish and promul- gate a great principle in the economy of government which has beeu since adopted and followed by every American State and Territory. The world owes to Texas the conception of this grand idea, that the homes of a free people are above the law and beyond the law, and that no matter how urgent the demand, no matter the misfortunes that may betide, or the consequences that may follow, the abiding place of the family shall be sacred. In the storms that are sure to come this will be the sheet-anchor for our safety, for the preservation of the home begets patriotism and conservatism ; and capital can never lay its hand upon these people and make them aught but freemen. * * *
" And blessed be the men who conceived and carried out the grand idea of the homestead, of whow Three-Legged Willie was the chief.
" Another thought that seemed to pervade the minds of our carly fathers in the construction of our government was, to banish the 'quirks and quibbles of the law,' so that our courts should be able to dispense speedy and substantial justice to the citizen without embarrassment, delay or chi- canery.
* * The code practiced in most of the States to-day is the fruit of Texas' example and inspiration. * *
" Another prominent idea in the minds of our fathers was the necessity of a general diffusion of education among the people of the State. * * * Indeed, so liberal has been their provision, a lapse of fifty years finds us quarreling among ourselves as to how we shall spend it. *
" But why go further in enumerating the many other ideas prominent in our early days? Not only this, but many nights could be spent in re- counting to each other the manifold features which characterized the formative period of our history.
" I have only referred to one or two of the more prominent, in order to demonstrate, especially to our young people, the magnificent thought and
statesmanship of those men who redeemed and made Texas, and with and among whom Robert M. Williamson lived and labored, primus inter pares.
" In addressing myself to the man as he was, am admonished by my own instinct that my I powers are wholly inadequate to the task. To properly delineate him, lawyer, judge, statesman, ยท soldier and patriot, he who essays the task should have known him in life, have seen him upon the. field, been with him in the council and at the bar, and mingled with him in the daily walks and con- versations which go to make up human life. His- tory at best deals only in fragments, and tradition often loses its thread in the memories of men.
"Only a few, very few, comrades of Judge Wil- liamson are spared to us, and to these we are indebted for the glimpse obtained of his achievemeuts and character. Of Seotch descent, he came of good old Revolutionary and fighting stock, his grandfather having been a Colonel in Washington's army, and his father a soldier in the War of 1812. Endowed by nature with a broad intellect, with splendid powers of analysis and oratory, and an energy of purpose and an inflexibility of will rarely equaled, he naturally turned to the bar as a proper field for his labors, and at once sprang into prominence as a lawyer in his native State and Georgia aud in the adjoining State, Alabama, to which he moved. The years 1828-9 fouud him a citizen of Texas and here his fame as an orator and statesman was won.
" The troubles and oppressions of the colony appealed most strongly to his manhood and his patriotism, and his clarion voice was soon raised for liberty and independence. The uature of the man admitted neither of truckling nor compromise. He was an absolute separationist from the beginning, a bold champion of the rights of the people of Texas, not only to self-government but unqualified inde- pendence. With a patriotism aud an eloquence at least equal to Patrick Henry, conjoined with a rug- gedness of expression that Henry never possessed and which often swept his audience like a cyclone, he went before the people of the several colonies and preached the gospel of a pure and unadulterated liberty. The fires of patriotism he kindled were soon burning with bright fervor, a mere handful of patriots resolved to be free, aud then followed in quick succession, the affairs of Turtle Bayou, Anapuca, Velasco, which quickened the revointion into life, and then the storming of Bexar, the heroic holocaust of the Alamo, the butchery of Goliad, the splendid and decisive victory at San Jacinto, and then free Texas. The best historian of Texas so far pays this just tribute to the man of whom I
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