GCHC NEWSLETTER JUNE 2016

Grimes County Historical Commission

Issue 6 Volume 2 June 2016 Meetings of the Grimes County Historical Commission are held on the Second Monday of the Month at 7:00 pm in the Courthouse Annex in Anderson, Texas Contact Information: Russell Cushman 403 Holland Navasota, TX 77868 (936) 825 - 8923 rcush403@aol.com

Photo of the Month

Grimes County Historical Commission Executive Board Chairman Russell Cushman Vice Chairman Joe King Fultz Secretary Vanessa Burzynski Treasurer Joe King Fultz

COMMITTEES Historical Markers Denise Upchurch Heritage Preservation Sarah Nash

Plantersville Town Hall Built in 1915

Newsletter & Publicity Vanessa Burzynski

GRIMES COUNTY HISTORICAL COMMISSION NEWSLETTER JUNE 2016

OLD THREE HUNDRED The name Old Three Hundred is sometimes used to refer to the settlers who received land grants in Stephen F. Austin's first colony. In January 1821 Austin's father, Moses Austin, had received a permit from the Spanish to settle 300 families in Texas, but he died in Missouri a short time later before he could realize his plans. Stephen F. Austin took his father's place and traveled to San Antonio, where he met with the Spanish governor Antonio María Martínez, who acknowledged him as his father's successor. Austin quickly found willing colonists, and by the end of the summer of 1824 most of the Old Three Hundred were in Texas. During 1823–24 Austin and the land commissioner Baron de Bastrop issued 272 titles, but Bastrop was called away in August 1824, and the work remained unfinished until 1827, when the new commissioner, Gaspar Flores de Abregoqv, issued the remaining titles. Since the family was the unit for distribution, Austin permitted unmarried men to receive grants in partnership, usually in groups of two or three. Twenty-two such partnership titles were issued to fifty-nine partners. In all, 307 titles were issued, with nine families receiving two titles each. Thus the total number of grantees, excluding Austin's own grant, was actually 297, not 300. The colonization decree required that all the lands should be occupied and improved within two years; most of the settlers were able to comply with the terms, and only seven of the grants were forfeited.

The lands selected by the colonists were along the rich bottomlands of the Brazos, Colorado, and San Bernard rivers, extending from the vicinity of present-day Brenham, Navasota, and La Grange to the Gulf of Mexico. According to the terms of the colonization agreement, each family engaged in farming was to receive one labor (about 177 acres) and each ranching

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family one sitio (about 4,428 acres).

Because of the obvious advantages, a sizeable number of the colonists classified themselves as stock raisers, though they were technically planters. Each family's sitio was to have a frontage on the river equal to about one-fourth of its length; thus the east bank of the Brazos was soon completely occupied from the Gulf to what is now Brazos County. Most of the labors were arranged in three groups around San Felipe de Austin, which formed the nucleus of the colony.

The majority of the Old Three Hundred colonists were from the Trans-Appalachian South; the largest number were from Louisiana, followed by Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Missouri. Virtually all were originally of British ancestry. Many had been born east of the Appalachians and were part of the large westward migration of the early years of the nineteenth century. Most were farmers, and many— including the Bell, Borden, Kuykendall, McCormick, McNair, McNeel, Rabb, and Varner families—already had substantial means before they arrived. Because Austin wanted to avoid problems with his colonists, he generally only accepted those of "better" classes; indeed, only four of the Old Three Hundred grantees were illiterate. Another indication of the financial stature of the grantees was the large number of slaveholders among them; by the fall of 1825, sixty-nine of the families in Austin's colony owned slaves, and the 443 slaves in the colony accounted for nearly a quarter of the total population of 1,790.

One of the colonists, Jared E. Groce, who arrived from Georgia in January 1822, had ninety slaves. Though not all of the original grantees survived or prospered, Austin's Old Three Hundred, as historian T. R. Fehrenbach has written, formed "the first Anglo planter-gentry in the province."

Their plantations, arrayed along the rich coastal river bottoms, constituted the

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heart of the burgeoning slave empire in antebellum Texas.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Eugene C. Barker, ed., The Austin Papers (3 vols., Washington: GPO, 1924–28).

Lester G. Bugbee, "The Old Three Hundred: A List of Settlers in Austin's First Colony," Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association 1 (October 1897).

Lester G. Bugbee, Austin Colony (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1893). T. R. Fehrenbach, Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans (New York: Macmillan, 1968).

One of the families who migrated to Texas with the Old Three Hundred

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AUSTIN, STEPHEN FULLER (1793–1836).

Stephen Fuller Austin, founder of AngloAmerican Texas, son of Moses and Maria (Brown) Austin, was born at the lead mines in southwestern Virginia on November 3, 1793. In 1798 Moses Austin moved his family to other lead mines in southeastern Missouri and established the town of Potosi in what is now Washington County. There Stephen grew to the age of ten, when his father sent him to a school in Connecticut, from which he returned westward and spent two years at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky. At Potosi, Moses Austin was engaged in the mining, smelting, and manufacturing of lead and, in addition, conducted a general store. After his return from Transylvania in the spring of 1810, Stephen Austin was employed in the store and subsequently took over the management of most of the lead business.

He served the public as adjutant of a militia battalion and for several years was a member of the Missouri territorial legislature, in which he was influential in obtaining the charter for the Bank of St. Louis. After failure of the Austin business in Missouri, he investigated opportunities for a new start in Arkansas and engaged in land speculation and mercantile activities.

While he was there the territorial governor appointed him circuit judge of the first judicial district of Arkansas. He took the oath of office and qualified in July 1820, but he only briefly held court, for at the end of August he was in Natchitoches, Louisiana, and in December in New Orleans, where he had made arrangements to live in the home of Joseph H. Hawkins and study law. At this time Moses Austin was on his way to San Antonio to apply for a grant of land and permission to settle 300 families in Texas.

Though not enthusiastic about the Texas venture, Austin decided to cooperate with his father. He arranged to obtain a loan from his friend Hawkins to float the enterprise and was at Natchitoches expecting to accompany his father to San

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Antonio when he learned of Moses Austin's death. He proceeded to San Antonio, where he arrived in August 1821.

Authorized by Governor Antonio María Martínez to carry on the colonization enterprise under his father's grant, Austin came to an understanding about certain administrative procedures and was permitted by the governor to explore the coastal plain between the San Antonio and Brazos rivers for the purpose of selecting a site for the proposed colony. Among other details, he arranged with Martínez to offer land to settlers in quantities of 640 acres to the head of a family, 320 acres for his wife, 160 acres for each child, and 80 acres for each slave. For such quantity as a colonist desired, Austin might collect 12½ cents an acre in compensation for his services.

Martínez warned Austin that the government was unprepared to extend administration over the colonists and that Austin must be responsible for their good conduct.

Austin returned to New Orleans, published these terms, and invited colonists, saying that settlements would be located on the Brazos and Colorado rivers. The long depression, followed by the panic of 1819 and changes in the land system of the United States, made settlers eager to take advantage of the offer, and the first colonists began to arrive in Texas by land and sea in December 1821. To his great disappointment, Austin was informed by Governor Martínez that the provisional government set up after Mexican independence refused to approve the Spanish grant to Moses Austin, preferring to regulate colonization by a general immigration law.

Austin hastened to Mexico City and, by unremitting attention, succeeded in getting Agustín de Iturbide's rump congress, the junta instituyente, to complete a law that the emperor signed on January 3, 1823. It offered heads of families a league and a

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labor of land (4,605 acres) and other inducements and provided for the employment of agents, called empresarios, to promote immigration. For his services, an empresario was to receive some 67,000 acres of land for each 200 families he introduced. Immigrants were not required to pay fees to the government, a fact that shortly led some of them to deny Austin's right to charge them for services performed at the rate of 12½ cents an acre. The law was annulled when Iturbide abdicated, but in April 1823 Austin induced congress to grant him a contract to introduce 300 families in accordance with its terms. In August 1824 a new congress passed an immigration law that vested the administration of public land in the states, with certain restrictions, and authorized them to make laws for settlement. In March 1825 the legislature of Coahuila and Texas passed a law conforming in general to the previous act approved by Iturbide. It continued the empresario system contemplated by that law and offered to each married man a league of land (4,428 acres), for which he was obligated to pay the state thirty dollars within six years. In the meantime, Austin had substantially fulfilled his contract to settle the first 300 families. Under this state law, he obtained three contracts (in 1825, 1827, and 1828) to settle a total of 900 additional families in the area of his first colony, besides a contract in partnership with his secretary, Samuel M. Williams, for the settlement of 800 families in western Texas.

Unfortunately, this partnership contract led to a disagreeable controversy with Sterling C. Robertson.

Austin had complete civil and military authority over his colonists until 1828, subject to rather nominal supervision by the officials at San Antonio and Monterrey.

He wisely allowed them to elect militia officers and local alcaldes, corresponding to justices of the peace in the United States; and, to assure uniformity of court

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procedure, he drew up forms and a simple civil and criminal code. As lieutenant colonel of militia, he planned and sometimes led campaigns against Indians.

When population increased and appeals from decisions of individual alcaldes promised to become a burden, Austin instituted an appellate court composed of all the alcaldes—ultimately seven in number. The Constitution of Coahuila and Texas went into effect in November 1827, and Austin seized the opportunity to relieve himself of responsibility for the details of local government by hastening the organization of the ayuntamiento, over which by virtue of experience he continued to exercise strong influence in relations with the superior government of the state.

Aside from the primary business of inducing immigrants to come to his colonies, Austin's most absorbing labor was devoted to the establishment and maintenance of the land system. This involved surveying and allocating land to applicants, with care to avoid overlapping and to keep conflicts at a minimum. The Mexican practice of issuing titles on loose sheets without a permanent record invited confusion, and Austin asked and obtained permission to record titles in a bound volume having the validity of the original.

Both copies and originals had to be attested by the land commissioner, who represented the government, but Austin and his secretary had to prepare them.

The labor of directing surveyors, checking their field notes, allocating grants, preparing titles and records, entertaining prospective colonists, corresponding with state and federal officials, punishing hostile Indians, and finding food and presents for friendly visitors to keep them from marauding was heavy and expensive.

To meet current costs, Austin's only resource was to assess fees against the colonists. Though his original plan to collect 12½ cents an acre for services

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rendered was originally welcomed by the first settlers, some of them refused to pay after the imperial colonization law proposed to compensate empresarios by grants of land. Ignoring the facts that the empresario could not claim the grant until he had settled at least 200 families and that he could hardly sell land when every married man could obtain 4,600 acres free, the settlers appealed to the political chief at San Antonio for an opinion, and he ruled that Austin could not collect. At the same time, however, he proclaimed a fee bill, which among other details allowed the land commissioner (the Baron de Bastrop in the first colony) to charge $127 a league for signing titles, and Austin made a private arrangement with Bastrop to split this fee.

A rather veiled provision of the state law of 1825 allowed empresarios to reimburse themselves for costs and services, and under this law Austin required colonists to pay, or promise to pay, first sixty dollars and later fifty dollars a league. Nearly all such collections as he was able to make were consumed in necessary public expenses, which fell upon him because nobody else would pay them. This statement applies, in fact, to all his colonizing experience.

Though his personal circumstances became somewhat easier with the growth of the colonies, he wrote shortly before his death that his wealth was prospective, consisting of the uncertain value of land acquired as compensation for his services as empresario.

Besides bringing the colonists to Texas, Austin strove to produce and maintain conditions conducive to their prosperous development. This aim coincided, in general, with that of the government. For example, by an act of September 1823, the federal government relieved the colonists of the payment of tariff duties for seven years; and the state legislature was nearly always reasonably cooperative. Mexican sentiment sometimes clashed, however,

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with practical needs of the colonists, and Austin had to evolve or accept a compromise. The status of slavery was always a difficult problem, and Austin's attitude from time to time seems inconsistent. With almost no free labor to be hired and expecting most of the colonists to come from the slave states, Austin prevailed on the junta instituyente to legalize slavery in the imperial colonization law, under which the first colony was established. Contrary to his strenuous efforts, the Constitution of Coahuila and Texas prohibited further introduction of slaves by immigration, but the legislature passed a law at his suggestion that evaded the intent of the constitution by legalizing labor contracts with nominally emancipated slaves. He appeared to concur, however, when congress prohibited immigration in 1830, and tried to convince the colonists that the long-time interest of Texas would be served by the prohibition. He vividly pictured the potential evils of slavery and was apparently sincere, but he failed to reconcile the colonists to the law and after 1833 declared consistently that Texas must be a slave state. Whatever his private convictions may have been, it is evident that they yielded to what may have seemed to be the current need of Texas. It is inferable, moreover, that his acceptance of federal and state regulations against the extension of slavery contemplated continuation of the evasive state labor law.

Another subject in which the interests of the colonists were deeply involved was their protection from efforts of creditors to collect debts incurred by debtors before they moved to Texas. In view of conditions in the United States during the 1820s, it was inevitable that many should have left debts and unpaid judgments behind them.

Working through the local ayuntamiento, the political chief at San Antonio, and representatives in the congress, or legislature, Austin secured a state law that

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closed the courts for twelve years to plaintiffs seeking collection of such debts and permanently exempted land, tools, and implements of industry from execution if a suit was finally won. The law provided further that unsuccessful defendants could not be required to pay produce or money in a way to "affect their attention to their families, to their husbandry, or art they profess." In effect, it was a sweeping homestead exemption law. For a while, in 1832, Austin toyed with the idea of abolishing collateral security for loans and basing "the credit system upon moral character alone...avoiding unjust retroactive effects."

Aware of the importance of external trade, Austin consistently urged the establishment of ports and the temporary legalization of coasting trade in foreign ships. In lengthy arguments to various officials, he declared that the coasting trade would establish ties of mutual interest between the colonists and Mexico and enable Mexico to balance imports from England by exporting Texas cotton.

Congress legalized the port of Galveston after a survey of the pass by Austin in 1825, and the government winked at the use of the Brazos and other landing places, but the coasting trade in foreign vessels was not established. As a result, external trade was confined to the United States. As early as 1829 and as late as 1835 Austin was giving thought to diversion of the Missouri–Santa Fe trade to Texas, but this was another far-sighted plan that could not be realized.

Harmony with state and federal authorities was indispensable to the success of the colonies. Austin clearly realized this fact and never allowed the settlers to forget the solid benefits that they received through the liberal colonization policy or their obligation to obey the laws and become loyal Mexican citizens. He anticipated and disarmed criticism of inconvenient laws and clumsy administration and then used

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the patience of the colonists as evidence of good faith in begging the government for concessions. He thwarted the efforts of Haden Edwards to drag his colonists into the Fredonian Rebellion and led the militia from the Brazos and Colorado to assist Mexican troops in putting it down. His settled policy before 1832 was to take no part in Mexican party convulsions. "Play the turtle," he urged, "head and feet within our own shells." Two factors finally defeated the policy of aloofness. By 1832 Austin's various colonies comprised 8,000 persons, and other empresarios, though less successful, had brought in a great many more. Naturally, it became more and more difficult for Austin to reconcile them to his cautious leadership. On the other hand, the rapid growth of the colonies, in addition to persistent efforts of the United States to buy Texas, increased the anxiety of Mexican leaders. Their consequent attempt to safeguard the territory by stopping immigration—with other irritations—caused an insurrection, and continued friction led to revolution and independence.

The Law of April 6, 1830, embodied the Mexican policy of stopping the further colonization of Texas by settlers from the United States. The law proposed to annul general empresario contracts uncompleted or not begun and prohibited settlement of immigrants in territory adjacent to their native countries. In effect, it applied only to Texas and the United States. By ingenious and somewhat tortuous interpretation, Austin secured the exemption of his own colonies and the colony of Green DeWitt from the prohibition. He thereby gained a loophole for continued immigration from the United States and then turned industriously to the task of getting the law repealed. He succeeded in this in December 1833.

In the meantime, however, military measures to enforce the Law of April 6, 1830, and imprudent administration of the

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tariff laws, to which the Texans became subject in September 1830, produced the Anahuac Disturbances. Austin had been away from Texas for several months at Saltillo attending a session of the legislature, of which he was a member. It is probable that he could have averted the uprising, had he been at home. In fact the local authorities, including Ramón Músquiz, the political chief, had quieted and repudiated it, when irresistible circumstances compelled Austin to abandon his well-tried policy of aloofness from national political struggles and adopt the cause of Antonio López de Santa Anna against the incumbent administration of President Anastasio Bustamante. Texas could no longer stand aside. Fortuitously Santa Anna won, and the colonists could not be diverted from claiming the reward of their valorous support.

The Convention of 1832 met in October of that year to inform the government of the needs of the Texans. They wanted repeal of the prohibition against immigration from the United States, extension of tariff exemption, separation from Coahuila, and authority to establish state government in Texas. For reasons not entirely clear these petitions were not presented to the government. Though Austin was president of the convention, he doubted the expediency of the meeting, fearing that it would stimulate suspicion of the loyalty of the colonists—all the more because the old Mexican inhabitants of San Antonio had sent no delegates to the convention. It is easy to conclude that Austin held out hope that he might persuade these local Mexicans to take the lead in asking for reforms in a later convention; at any rate, he was in San Antonio engaged on this mission when the ground was cut from under his feet by publication of a call for a second convention to meet at San Felipe on April 1, 1833. Again Austin acquiesced and served in the convention, hoping in some measure to moderate its action. This

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Convention of 1833 repeated the more important petitions of the previous meeting and went further in framing a constitution to accompany the request for state government. Though it was well known that Austin thought the movement ill-timed, the convention elected him to deliver the petitions and argue for their approval.

Even men who distrusted him acknowledged his great influence with state and federal authorities. He left San Felipe in April, arrived in Mexico City in July, and, after unavoidable delays, persuaded the government to repeal the Law of April 6, 1830, and to promise important reforms in Texas local government.

He started home in December, reasonably satisfied with his work and convinced at least that he had left nothing undone; President Santa Anna simply would not approve state government for Texas. Austin was arrested at Saltillo in January, under suspicion of trying to incite insurrection in Texas, and taken back to Mexico City. No charges were made against him, no court would accept jurisdiction of his case, and he remained a prisoner, shifting from prison to prison, until December 1834, when he was released on bond and limited to the area of the Federal District. He was freed by a general amnesty law in July 1835 and at the end of August returned to Texas by way of New Orleans.

October 1. Austin was elected to command the volunteers gathered there and led them against the Mexican army at San Antonio.

In November the provisional government elected him to serve, with William H. Wharton and Branch T. Archer, as commissioner to the United States. He arrived in New Orleans in January 1836 and returned again to Texas in June. The business of the commissioners was to solicit loans and volunteers, arrange credits for munitions and equipment, fit out warships, and do whatever they could to commit the government of the United States to recognition and eventual annexation if Texas should declare independence. They were fairly successful in accomplishing this program, except in the effort to obtain assurances from President Andrew Jackson and Congress.

Austin was convinced, however, that Congress would have voted for recognition in May, after the battle of San Jacinto, if the acting president, David G. Burnet, had cooperated with the commissioners by sending them official reports of conditions in Texas. Somewhat hesitantly, Austin consented to offer himself for the presidency after his return to Texas. He was defeated in the election of September 1836, but accepted the office of secretary of state from the successful candidate. He died in service on December 27, 1836, at the untimely age of forty-three.

Austin was thus absent from Texas for twenty-eight months. Upon his return, he learned that an unofficial call had been issued for a convention, or consultation, to meet in October. Probably he could have quashed this call, but in a notable speech at Brazoria on September 8 he gave it his sanction, and election of delegates proceeded. The Consultation organized on November 3. In the meantime, during September and early October, Austin had been in effect civil head of Anglo-American Texas, as chairman of a central committee at San Felipe. War began at Gonzales on

Judged by historical standards, Austin did a great work. He began the AngloAmerican colonization of Texas under conditions more difficult in some respects than those that confronted founders of the English colonies on the Atlantic coast. He saw the wilderness transformed into a relatively advanced and populous state, and fundamentally it was his unremitting labor, perseverance, foresight, and tactful management that brought that miracle to pass. Contemporaries who disagreed with his cautious policy of conciliating Mexican officials accused him of weakness and

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instability, but criticism did not cause him to abandon it. Casually discussing this subject in a letter of April 9, 1832, to his secretary, he wrote, "Some men in the world hold the doctrine that it is degrading and corrupt to use policy in anything....There is no degradation in prudence and a well tempered and well timed moderation." Until the passage of the Law of April 6, 1830, attempting to shut out emigrants from the United States, he believed that Texas could develop into a free and prosperous Mexican state, a goal that he sincerely desired. Passage of that law and continued political turmoil in Mexico certainly shook his confidence, but prudence forbade abandonment of the policy of outward patience and conciliation before Texas seemed strong enough to demand reforms and back the demand by force. Premature action might be fatal, or so he thought. He would have prevented the conventions of 1832 and 1833 if he could have had his way, but, since he could not, he went along and tried to moderate their demands. The same considerations caused him to oppose the Texas Declaration of Independence by the provisional government in 1835, while there was hope of winning the support of the liberal party in Mexico. In short, his methods varied with circumstances, but from the abiding aim to promote and safeguard the welfare of Texas he never wavered. As he wrote in July 1836, "The prosperity of Texas has been the object of my labors, the idol of my existence—it has assumed the character of a religion, for the guidance of my thoughts and actions, for fifteen years." Consciousness of heavy responsibility dictated his policy of caution and moderation and compelled him to shape his methods to shifting circumstances.

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Stephen Fuller Austin

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Grimes County Land Grants

Jones, Timothy – 1 league Oct 24, 1835

List of Persons who were granted land in what is now Grimes County by the Government of the United States.

Landrum, John – 1 league April 10, 1831

Kennard, Anthony – 1 league Nov 2, 1823 Laughlin, William – ¼ league April 11, 1831

Armour, Robert – 1 league Oct. 5, 1835

McDonald, Thomas – 1 league Oct. 5, 1835

Arnold, Daniel – 1 league May 9, 1831

McDowell, M. – 1 league Oct. 17, 1835

Babbitt, Benjamin – ¼ league Nov. 22, 1832

McGriffin, Wm. – 1 league Nov 12, 1832

Bell, James - ¾ league Dec. 2, 1832

McIntire, William – ¼ league Apr 6, 1831

Black, John S. – 1 league April 6, 1831

McIntire, Margaret – 1 league Apr 5, 1831

Black, Marcus D. - ¼ league April 6, 1831

McMahan, Daniel – 1 league Oct 16, 1835

Bowman, John – 1 league April 6, 1831

Montgomery, William – 1 league May 4 1831

Bowman, Samuel – 1 league Oct. 16, 1835

McNealy, Jesse – 1 league Apr 11, 1831

Brown, Alexander – 1 league May 17, 1831

Moore, James W. – 1 league Oct 20, 1835

Burney, William – 1 league April 6, 1831

Moore, John – 1 league Apr 15, 1831

Campbell, Cyrus – 1 league Oct. 22, 1835

Pankey, James W. – 1 league Oct 19, 1835

Conner, John C. – 1 league Oct. 22, 1835

Payne, John - 1 league Oct 16, 1835

Cox, James – 1 league May 28, 1832

Peterson, John – 1 league Apr 2, 1831

Cornaugh, Hannah – 1 league Dec 19, 1832

Pitts, Obediah – 1 league Oct 29, 1835

Fitzgibbons, William – 1 league Apr 6, 1831

Ray, Robert – ¼ league Apr 9, 1831

Fulton, Samuel – 1 league April 9, 1831

Rea, Andrew – ¼ league June 18, 1831

Garrett, Claiborne – ¼ league Dec 3, 1832

Simms, Ignacius – 1 league Oct 26, 1835

Gillett, Heirs of J. – 1 league Mar 27, 1831

Townsend, William – 1 league Oct 20, 1835

Greenwood, Franklin – 1 league Apr 7,1831

Tyler, Daniel – ¼ league Oct 22, 1835

Greenwood, Joel – 1 league May 13, 1831

Vince, Allen – ½ league Apr 30, 1831

Gregg, Darius – ¼ league April 6, 1831

Walker, Tandy – 1 league Apr 27, 1831

Grimes, Jesse – 1 league April 6, 1831

Wallace, Caleb – 1 league May 14, 1828

Groce, Jared E. – 3 leagues Jul 29, 1831

Wallace, James – 1 league April 9, 1831

Groce, Leonard W. – 1 league Apr 21, 1831

White, Dudley J. – 1 league May 31, 1831

Hadley, Joshua – 1 league May 7, 1831

Whitesides, John J. – 1 league Oct 14, 1831

Harris, John – ¼ league Oct. 16, 1832

Whitesides, James – 1 league Jul 16, 1824

Hays, Jacob – 1 league April 8, 1831

Yeamans, Asa – 1 league July 8, 1831

Holland, Francis – 1 league Aug 10, 1824

Zuber, Abraham – 1 league March 4, 1833

Holland, James – ¼ league April 7, 1831 Holland, William – 1 league Aug 10, 1824 Jack, Patrick C. – ¼ league April 6, 1831 Jackson, Isaac – 1 league Aug 7, 1824

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GROCE, JARED ELLISON (1782–1839).

Jared Ellison Groce, planter, public official, and the wealthiest settler in Stephen F. Austin's colony, was born in Halifax County, Virginia, on October 12, 1782, the son of Jared Ellison and Sarah (Sheppard) Groce. In 1802 he moved to South Carolina, where he acquired valuable property and married Mary Ann Waller, daughter of Texas pioneer Leonard Waller, on August 29, 1804. Later that year he moved to Lincoln County, Georgia, where he purchased a large estate. There he became a delegate to the convention that drafted the Georgia constitution. After his wife's death in 1814, Groce moved to Alabama and established a settlement known as Fort Groce. He heard of Austin's colonization scheme in 1821 and decided to move to Texas.

With the aid of some fifty wagons and ninety slaves, Groce and his effects reached the Brazos River in January 1822.

He began constructing a homestead, which soon became Bernardo Plantation, on the east bank four miles south of the site of present-day Hempstead. In recognition of the extensive property that he had brought with him, he was granted title to ten leagues of land by the Mexican government, on July 29, 1824. These original holdings were soon augmented by shrewd purchases. It is said, for example, that in 1828 Groce acquired the league on which Courtney was founded in exchange for a riding pony and a bolt of cloth. In 1822 he cultivated what may have been the first cotton crop in the Austin colony and in 1825 constructed one of the earliest gins in Texas, on the Brazos River, now in southwestern Grimes County. By the end of 1822 he had built a large house at Bernardo on a hill overlooking the Brazos near the mouth of Fish Pond Creek; here he resided until 1833, when the malarial

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environment of the Brazos bottoms compelled him to divide his estate among his children and move several miles northward to Wallace Prairie, now in Grimes County. Here, accompanied by twenty slaves, on an open hill in a threeleague tract of land on the east bank of the Brazos, Groce constructed a new home known as Groce's Retreat.

The establishment included a primitive sawmill for processing logs hewn from nearby junipers. During the 1830s, in order to defend his home against occasional Indian raids, Groce armed a company of his slaves.

He had been a participant in the affairs of the Austin colony since 1824, when he chaired a committee to petition the Mexican congress for the protection of slave property in Texas. He actively opposed the Fredonian Movement and placed his ferry, wagons, teams, and slaves at the disposal of Col. Mateo Ahumada as he marched to Nacogdoches to suppress the uprising in 1827 (see FREDONIAN REBELLION). Groce was selected as a delegate from the District of Viesca (later Milam County) to the Convention of 1832, where he opposed the resolution seeking independence for Texas and chaired a committee to draft petitions for tariff reduction. He was returned to the Convention of 1833, where he again participated actively.

But whatever the grounds of his earlier reluctance, by 1836 Groce had espoused revolution. Though he was crippled in both arms and unfit for military duty, he is reported to have personally outfitted five men for service in the Texas army. The draft of the Texas Declaration of Independence was completed before March 2 by George C. Childress at Groce's Retreat, whence it was returned to Washington-on-the-Brazos for ratification.

Between March 18 and March 21, 1836, the Retreat served as the temporary capital of the Republic of Texas, while the interim

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government of David G. Burnet stopped there en route from Washington to Harrisburg. In April before the battle of San Jacinto, Gen. Sam Houston and his army camped on the west bank of the Brazos opposite Bernardo, which Groce's son, Leonard Waller Groce, had inherited. For two weeks Leonard Groce supplied the army with provisions, shelter, and medical attention. After San Jacinto, Groce's Retreat was among the venues considered to become the permanent capital of the republic.

Groce won a wide reputation for hospitality and generosity; his home was reported to be continually filled with weary travelers, whom he unfailingly received as his guests.

He encouraged and assisted the immigration of many families and individuals to Texas, the most notable of whom was his friend Sam Houston. Groce and his first wife had three sons and a daughter. In 1814 Groce married Ann Waller, Mary's sister, and they had two additional children. Ann died in 1818.

Austin County records contain a copy of Groce's will dated October 24, 1838; he died in 1839 and was buried at Bernardo.

The present community of Retreat was established in 1851 two miles east of Groce's Retreat on the route of a stage line from Houston to Anderson.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Eugene C. Barker, The Life of Stephen F. Austin (Nashville: Cokesbury Press, 1925; rpt., Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1949; New York: AMS Press, 1970). Rosa Groce Bertleth, "Jared Ellison Groce," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 20 (April 1917). E. L. Blair, Early History of Grimes County (Austin, 1930). Lester G. Bugbee, "The Old Three Hundred: A List of Settlers in Austin's First Colony," Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association 1 (October 1897). Grimes County Historical Commission, History of Grimes County, Land of Heritage and Progress (Dallas: Taylor, 1982).

Texas House of Representatives,

Biographical Directory of the Texan Conventions and Congresses, 1832–1845 (Austin: Book Exchange, 1941).

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STONEHAM, GEORGE (ca. 1786–1869?).

George Stoneham (Stonam, Stonum), pioneer and cotton planter, son of Henry and Jane (Dillard) Stoneham, was born in Virginia about 1786, the oldest of several children of a Revolutionary War veteran. At the age of fifteen the family moved to Jackson County, Georgia. About 1819 George moved to Conecuh County, Alabama, with his brother Joseph and began the profitable operation of a keelboat between Brooklyn and Pensacola, Florida. When Joseph and his wife both died of fever in 1836, George became the guardian of Joseph's four orphaned sons.

In 1844, accompanied by his nephews and probably a number of slaves, Stoneham moved to Texas, where he purchased a large tract of land from Mrs. Margaret McIntyre on Grimes Prairie in what is now southern Grimes County. The rest of his family joined him there in 1845. Stoneham, a successful cotton planter, raised hundreds of bales annually. By 1860 he controlled 115 slaves and an estate worth more than $150,000. He had thus become the wealthiest man in the county. As each nephew attained his majority, Stoneham gave him land and slaves. The second nephew, John H. Stoneham, became the founder of the town of Stoneham. Like most slaveowners, Stoneham was seriously damaged by emancipation. By the end of 1865 his remaining property was valued at only $28,000. His name disappeared from county tax rolls after 1869, when he appears to have died.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Grimes

County

Historical

Commission,

History of Grimes County, Land of Heritage and Progress (Dallas: Taylor, 1982).

GRIMES COUNTY HISTORICAL COMMISSION NEWSLETTER JUNE 2016

GROCE'S RETREAT. Groce's Retreat, Jared E. Groce's plantation home in what is now southwestern Grimes County, was built in 1833 when Groce moved to the site on Wallace Prairie, retreating from the malaria of the Brazos River bottoms. The house was located on a three-acre tract twelve miles south of Navasota on an elevation in prairie country that later was part of the farms of S. D. Mason and N. W. Lyles on the east bank of the Brazos River.

While residing at the plantation in early 1836, George C. Childress drafted the Texas Declaration of Independence, which was signed at Washington-on-the-Brazos on March 2. President David G. Burnet and his cabinet stayed at Groce's Retreat from March 18 to March 21, 1836, on their way from Washington-on-the-Brazos to Harrisburg; for three days it was thus the temporary capital of the Republic of Texas.

William Fairfax Gray described the houses of the plantation as numerous but small and crowded. Groce died there on November 20, 1836. His heirs sold the property to a family named Dunham. The property was later purchased by Dugald McAlpine who built his residence a mile north of the former plantation house. Some of the Groce buildings were standing in 1852. A state historical marker on Highway 6 commemorates the site.

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Groce Family Historical Marker

Jared Ellison Groce

GRIMES COUNTY HISTORICAL COMMISSION NEWSLETTER JUNE 2016

PLANTERSVILLE, TEXAS. Plantersville, at the junction of State Highway 105, Farm Road 1774, and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway in southeast Grimes County, was settled by Americans, primarily from Alabama and Arkansas, during the 1830s, although no actual community seems to have existed until about 1840. In 1843 Alabaman Isaac Baker began constructing an impressive 2,850acre plantation known as the Cedars three miles northeast of the settlement, which was then emerging near the junction of the headright grants of Austin colonists Asa Yeamans, John Landrum, and William Montgomery. By the early 1850s a twostory Masonic building had been constructed in the community; a school was established on its lower floor. A Methodist congregation of some 200 members, including many slaves, was organized in 1853 by Rev. Robert Alexander, and in 1861 a Baptist group, with twenty members, was formed; George W. Baines, great grandfather of President Lyndon Baines Johnson, served as its first pastor. The two congregations shared use of the Masonic building as a meetinghouse until each could construct its own church.

This was accomplished in the case of the Baptists in 1871, and the Methodists in 1873. The first general store, Isaac Baker and Sons, opened in a two-story frame structure sometime between 1854 and 1860. In 1856 a post office was established, and the town was officially designated Plantersville, a name suggested by Mrs. J. L. Greene, to honor the planters who had settled the site.

Following the Civil War, Plantersville Methodists, led by Thomas W. Blake and Rev. J. M. Wesson, launched a ministry among local freedmen, and in 1866 their church reported a membership of 143 whites and 172 blacks. The Baptists

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undertook a similar ministry among blacks both during and after the war, but the experiment was terminated in 1870, when black members were dropped from the rolls. Commercial activity increased in 1879, when the Montgomery Central Railway built a line through, connecting Montgomery and Plantersville with Navasota; a few years later this road was purchased by the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe and extended east to Conroe and Beaumont and west to Somerville. An influx of immigrants from Russia, Poland, and Germany in the 1870s and 1880s brought a number of Catholics to the vicinity of Plantersville; by 1894 Father Joseph I. Klein had organized the first Catholic church in the community, St. Mary's. In 1890 Plantersville reported a population of 400. In 1915 the town had a number of general stores, gristmills, cotton gins, a wagon-manufacturing plant, and a population of 150. By 1936 it had a population of an estimated 200 and four businesses, including the Security State Bank. Thereafter, the population remained virtually unchanged for decades; in 1957 it was estimated at 200, and in 1990 it stood at an estimated 212. In 1957 the town had five businesses and in 1990, ten. The population remained at 212 in 2000 but Plantersville had forty-seven businesses.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Grimes County Historical Commission, History of Grimes County, Land of Heritage and Progress (Dallas: Taylor, 1982). Fred I. Massengill, Texas

Towns: Origin of Name and Location of Each of the 2,148 Post Offices in Texas (Terrell, Texas, 1936).

GRIMES COUNTY HISTORICAL COMMISSION NEWSLETTER JUNE 2016

STONEHAM, TEXAS. Stoneham is on a dirt road at the junction of the Missouri Pacific and the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe railways, a mile south of State Park Road 234 in southern Grimes County. It was established by farm families in the vicinity of Hurricane Creek who began migrating onto a projected line of the Central and Montgomery Railway in 1879. In that year the railroad acquired a right-of-way from local landowner John H. Stoneham, for whom the town was named. The site was first settled by members of Austin's colony during the 1830s. In the 1840s a Methodist meetinghouse was constructed, and the building doubled as a schoolhouse. After the Civil War the High Point Baptist Church was built on the road to Yarboro. The churches seem to have been the only public buildings in the vicinity until the coming of the railroad. John Stoneham established a general mercantile store near the rail line, which was purchased in 1885 by the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway. A post office was established in 1890 with Stoneham as postmaster. A new Methodist church was constructed in 1894.

About 1900 the International-Great Northern Railroad extended a line through the community, which had become a shipping center for cotton and other agricultural commodities. In 1901 the Smith Land and Improvement Company of Beaumont laid out the present townsite and began the sale of lots. The early settlement supported a cotton gin, a drugstore, a barbershop, a meat market, a blacksmith shop, and two general stores.

In 1909 St. Joseph's Catholic Church was organized to accommodate the growing numbers of Polish immigrants who began arriving in the vicinity in the late nineteenth century. In 1910 a new school opened, and the community's first black church, the Stonehamville Methodist Episcopal Church, was built a mile south of town; its

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members had previously worshipped in a brush arbor near the site of the present Stoneham cemetery. A school for children of Polish ancestry was established three miles from town on Grimes Prairie in 1910– 11. Three white and three black schools were operated by the Stoneham Common School District during the early twentieth century.

In 1890 the town had a population of thirty.

In 1900 250 people lived in the Stoneham vicinity. In 1918 the International-Great Northern Railroad built a spur to the local cotton gin, and greater quantities of cotton than ever were shipped to Houston and Galveston. The I&GN road was purchased by the Missouri Pacific in 1924. In 1932 a fire destroyed the Stoneham business district, much of which, in those depressed economic times, was not rebuilt. In 1936 the town had an estimated population of 200 and eight businesses. After World War II the population declined; in 1949 it was an estimated 100, and the community had three rated businesses. By 1970 the figure had dropped to an estimated twelve inhabitants, and no businesses remained.

In 1990 Stoneham retained an estimated population of twelve. The population remained the same in 2000.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Grimes County Historical Commission, History of Grimes County, Land of Heritage and Progress (Dallas: Taylor, 1982). Fred I. Massengill, Texas

Towns: Origin of Name and Location of Each of the 2,148 Post Offices in Texas

(Terrell, Texas, 1936).

GRIMES COUNTY HISTORICAL COMMISSION NEWSLETTER JUNE 2016

PAGE 16

Baker Family Cemetery

Stoneham Cemetery

To reach the Baker cemetery, from the intersection of HWY 105 and 1774, go north on 1774 to the first driveway on the right, which is the entrance to "The Cedars".

Going down the drive about 1 mile until the house can be seen, the cemetery can be seen just to the left behind a chain link fence. To reach where the second Baker cemetery was located going south on FM 1774 toward Plantersville, past County Road 313 on the right and County Road 213 on the left, travel a short distance to drive on the right. On that drive there once stood a second Baker Cemetery. Recently, the property on which the cemetery was located was bulldozed, completely destroying this cemetery. The Bakers buried in this cemetery were related to the Bakers buried in the family cemetery near Plantersville on "The Cedars" ranch above.

Franklin Jarvis Greenwood (1804-1882), who came to Texas in 1829, donated land for this cemetery. It was originally called “High Point” for a nearby settlement. The first known interments were Greenwood’s daughters Mary Ann (b.1840) and Harriet.

They died in 1856 of Cholera. Graves of Yellow Fever Victims were specially marked to avoid spread of the epidemic.

Many burials are descendants of Stephen F. Austin Colonists. The name of the Cemetery and town changed to “Stoneham” after John H. Stoneham (18291894). Gave land for the railroad in 1879.

John H. Stoneham

GRIMES COUNTY HISTORICAL COMMISSION NEWSLETTER JUNE 2016

MONTGOMERY, ANDREW JACKSON (1801–1863).

Andrew Jackson Montgomery, adventurer, businessman, soldier, and surveyor, was born near Maryville, Tennessee, on April 4, 1801, to William and Mary (James) Montgomery. By 1816 the family was living in Alabama. In 1819, at the age of eighteen, Montgomery took part in the filibustering expedition of James Longqv into Texas. His duties included scouting the territory between the camps that Long established in East Texas.

Montgomery's connections among the Bidai Indians enabled him to remain in hiding in Texas after the Spanish drove out most of the rest of the expedition.

Subsequently, the Mexicans successfully rebelled against their Spanish masters, making it possible for Montgomery to establish, in 1823, a trading post on the lower Coushatta Trace, an Indian trail stretching between the Brazos and Trinity rivers. Intersecting this trace from north to south at Montgomery's post was the Indian trail known as the Loma del Toro.

Montgomery advertised for and welcomed settlers to the trading post and to the budding community surrounding it, which was known at first as Montgomery Prairie.

By 1827 much of his family had joined him, including his father, his uncle James, and his aunt Margaret and her husband, Owen Shannon. These Montgomerys were all cousins of Gen. Richard Montgomery of Revolutionary War fame. Before the construction of Fort Parker in 1835, Montgomery did surveying in the area as well as near the Brazos Falls for the Nashville Colony. During the Texas Revolution he served as a private and fought in the battle of San Jacinto. On April 21, 1860, he served as vice president of the convention that nominated his friend and former commander, Sam Houston, for president of the United States.

Montgomery eventually moved a few miles west to the community now known as Stoneham. The settlement that he had established near his trading post

PAGE 17

continued to use the name Montgomery, and in 1837 Montgomery County was named after the town. At the age of fortythree Montgomery married Mary Mahulda Farris, and they had nine children. He died in 1863 and was buried in Stoneham.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Robin Navarro Montgomery, The History of Montgomery County (Austin: Jenkins, 1974).

GRIMES COUNTY HISTORICAL COMMISSION NEWSLETTER JUNE 2016

PAGE 18

Franklin Greenwood Franklin Jarvis Greenwood was born 1804, Powell Valley, VA (now North Eastern TN).

He and his wife Mary Jane Montgomery (1808-1880) were colonists in Stephen F. Austin's Second Colony, coming to Grimes County, TX in October of 1830. Died in 1882 and buried in the Stoneham Cemtery.

They had 10 children: William Montgomery (1830-1888); Franklin Bailey (1846-1919, married Annie Rebecca Dunham; Benjamin Franklin (died in infancy); Nancy Caroline (1832-1905), married James Lawrence; Sarah Emaline (1838-1926) married John H. Stoneham; Mary Jane died of plague; Harriet Ewing died of plague; Dr. Thomas Benton (1834-1880); John Wesley (18491930) married Anna Devereaux.

GRIMES COUNTY HISTORICAL COMMISSION NEWSLETTER JUNE 2016

“The Cedars”

Isaac Baker Sr., son of John & Elizabeth Baker, sailed up from Tombigbee River in AL in 1787 and settled on a Spanish grant a few miles above the St. Stephens. Isaac was the youngest son. He married Aurelia Womack on Sept 23, 1827. He moved from Washington County, Alabama to Texas in 1843. Isaac Baker and his wife, Aurelia Womack, built "The Cedars" three miles NE of what is now Plantersville, in Grimes County, TX. The name was derived from the cedar trees planted by the Baker slaves on the front lawn in a horseshoe shape. He provided for the dead as well as the living by establishing 2 cemeteries one for his family and one for his slaves and servants. By 1853, the local planters recognized the need for a town, so Judge Henry Griggs, Col Isaac Baker and Dr. Mitchell each donated 10 acres of land for the founding of Plantersville.

After Isaac Bakers death the home was sold to one of his sons, Jack Baker and his wife, Cordella Forrester Baker.

Succeeding generations of Bakers lived in The Cedars until 1918, when the plantation was sold to the Kempner family of Galveston. The Kempners renamed it Deer Hills. In 1956 the Kempner's sold the house

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to M.E. Shiflett family of Houston. In 1962 the Shifletts sold to Mr. Dean W. Osmun of Houston who called it Cedar Hill Ranch and later restored the original name of The Cedars. In 1982 it consisted of 2,870 acres.

It is now owned by J. R. Butler.

Entrance to the “Cedars”

Isaac Baker, Sr. Tombstone