Going To Texas, Part 4

My first "Going To Texas" blog presents an overview of Michener's novel, Texas; Part 3 compares the very real Kimbro family, who migrated to Texas from Tennessee as did some of the fictional characters portrayed in Texas. Did Michener's fictional character, Dewey Kimbro, the oil wildcatter, resemble any member of the authentic Kimbros? The real-life Euclid U. Kimbro (1833 - 1895) married into an "Alamo" family (Lucinda, daughter of Willis & Elzina (Weeks) Avery and granddaughter of Catherine (Overton) Avery McCutcheon Jennings). His wife's step-grandfather, Gordon Jennings, was thought to be the oldest person killed at the Alamo.

The prelude to the battle at the Alamo was described thusly by Michener:

Zacatecas had been ravaged because it refused to change its loyalty as quickly as Santa Anna had changed his, and word went out if Tejas continues to oppose the central government and tries to cling to its old constitution, it can expect like punishment: And in the dying days of 1835, backed by an immense army, aided by good generals and strong artillery, Generalisimo Santa Anna marched north, determined to humiliate once more the recalcitrant Texicans. All who opposed him would be slain. (Page 431, Texas)

The time between the fall of the Alamo and Sam Houston's victory at San Jacinto is known as the Runaway Scrape:

Then began the great retreat, the Runaway Scrape, in which civilians fled before the onrushing Mexicans. Towns were abandoned and set to the torch by their inhabitants. Cattle were herded north and east, then left to fend for themselves at river crossings. Hamlets were left bare. Nothing seemed able to halt the victorious dictator [Santa Anna]. (Page 468, Texas)

Gordon Jennings' daughter Catherine (Katy) (1826-1911) in a ride compared to that of Paul Revere, was sent by her mother to warn other settlers that the Alamo had fallen. The residents of Texas had a reversal of fortune and won the Battle of San Jacinto. Katy's half-brother, Willis Avery, fought at that battle.

Going To Texas, Part 3

There are parallels between Michener’s fictional characters in the novel, Texas, and my (very) extended family tree. Below is an excerpt from the novel, describing the character of the archetypical Tennessee immigrant who moved into a Texas. Did this describe the Kimbro family? They moved to Texas from Tennessee. Daniel Kimbro was a wheelwright according to the 1850 census taken in Williamson Co., Texas; did he farm, too?

It would not be easy to find two groups of people less qualified by history and temperament to share a land like Texas in the early 1800s, than the old Spanish-Mexican to the south and the new Kentucky-Tennessee man to the north. God reached deep into His grab bag when He asked those two dynamite caps to share the land between San Antonio and Louisiana. The older group was Catholic, of Spanish descent, family oriented, careless about on-the-spot administration, town oriented, ranchers if they could afford the land and the cattle, obedient to authority up to the moment of revolution, and extremely proud, punctilious as well. The intruding group was Protestant, British, individually oriented, insistent upon good local administration, farmers with a positive passion for the soil, suspicious of cities, disrespectful of any national authority, especially religious, but just as eager for a duel as any hidalgo. p. 226

Daniel Kimbro, the 4^th great-grandfather of my niece & nephew, was born in North Carolina and moved to Tennessee at a young age. He married a Tennessee native, Mary Gilbert, and then moved to San Augustine, Texas, via New Orleans, in 1836, the year of Texas Independence. About a year later he took he moved to Bastrop, Texas. He had the first shop making looms, spinning wheels, chairs, etc. The town built a fort for protection against the Indians and Daniel went on many expeditions against the enemy. In the Fall of 1846 the Kimbro family moved to an area near Taylor, Texas, on Brushy Creek, previously settled by the Averys.

There is an historical marker at the Kimbro family cemetery.

Here's some of the earlier research I did about Daniel Kimbro's son, Crawford Kimbro.

Daniel Kimbro’s son, Euclid U. Kimbro, married Lucinda Avery. Lucinda's family had Alamo and San Jacinto connnections.

[Some information written by Roy Bland, a descendant of Euclid Kimbro, and sent to me by a librarian at the Taylor Public Library, Taylor, Texas.]