John Cameron's Texas Land

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Terry's Texas Rangers Circa 1863

 Photo Displayed At The Texas Rangers Museum

From Reminiscences of the Terry Rangers:

"A brigade of cavalry was organized at once consisting of the 8th Texas, which was our regiment, the 11th Texas, 3rd Arkansas, and 4th Tennessee regiments, and placed under command of General Joe Wheeler."

General Albert Sydney Johnston

Texas State Cemetery (Reinterred)

The death of General Sidney Johnston is heart-rendering, He fought bled and died-- for he breathed
his last in two minutes after dismounting suppose to have bled to death from a wound in  his Leg. (Quote from Miss Priscilla Larkin: The Civil War Diary of a Southern Belle)

Source

Caught By Hays' Texan Rangers

View From The Rio Grande River Looking At Mexico

Notes of the Mexican War, 1846-47-48...:

 

"He (a guerilla) was caught by Col. Jack Hays' Texan Rangers, coming up from Vera Cruz (where he was captured)...let go on parole of honor, and again captured leading a guerilla band...".

A Strongly Entrenched Santa Anna

Notes of the Mexican War, 1846-47-48:

"Gen. Santa Anna was strongly entrenched around his loved and boasted capital, surrounded by his splendidly-uniformed staff, his glittering lancers and the flower of his army; he was sole master of the city of Mexico.  Straight for that ancient city our army marched... ."

An Artifact At The Illinois National Guard Museum, Springfield, Illinois

From The First Gun At Palo Alto

Notes of the Mexican War, 1846-47-48: Comprising Incidents, Adventures and Everyday Proceedings and Letters While with the United States Army in the Mexican War; Also Extracts from Ancient Histories of Mexico, Giving an Accurate Account of the First and Original Settlers of Mexico, Etc.; Also the Names and Numbers of the Different Rulers of Mexico; Also Influence of the Church

Source

"...from the first gun at Palo Alto to the surrender of the city of Mexico...we made our advances, without one defeat, without one retreat.  There is not a paralell in all the pages of history."

The Captain Is A Fighting Man

Notes of the Mexican War, 1846-47-48:

"Word now comes from Capt. Small's party of fifty picked men, saying that they are at work piercing their way through the deserted stone houses, so as to get in the rear of the enemy's battery, and then charge upon the enemy by surprise; that is, provided the enemy don't stop them before they get through, but there is no fear on our side of the house, for the Captain is a fighting man, and all his men are fighting soldiers, and have expressed a determination to capture the breastworks, if possible."

Bowie And His Association With Jean Lafitte

From Lots of Land:

In that year [circa 1830] Jim Bowie appeared in Texas with a colorful reputation behind him and considerable means as the result of his association with Jean Lafitte (Bowie and his brother were reportedly agents of the pirate king in disposing of his stolen "black ivory."

In one year they are supposed to have netted $65,000 in commissions.) After having fought alligators barehanded, killing a man with a knife fashioned by his brother, searching for gold among the Lipan Indians, and marrying the daughter of a wealthy Spaniard in San Antonio, Bowie turned to land traffic. In 1830 he purchased sixteen such eleven-league grants from Mexican citizens who filed for them and released them to Bowie.

How Much That Sword Looked Like A Baton

Jim's Photo Of Alamo Display

And Wait For The Night by JohnWilliam Corrington (published ca 1964)

Because it struck me how much that sword looked like a baton, and how I had been the bandmaster without knowing it. I don’t know why—I never figured why—but all the fight was gone out of me in an instant. I had come to Mexico to kill as many of ‘em as I could shoot, stab, or ride down. For Travis and Bowie and Bonham. I came to burn or devastate, it didn’t matter who or how. But there I was with a clean sword in my hand and twelve of my own men turning in the hot wind, and the words of politicians and landgrabbers elbowing each other in my memory.….and because anyhow there probably hadn’t been ten men in the Mexican army we were facing who had fought at the Alamo or murdered at Goliad.

Texas Fiction

A quote from The Eagle and the Raven by James Michener:

"Texas is a collector's paradise (for books about their state) and local publishers know it, for they keep providing a constant flood of books about the Lone Star state."

Author Melodie Cuate makes history interesting for the 9 - 12 year old crowd with her Mr. Barrington's Mysterious Trunk book series and is published by "local publisher" Texas Tech University Press.

See the author on YouTube.

Refugio

Part Of Refugio County, Texas Map (LOC link)

Lots of Land (Refugio):

Daring Chivalry And High Adventure

Source

"...President Houston issued a proclamation inviting volunteers for a retaliatory expedition across the Rio Grande, and designating the 25th of October, at San Antonio de Bexar, as the time and place for their rendezvous. Near eight hundred of the most gallant spirits of western Texas responded to the requisition with whom the author found himself associated in an enterprise which, however disastrously it afterwards terminated, wore at its outset the most attractive hues of daring chivalry and high adventure." 

A Rotten Fight

Rio Grande River Looking Towards Mexico

And Wait For The Night by JohnWilliam Corrington...

"He remembered the long tortured negotiations that summer before the war with Mexico, the equally tortured logic of the administration, the coarse gleeful representatives in the Louisiana legislature who wanted a war that would net not only Texas to the Rio Grande, but the whole of the subcontinent down to Central America if the Mexicans gave trouble."

"Mexico was a rotten fight, and you were right on top of the heap. You fought ‘em from the border to the City of Mexico itself. You saw Scott ride in, and you were part of what went on before he made that ride. I bet you remember Chapultepec."

Camping At Fort Davis

A Texas Pioneer: Early Staging and Overland Freighting Days on the Frontiers ...

"We continued our journey westward and arrived at Fort Davis in the morning and camped until two o'clock in the afternoon."

James Power's Colony In Texas

Jim's Photo - Texas (Not The Colony)

Lots of Land mentioned the following:

JAMES POWER, a native of Ireland, and James Hewetson, a resident of Monclova, contracted on June 11, 1828, with the legislature of Coahuila-Texas for the introduction of two hundred families, half Irish and half Mexican. The central government gave its permission for the colony to be located within the ten-league coastal area.


From this source:

The upper boundary of the Power and Hewetson colony extended well into the present county of Goliad... .

A Texas Pioneer

A Texas Pioneer: Early Staging and Overland Freighting Days on the Frontiers ...,  By August Santleben

The author's Civil War participation was verified in the Compiled Service Records of Volunteer Union Soldiers Who Served in Organizations from the State Of Texas    NARA:

 

August Santleben's Texas death record:

Source

Annexed Texas....

From The New Nation Grows, Volume Two:

"Exuberant, bumptious, the young republic annexed Texas, picked a quarrel with Mexico, and then sent thousands across the plains and mountains to the newly discovered gold fields."

"By 1850, California had entered the Union, and the United States had preempted the whole vast territory from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Lake of the Woods to the Rio Grande." "And in the federal census of that year, it counted 23,191,876 inhabitants."


An 1850 letter from Wm. Carey Jones.

Foreigners In Spanish Texas In 1804

Jim's Photo 

From Lots of Land:

In 1804, according to Mrs. Hatcher, there were sixty-eight foreigners living in Spanish Texas, of whom fifty had been there more than three years. Thirteen of them were Americans, among them William Barr and Samuel Davenport. There were nine Frenchmen and eight Irishmen living at Nacogdoches. None of

them held land titles from the Spanish, nor did Gil Ybarbo and his clan. But they were there, with deep roots in the soil, and they were never budged, not even twenty-odd years later when a foreign empresario sought to evict them.

See It Was Americans Who Broke Through from the same source at Relatively Fiction.

Portrait Of John Coffee Hays

Portrait and description of Colonel Hays from The Mexican War And Its Heroes.  Hays and Christopher Acklin were both Texas Rangers.

"...conduct of Colonel Hays and his noble band of Texan volunteers. Hereafter they and we are brothers and we can desire no better guarantee of success than by their association."

"The following description of the personal appearance of this celebrated partisan is given by his friend Reid."
"We had heard so much of Col. Hays that we were anxious to be introduced to the commander of our regiment."

"As we cast our eye around the group we tried to single out the celebrated partisan chief and we were much surprised when we were presented to a delicate looking young man of about five feet eight inches in stature and told that he was our colonel.  He was dressed very plainly and wore a thin jacket with the usual Texian hat; broad brimmed with a round top and loose open collar with a black handkerchief tied negligently around his neck.  He has dark brown hair and a large and brilliant hazel eye which is restless in conversation and speaks a language of its own not to be mistaken with very prominent and heavy arched eyebrows.  His broad deep forehead is well developed he has a Roman nose with a finely curved nostril a large mouth, with the corners tending downwards a short upper lip, while the under one projects slightly indicative of great firmness and determination.  He is naturally of a fair complexion but from long exposure on the frontier has become dark and weather beaten. He has rather a thoughtful and care worn expression from the constant exercise of his faculties and his long acquaintance with dangers and difficulties, and the responsibilities of a commander have given him an habitual frown when his features are in repose.  He wears no whiskers, which gives him a still more youthful appearance and his manners are bland and very prepossessing from his extreme modesty."

John Coffee Hays

Hays Display At The Texas Ranger Museum

From The Mexican War And Its Heroes, a biography of John Coffee Hays, with whom Christopher (Kit) Acklin served.

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