Consider the Lily:
The Ungilded History of Colorado County, Texas

1 Sion Record Bostick, "Reminiscences of Sion R. Bostick," The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, vol. 5, no. 2, October 1901, p. 86; Mary Crownover Rabb, Travels and Adventures in Texas in the 1820's (Waco: W. M. Morrison, 1962), pp. 12-13. Sion Bostick was the son of Levi Bostick (see Austin County Colonial Records, Succession Book 1, p. 43; History of Texas Together with a Biographical History of the Cities of Houston and Galveston (Chicago: Lewis Publishing Co., 1895), pp. 533-537). Bostick's house was on a site inside the bend of the river to the north of what would become Columbus (see Colorado County District Court Records, Civil Cause File No. 63: William B. Dewees v. Martha Bronson alias Bostick).

2 Charles Adams Gulick, Jr. (vols. 1-4), Katherine Elliott (vols. 1-3), Winnie Allen (vol. 4), and Harriet Smither (vols. 5-6), eds., The Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, 6 vols. (vols. 1 and 2, Austin: A. C. Baldwin & Sons, [1921], 1922; vols. 3-6, Austin: Von Boeckmann-Jones, [1923-1927]), vol. 4, part 1, pp. 215-216; John Henry Brown, Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas (Austin: L. E. Daniel, 1880), p. 526; Texas Monument, August 28, 1850; Colorado County District Court Records, Civil Cause File No. 658: George C. Hatch v. Elizabeth Cass, et al. Andrew Rabb, who supplied the information on Ross to Lamar, stated that Ross had been killed in January or February 1834. However, Ross was certainly alive on February 20, 1834, when William Barret Travis gave him a note, and was presumably still alive some three months later, when Travis received a letter from him and wrote him a reply (see Robert E. Davis, ed., The Diary of William Barret Travis (Waco: Texian Press, 1966), pp. 129, 172). Ross' stormy relationship with women had continued. In 1827, he abandoned James Cummins' daughter Mariah (to whom he may or may not have been married twice, once in Arkansas in about 1822 and again Texas in 1825) and took up with her younger sister, Nancy (see Colorado County District Court Records, Civil Cause File No. 658: George C. Hatch v. Elizabeth Cass, et al.).

3 Texas Gazette, March 27, 1830; Gulick, Elliott, Allen, and Smither, eds., The Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, vol. 4, part 1, p. 216; Davis, ed., The Diary of William Barret Travis, p. 71. A news article reported that Kuykendall had been trepanned by Dr. Peebles, meaning that small circular sections of corneal tissue or of bone, presumably from his skull, were cut away. The economic state to which this former public servant had been reduced might be judged by his pursuit, a few months after the surgery, of a claim against the United States government for depredations committed against him by Indians in 1816. His signature, present in full on earlier documents, had diminished to an unsteady "X" (see Austin County Colonial Records 1810 [1824]-1832. For an earlier signature, see, for example, his July 13, 1823 letter to the governor of Texas, which is reproduced on pages 28-29 of Ernest William Winkler, ed., Manuscript Letters and Documents of Early Texians 1821-1845 (Austin: The Steck Company, 1937)).

4 Eugene Campbell Barker, ed., "Minutes of the Ayuntamiento of San Felipe de Austin," Southwestern Historical Quarterly, vol. 21, no. 3, January 1918, pp. 299, 302, 304, 310, 398-399. The northernmost boundary of the Fourth Militia District, and thus the southernmost boundary of the district which was to field half a company was: along the Atascosito Road from the Lavaca River to Skull Creek, thence along Skull Creek to the Colorado River, thence to Eagle Lake, thence to the lower line of Thomas Slaughter's league on the San Bernard River, thence to the head of Llano Creek.

5 Barker, ed., "Minutes of the Ayuntamiento of San Felipe de Austin," Southwestern Historical Quarterly, vol. 22, no. 1, July 1918, pp. 79, 82, 83, 86-87. On November 10, 1829, Dewees had purchased the labor granted to James Cummins from Zadock Woods, who had purchased it from Cummins (see Colorado County Deed Records, Book A, p. 307, or Spanish Translated Book A, p. 65).

6 Austin County Colonial Records 1810 [1824]-1832; James Cummins Title, Austin Land Papers, Box 22, Folder 8, Spanish Collections, Archives and Records Division, Texas General Land Office, Austin. The mill that Robinson was to build was to be "suitable for grinding corn." Just over a year after his deadline to complete the mill, Robinson, in his own right, would be granted a square league of land on the west side of the Colorado River in what later became Wharton County on April 6, 1831 (see William Robinson Title, Austin Land Papers, Box 9, File 14, Spanish Collections, Archives and Records Division, Texas General Land Office, Austin).

7 Barker, ed., "Minutes of the Ayuntamiento of San Felipe de Austin," Southwestern Historical Quarterly, vol. 23, no. 2, October 1919, pp. 147-148; James Cummins Title, Austin Land Papers, Box 22, Folder 8, Spanish Collections, Archives and Records Division, Texas General Land Office, Austin; Gulick, Elliott, Allen, and Smither, eds., The Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, vol. 4, part 1, p. 215; Rabb, Travels and Adventures in Texas in the 1820's, p. 11. A biographical sketch of William Rabb's son, Virgil S. Rabb, published more than sixty years after the mill was built, states that the elder Rabb imported two round millstones from Scotland, landed them at Matagorda, then, rigging up an axle to connect the two millstones, rolled them to his homesite (see Memorial and Genealogical Record of Southwest Texas (Chicago: Goodspeed Brothers, 1894), p. 337).

8 Hans Peter Nielsen Gammel, comp., The Laws of Texas 1822-1897, (Austin: The Gammel Book Company, 1898), vol. 1, pp. 479, 503. The minutes of the ayuntamiento after January 1832 are lost; therefore, the exact date of the creation of the District of Alfred, and whether or not it actually was the ayuntamiento which created it, cannot be determined. Lacey, Burnam, and Robinson are known to have lived in the present Colorado County area. Prior to 1832, the subsidiaries of the municipality were known as precincts. Each precinct, of which by 1832 there were six, had its own officials (see Barker, ed., "Minutes of the Ayuntamiento of San Felipe de Austin," Southwestern Historical Quarterly, vol. 24, no. 2, October 1920, pp. 161-162). Robinson was among the most politically active of the Colorado settlers between 1828 and 1832. Elections were regularly held at his home, and, in 1831, he served as regidor in the ayuntamiento (see Barker, ed., "Minutes of the Ayuntamiento of San Felipe de Austin," Southwestern Historical Quarterly, vol. 22, no. 2, October 1918, p. 180, vol. 22, no. 4, April 1919, p. 354, vol. 23, no. 2, October 1919, p. 151, vol. 23, no. 4, April 1920, p. 304, vol. 24, no. 1, July 1920, p. 81, vol. 24, no. 2, October 1920, p. 161). The District of Alfred evidently derived its name from the name of Robinson's plantation, which he had dubbed Alfred (see Colorado County Bond and Mortgage Records, Book B, p. 165).

9 Texas Gazette, March 13, 1830, August 9, 1830; Barker, ed., "Minutes of the Ayuntamiento of San Felipe de Austin," Southwestern Historical Quarterly, vol. 24, no. 2, October 1920, p. 161; Eugene Campbell Barker, ed., The Austin Papers, 3 vols. (vols. 1 and 2, Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office, 1924 and vol. 3, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1926) vol. 2, p. 792. These population increases came despite the decree of April 6, 1830, which prohibited emigration from nations bordering on Mexico, including, obviously, the United States (see Ernest Wallace, David M. Vigness, and George B. Ward, eds., Documents of Texas History (Austin: State House Press, 1994), p. 67, for a convenient printing of the decree).

10 W. A. Glass and Eltea Armstrong, Colorado County [Land Grant Map] (Austin: General Land Office, 1946); Henry Austin Title, Austin Land Papers, Box 22, Folder 2, Spanish Collections, Archives and Records Division, Texas General Land Office, Austin. There is no record of the date of Dewees' wedding. He first mentions a wife in his "letter" dated January 2, 1830 (see William Bluford Dewees, Letters from an Early Settler of Texas, (Louisville: Morton & Griswold, 1852. Reprint. Waco: Texian Press, 1968), p. 119).

11 Colorado County Deed Records, Book J, p. 626; "Reminiscences of Sion R. Bostick," The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, vol. 5, no. 2, October 1901, pp. 86-87. Levi Bostick died on October 24, 1832. He and his wife had had nine children, but only the youngest two were of school age in 1834 (see Austin County Colonial Succession Records, Book 1, pp. 43, 55).

12 Dewees, Letters from an Early Settler of Texas, p. 248; "Memoirs of George Bernard Erath," Southwestern Historical Quarterly, vol. 26, no. 3, January 1923, p. 222; Gulick, Elliott, Allen, and Smither, eds., The Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, vol. 4, part 1, pp. 216-217; Davis, ed., The Diary of William Barret Travis, pp. 44, 48; Rabb, Travels and Adventures in Texas in the 1820's, pp. 11-12; Thomas Earle, comp., The Life, Travels and Opinions of Benjamin Lundy (Philadelphia: William D. Parrish, 1847. Reprint. New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1971), p. 38; Memorial and Genealogical Record of Southwest Texas (Chicago: Goodspeed Brothers, 1894), pp. 337-338).

13 Colorado County Deed Records, Book A, pp. 228, 238, Spanish Translated Book A, p. 47. The deeds are incomplete, and one seems to be slightly inaccurate. When, on January 19, 1837, Mercer purchased additional acreage in the Jones Survey, the land was described as being adjacent to that owned by Heard. No deed chronicling Heard's initial purchase of land in the area has been discovered.

14 See Caroline von Hinueber, "Life of German Pioneers in Early Texas," The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, vol. 2, no. 3, January 1899, pp. 227-232 and "Die erste deutsche Frau in Texas," Der Deutsche Pionier, December 1884, or the much more convienient, though edited and altered, translation in Crystal Sasse Ragsdale, ed., The Golden Free Land (Austin: Landmark Press, 1976), for accounts of Ernst's early days in Texas by his daughter and wife.

15 Pieper Family File, Archives of the Nesbitt Memorial Library, Columbus, which contains copies of German-language documents gathered by Walter P. Noser and Bunnie Louise Brooks from unidentified repositories in Germany; Colorado County District Court Records, Civil Cause File No. 168: Friedrich A. Zimmerscheidt v. The Republic of Texas; Friedrich Adolph Zimmerscheidt, Colorado District First Class File 16; Peter Pieper, Colorado District First Class File 38, both in Original Land Grant Collection, Archives and Records Division, Texas General Land Office, Austin; Peter Pieper Title, Austin Land Papers, Box 21, Folder 42; and Bernard Beimer Title, Austin Land Papers, Box 21, File 16, both in Spanish Collections, Archives and Records Division, Texas General Land Office, Austin; Registro de las Familias, Austin Land Papers, Spanish Collections, Archives and Records Division, Texas General Land Office, Austin, vol. A, pp. 4, 9-10, 89, or the much more convenient though flawed transcription by Villamae Williams and published in 1984 under the title Stephen F. Austin's Register of Families (n. p.), which shows that on March 2, 1835, a Mrs. Bell applied for the league that had been reserved for Pieper "if he does not come forward in tim[e]" (Williams' transcription says "Wants land as is stated for Mrs. Bell, as above. Applies for P. Pipers --- if he has not come forward in time." The original says "Wants land as is stated for Mrs Bell, as above Mrs. Bell applies for P. Pipers lea[gue] if he does not come forward in tim[e]"). The reference to Zimmerscheidt in the Registro de las Familias (p. 4) is undated and otherwise singularly uninformative, but it does state that Zimmerscheidt was 49 years old. His tombstone, in the Zimmerscheidt-Leyendecker Cemetery in Colorado County, gives his date of birth as October 17, 1784. The 1988 edition of the International Genealogical Index gives it as March 29, 1785. Supposing that one or the other is right, Zimmerscheidt might have given his age as 49 at any time between October 17, 1833 and March 29, 1835, meaning that, by mathematical reckoning, he most likely visited the land office in 1834.

16 Barker, ed., "Minutes of the Ayuntamiento of San Felipe de Austin," Southwestern Historical Quarterly, vol. 22, no. 1, July 1918, p. 80; Texas Gazette, January 30, 1830 and other issues through March 20, 1830; Colorado County Deed Records, Book J, p. 626, Book A for Bonds and Deeds, p. 36.

17 Benjamin Lundy refers to the place as "Dewees' ferry" as early as August 12, 1834, or nearly a month before Dewees purchased the land (see Earle, comp., The Life, Travels and Opinions of Benjamin Lundy, p. 123). Moseley was in Brazoria when the local newspaper ran advertisements offering the Tumlinson estate for rent; therefore it is reasonable to speculate that he saw the ads. As, by 1833, he was living on the property and as there is no record that he owned it, it is reasonable to speculate that he might have rented it (see Texas Gazette, May 8, 1830, July 3, 1830 for advertisements by Moseley, and Texas Gazette, January 30, 1830 through March 20, 1830 for Tumlinson advertisement). William Barret Travis witnessed the division of the Tumlinson property. His diary confirms that Moseley, Beeson, James Wright, James J. Ross, and Martha Hill Bostick all lived in the immediate vicinity, and that the recently deceased William Robinson had also lived nearby (see Davis, ed., The Diary of William Barret Travis, p. 91). A more exact location for the Bostick house is provided by Colorado County District Court Records, Civil Cause File No. 63: William B. Dewees v. Martha Bronson alias Bostick.

18 It will be remembered that the name Montezuma had been applied to the place where the Atascosito Road crossed the river, a few miles south of the site where Columbus would be established. Several later writers, including, apparently, Dewees himself, equate the site of Montezuma with that of Columbus. Dewees, or some other unknown writer, did so in an advertisement for lots in the town of Columbus that appeared in the Telegraph and Texas Register on June 8, 1837 and on several subsequent dates. No satisfactory explanation for the adoption of the name Columbus has yet emerged. The most likely explanation is, quite simply, the enormous celebrity that had recently been achieved by Christopher Columbus via the publication of Washington Irving's unimaginably popular, fictionalized biography entitled A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus. The book, which was published in 1828, did nothing less than rescue Columbus from obscurity. That it was known in Texas cannot be denied, for the Texas Gazette of February 27, 1830 carried a poem entitled "The Burial of Columbus" that was inspired by the Irving book. As we have seen, Robert J. Moseley, who lived near Dewees when he presumably named the town, had lived in Brazoria when the poem was published in its newspaper. He may have urged adoption of the name.

19 Petition for a New Municipality to be Called Colorado, December 30, 1835, Memorials and Petitions, Texas State Archives, Austin; Election Returns, RG 307, Secretary of State Papers, Texas State Archives, Austin; Gammel, comp., The Laws of Texas 1822-1897, vol. 1, pp. 757, 1034-1037.

20 John Hampton Kuykendall, "Kuykendall's Recollections of the Campaign," in Eugene Campbell Barker, "The San Jacinto Campaign," The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, vol. 4, no. 4, April 1901, pp. 291-295 (also published in abridged form as "A Contemporary Account of J. H. Kuykendall of the Famous Houston Retreat as it Affected Fayette County" in Leonie Rummel Weyand and Houston Wade, An Early History of Fayette County (La Grange: La Grange Journal, 1936), pp. 124-137); Amelia W. Williams and Eugene Campbell Barker, eds., The Writings of Sam Houston 1813-1863 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1938-1943), vol. 1, pp. 362-364, 367-368. 373-375; Sam Houston Dixon and Louis Wiltz Kemp, The Heroes of San Jacinto (Houston: The Anson Jones Press, 1932), pp. 203-223. Dixon and Kemp list Rabb's company as First Regiment Texas Volunteers, Company F, and list Heard as its captain. As will be seen, Rabb had departed and Heard had taken over command before the company reached San Jacinto.

21 Kuykendall, "Kuykendall's Recollections of the Campaign," The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, vol. 4, no. 4, April 1901, pp. 297-298; Dixon and Kemp, The Heroes of San Jacinto, p. 203; Williams and Barker, eds., The Writings of Sam Houston 1813-1863, vol. 1, pp. 377-378. Burnam's Crossing was about one mile downriver from the northernmost corner of his survey near what became the Colorado-Fayette County line (see Original Field Notes in English, Book 1, p. 216, Spanish Collection, Archives and Records Division, Texas General Land Office, Austin). John Crier's home was in the Joseph Duty Survey (see Colorado County Deed Records, Book G, pp. 281-283; Original Field Notes in English, Book 2, p. 7, Spanish Collection, Archives and Records Division, Texas General Land Office, Austin).

22 Caroline von Hinueber, "Life of German Pioneers in Early Texas," The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, vol 2, no. 3, January 1899, pp. 230-231; James Hampton Kuykendall, "Reminiscences of Early Texans," The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, vol. 7, no. 7, July 1903, p. 59; "Die erste deutsche Frau in Texas," Der Deutsche Pionier, December 1884, or the much more convienient, though edited and altered, translation in Crystal Sasse Ragsdale, ed., The Golden Free Land (Austin: Landmark Press, 1976), pp. 3-4. Mary Theresa Jürgens, whose maiden name was Henneke, was ransomed at a trading post on the Red River within one or two years of her capture. Probably, she was one of the persons obliquely referred to in a joint resolution which was adopted by both houses of the First Congress of the Republic of Texas on December 10, 1836 and which authorized then President Sam Houston to take whatever measures he deemed appropriate to "effect the release or redemption of our unfortunate prisoners, captured by and in the possession of hostile Indians, said to be on the waters of Red River" (see Gammel, The Laws of Texas 1822-1897, pp. 1134-1135). While in captivity, she gave birth to a daughter, Jane Margaret. She later declared that the birth had taken place on August 26, 1836 (see Baptismal Records of St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church, Houston, 1841-1860, Record No. 47). She returned to her husband, but he evidently died shortly thereafter. Burdened with a young daughter and, one must imagine, little means of support, she quickly remarried, to George Grimes, on October 8, 1838 (see Austin County Marriage Records, Book A, p. 28). Grimes had either died or disappeared by 1843, for on May 9 that year, she married her third husband, Samuel Joseph Redgate (see Colorado County Marriage Records, Book B, p. 45). Redgate took formal custody of her daughter on May 29, 1843, had her baptised a Catholic on November 11, 1843, and legally adopted her on January 10, 1845 (see Colorado County Probate Records, Minute Book B, pp. 90, 110; Baptismal Records of St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church, Houston, 1841-1860, Record No. 47; Gammel, comp., The Laws of Texas 1822-1897, vol. 2, p. 1060). Nothing further was ever heard from the two children, both boys, who were captured with her.

23 Williams and Barker, eds., The Writings of Sam Houston, vol. 1, p. 379; Henry Stuart Foote, Texas and the Texans (Philadelphia: Thomas, Cowperthwait & Co., 1841), pp. 269-271, 273 which presents, in two footnotes, an account of the scouting expedition written by one of its members, John Sharp; John H. Jenkins, ed., The Papers of the Texas Revolution 1835-1836 (Austin: Presidial Press, 1973), vol. 5, p. 152; Robert Hancock Hunter, The Narrative of Robert Hancock Hunter (Austin: Encino Press, 1966), p. 12; Petition of Leander Beeson and Heirs of Benjamin Beeson, Memorials and Petitions, Texas State Archives, Austin; Louis E. Brister, trans. and ed., "The Journal of Col. Eduard Harkort, Captain of Engineers, Texas Army, February 8-July 17, 1836," Southwestern Historical Quarterly, vol. 102, no. 3, January 1999, p. 316. The scouting party rendezvoused at Jesse Burnam's house before proceeding to the Navidad. Burnam's house, too, was burned during the campaign, though apparently by others (see Petition of Jesse Burnam, Memorials and Petitions, Texas State Archives, Austin). Though Sharp implies that the date was March 16, it seems evident from his description of the mission that he and the other scouts were not detached from the army until after it had reached or started toward Crier's. Three of the nine men, Sharp, Smith, and Karnes, have been mentioned. Four of the others were John D. Owen, Clark M. Harmon, Benjamin C. Franklin, and Robert Eden Handy. The other two are identified by Sharp as Murphy and Secrest. The first was probably William Murray, who served in Sharp's company; the second Washington H. Secrest, who was associated with both Karnes and Smith. Sharp and Karnes also helped to set the fires in Gonzales (see Foote, Texas and the Texans, p. 268). After the conclusion of the hostilities, Secrest would move into the Columbus area. He married Comfort Robinson, the widow of William Robinson and the sister of Sion Record Bostick, on November 25, 1837 (see Austin County Colonial Records, Succession Book 1, pp. 43, 55; Colorado County Marriage Records, Book B, p. 4).

24 Kuykendall, "Kuykendall's Recollections of the Campaign," The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, vol. 4, no. 4, April 1901, pp. 298-299; Petition of Rhoda G. Hunt, Memorials and Petitions, Texas State Archives, Austin; Gammel, The Laws of Texas 1822-1897, vol. 3, p. 368; Sion Record Bostick, "Reminiscences of Sion R. Bostick," The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, vol. 5, no. 2, October 1901, p. 91; Colorado County District Court Records, Civil Cause File No. 63: William B. Dewees v. Martha Bronson alias Bostick; Hunter, The Narrative of Robert Hancock Hunter, p. 11; Jenkins, ed., The Papers of the Texas Revolution 1835-1836, p. 167. According to Kuykendall, Houston botched the order which dispatched the men to the Atascosito Crossing, sending them on foot because he thought they could find their way better in the dark and go more silently, but ordering them to send a messenger to him on their best horse if the Mexicans showed up. As regards the Bostick home, J. W. E. Wallace later stated that it was moved by the members of the army, namely Erasmo Seguin, Gaspar Flores, and others, for "the purpose of shelter during the difficulties of the time." Sion Bostick was the son of Martha Hill Bostick.

25 Kuykendall, "Kuykendall's Recollections of the Campaign," The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, vol. 4, no. 4, April 1901, pp. 299; Nicholas Descombs Labadie, "San Jacinto Campaign," in James M. Day, comp., The Texas Almanac 1857-1873 (Waco: Texian Press, 1967), pp. 146-147. Labadie, who served under Karnes on his scouting expedition, seems to have the dates confused, and reports that when he and the others returned to their campsite across the river, Houston had already abandoned camp. Perhaps so, though other accounts disagree. Labadie, no fan of Houston, made every effort to disparage him. Certainly, his statements that Houston abandoned Karnes' unit in the field to meet its fate must be evaluated in this light.

26 Williams and Barker, eds., The Writings of Sam Houston, vol. 1, pp. 381-382, 384; Kuykendall, "Kuykendall's Recollections of the Campaign," The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, vol. 4, no. 4, April 1901, pp. 299-300; Rabb, Travels and Adventures in Texas in the 1820's, p. 14; Day, The Texas Almanac 1857-1873, pp. 648-649; Dewees, Letters from an Early Settler of Texas, pp. 192-193.

27 Juan Nepomuceno Almonte, "The Private Journal of Juan Nepomuceno Almonte," Southwestern Historical Quarterly, vol. 48, no. 1, July 1944, pp. 27-30; Antonio López de Santa Anna, "Manifesto Relative to His Operations in the Texas Campaign and His Capture," in Carlos E. Casteñeda, trans., The Mexican Side of the Texan Revolution (Dallas: P. L. Turner Company, 1928), p. 72; Vicente Filisola, "Representation to the Supreme Government with Notes on His Operations as General-in-Chief of the Army of Texas, in Casteñeda, trans., The Mexican Side of the Texan Revolution, p. 173; Dixon and Kemp, The Heroes of San Jacinto, pp. 203, 217; Bostick, "Reminiscences of Sion R. Bostick," The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, vol. 5, no. 2, October 1901, pp. 92-95; Colorado County Probate Records, File No. 11: Leroy Wilkinson.

28 Jose Enrique de la Peña, With Santa Anna in Texas, translated and edited by Carmen Perry (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1975), pp. 160-166; Dewees, Letters from an Early Settler of Texas, pp. 201-202; Hinueber, "Life of German Pioneers in Early Texas," The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, vol. 2, no. 3, January 1899, p. 231. Hinueber remembered that her family's home was the only one that had not been destroyed, and theorized that it was spared because several of the local German Catholics had placed religious symbols in their garden. The house had been visited, for as Hinueber relates, the family had buried its valuables between two poles placed in the ground, and when they returned, both poles had been removed and several holes dug in the area. Just who destroyed the Germans' homes is open to question. Houston is not known to have detached units into the area. The Mexicans seemingly had little reason to destroy the houses. Houston, after all, destroyed the houses that he destroyed to keep them out of Mexican hands. The Indians, on the other hand, with few if any of the settlers around to stop them, may have taken the opportunity to destroy as many houses as possible in the hope that doing so might keep the settlers from returning.