1 William Bluford Dewees, Letters from an Early Settler of Texas (Louisville: Morton & Griswold, 1852. Reprint. Waco: Texian Press, 1968), pp. 205, 208. Another, more subtle limitation to the prosperity of the Colorado settlers should be pointed out. Many of the recent arrivals in the colony had served in the war, and thereby found themselves entitled to land grants. So did many others who met the residency requirements laid out in the new constitution. The sudden availability of so much nearly-free land must have sharply devalued the real estate that had already been acquired, depriving landowners both of rents and of markets for either their land or their produce.

2 Dewees, Letters from an Early Settler of Texas, pp. 206-207. The identity of the army officer, to whom Dewees refers as a major, and that of the Mexican collaborator, are unknown.

3 Hans Peter Nielsen Gammel, comp., The Laws of Texas 1822-1897, (Austin: The Gammel Book Company, 1898), vol. 1, p. 1079; Colorado County Deed Records, Book A, pp. 1, 43, Book E, pp. 575-576, Book F, pp. 246-247; Judgement of the United States District Court, Thomas J. Henderson and Alexander C. Henderson v. James C. Abell and William J. Jones, Original Land Grant Collection, Colorado 1-82, Archives and Records Division, Texas General Land Office, Austin; Colorado County District Court Records, Civil Cause File No. 1: Peter G. Silvey v. John Byrne. Byrne had also purchased much of the James Tumlinson Survey north of the river, but quickly sold it. He bought that land on February 28, 1832 and sold it, to Amos Alexander, on April 16, 1834 (see Colorado County Deed Records, Book A, p. 226, Translated Book A, p. 44).

4 James L. Haley, ed., Most Excellent Sir (Austin: Duncan & Gladstone, 1987), pp. 46-51; Dewees, Letters from an Early Settler of Texas, pp. 205-206. Dewees, who provides all of the details regarding the Fordtran incident, does not give the name of the family which was attacked. However, Washington H. Secrest, writing to Sam Houston on March 1, 1837, states that "the Indians have committed severel depredation on the Setelers of Millcreak and Colorado they killed a dutchman by the name of Fotran and two children . . ." (see Dorman H. Winfrey and James M. Day, eds., Texas Indian Papers, 1825-1843 (Austin: Pemberton Press, 1966. Reprint. Austin: Texas State Historical Society, 1995), vol. 1, pp. 20-21). The Dutchman, that is German, in question must have been Charles Fordtran, though he certainly was not killed in 1837. Fordtran was quite an important player in bringing German immigrants to Texas. He initially lived near Industry, and in fact came to Texas with the man who established Industry, the man known as Friedrich Ernst (see "Die erste deutsche Frau in Texas," Der Deutsche Pionier, December 1884, or the much more convenient, though edited and altered, translation in Crystal Sasse Ragsdale, ed., The Golden Free Land (Austin: Landmark Press, 1976), p. 3). Ernst took title to a league of land on Mill Creek in present Austin County on April 16, 1831; Fordtran, as a single man, to a quarter league on the east side of the Colorado River in present Colorado County on May 18, 1831. Just when Fordtran began living on his survey, and perhaps even if he did at all, is open to question. Most accounts of his life, including one published while he was still alive, imply that he lived near Ernst in Austin County his entire life (see for example, John Henry Brown, Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas (Austin: L. E. Daniell, 1880), pp. 524-527). It may be reasonable to suppose that Fordtran did indeed live on his Colorado County tract for a brief time after the war, or at least that he intended to, but that he moved back to his old digs in Austin County after the visit by the Indians.
    According to Andrew Jackson Sowell’s Early Settlers and Indian Fighters of Southwest Texas ((Austin: Ben C. Jones Co., 1900. Reprint. Austin: State House Press, 1986), p. 54) at about the same time and in about the same area, William Alexander Anderson "Big Foot" Wallace engaged in his first conflict with Indians. Wallace and four men, two of whom are identified as "Gorman Woods" [perhaps Norman] and "a man named Black," pursued a band of Indians who had raided the settlements around La Grange. They caught the Indians, and engaged in a running battle with them across "several miles," killing two and wounding one. Despite the similarities of the stories, it is unlikely that the Dewees posse and that of Wallace were the same, for Dewees’ came from near Columbus and killed no Indians.

5 Telegraph and Texas Register, October 5, 1836; Dewees, Letters from an Early Settler of Texas, pp. 211-215. Documents in his probate file reveal that Steele rented housing from Benjamin Beeson, apparently beginning in January 1836, though his estate is charged $144 for twelve months rent by the Beesons. The Beesons also charged him for a horse, probably the very one he rode on and which was lost when he was killed assisting them in chasing their runaway slaves. Other documents in the file confirm that he was in Texas by November 1835 (see Colorado County Probate Records, File No. 17: Maxwell Steele). He had served in William Jones Elliott Heard's company at San Jacinto, and the land he received for that service was used to pay the few claims against his estate.

6 Gammel, comp., The Laws of Texas 1822-1897, vol. 1, pp. 1069-1070, 1074, 1084, or Ernest Wallace, David M. Vigness, and George B. Ward, eds., Documents of Texas History (Austin: State House Press, 1994), pp. 100-102, 105-106; Journals of the House of Representatives of the Republic of Texas First Congress---First Session (Houston: 1838); "Historical Reminiscences," Houston Daily Telegraph, June 16, 1870 or reprint in James M. Day, ed., The Texas Almanac 1857-1873 (Waco: Texian Press, 1967), pp. 668-669; Texas Indian Papers, vol. 1, pp. 20-21; James Hampton Kuykendall, "Reminiscences of Early Texans," The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, vol. 6, no. 3, January 1903, pp. 246-247; Haley, ed., Most Excellent Sir, pp. 46-49; Amelia W. Williams and Eugene C. Barker, eds., The Writings of Sam Houston 1813-1863 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1938-1943), vol. 2, p. 68; "Die erste deutsche Frau in Texas," or translation in The Golden Free Land, p. 3. Both the site of the Robison home and of the murders are now in Fayette County. Nine months after the murders, Joel Robison married the girl he had visited that day, and Stephens performed the ceremony (see Colorado County Marriage Records, Book B, p. 7).

7 Colorado County District Court Records, Minute Book A, p. 1; Colorado Citizen, October 22, 1889. The date of the session is given as "April term 1837." Williamson, as judge of the Third Judicial District, was required by law to conduct court twice a year in six different counties over a six week period, beginning his circuit on the first Mondays in March and September. Colorado County was the fifth stop on the circuit, meaning that Williamson should have been there on the fifth Monday of his tour, or April 3 (see Gammel, comp., The Laws of Texas 1822-1897, vol. 1, pp. 1258-1259). Many writers have stated that the first session of court was held under an oak tree, however, the above cited issue of the local newspaper states that it was held "in a log house near the river, long since gone to decay." Since it is known that there was a schoolhouse near the river as early as 1833, and since it probably contained the space that the court needed, it is likely that this, the earliest account of the session that mentions a location, is correct.

8 Wallace, Vigness, and Ward, eds., Documents of Texas History, p. 102; Gammel, comp., The Laws of Texas 1822-1897, vol. 1, pp. 1014, 1201-1206, 1208-1223; Amelia W. Williams and Eugene Campbell Barker, eds., The Writings of Sam Houston (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1938-1943), vol. 1, p. 514.

9 Election Returns, Secretary of State Papers (RG 307), Texas State Archives, Austin; Colorado County Deed Records, Book A, p. 23. On December 25, 1835, a man named Tom Thatcher murdered another man said to be his cousin in Vicksburg, Mississippi, then fled toward Louisiana. There his trail was apparently lost. It is well within the realm of reason to suppose that he came to Texas, which would then have afforded him some shelter from authorities in the United States, and that, a little over a year later, he was elected district clerk of Colorado County (see From Virginia to Texas, 1835 Diary of Col. Wm. F. Gray (Houston: Gray, Dillaye & Co., 1909. Reprint. Houston: Fletcher Young Publishing, 1965), pp. 57-58).
    Curiously, Brotherton, who has appeared many times in the preceding chapters of this history, had connections to two governors of the State of Missouri. When he came to Texas in 1822, he carried with him a letter of introduction from the then governor of the state, Alexander McNair. After Brotherton died, in the first few months of 1839, his nephew, Joseph Washington McClurg, inherited his considerable Colorado County property. McClurg came to Texas and, on March 25, 1839, was appointed administrator of his uncle's estate by the Colorado County probate court. Later, he took a job as deputy county clerk, and, on December 2, 1840, secured a license to practice law. Apparently, he left the state shortly thereafter. The May 3, 1841 sale of most of his holdings in Columbus, some of which he had purchased only a month earlier, probably signals his departure from Texas. He continued to own two lots in Columbus and more than 500 acres on the river west of town until 1851. That year, his appointed agent, William B. Perry, sold one of the town lots and the farm. He sold the other lot the following year. By then, McClurg had been to California, where he unsuccessfully tried his hand at mining gold. He returned to Missouri, where, in Camden County, he and two partners opened a vastly successful store. His growing wealth and the Civil War led him into politics. Beginning in 1862, he served three terms in congress, and, in 1869 and 1870, he served as governor of Missouri (see 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. 1, pp. 493-494; Colorado County Probate Records, File No. 36: Robert Brotherton; Minute Book A, p. 15; Colorado County Bond and Mortgage Records, Book B, p. 300, Colorado County Commissioners Court Minutes, Book A, pp. 15, 18; Colorado County District Court Records, Minute Book A & B, p. 86; Colorado County Deed Records, Book C, p. 79, Book H, pp. 12, 13, 14, 68, 225; Floyd C. Shoemaker, ed., Missouri Day by Day (State Historical Society of Missouri, 1942), pp. 142-143. This Robert Brotherton who died in early 1839 is different from the Robert Brotherton who died on July 16, 1839. That Robert Brotherton, who came to Texas about the same time as the Colorado County Robert Brotherton died, was a traveling minister (see [Houston] Morning Star, August 9, 1839)).

10 Colorado County Commissioners Court Minutes, Book A, p. [i]; Gammel, The Laws of Texas 1822-1897, vol. 1, p. 1210. Until the county secured a bound book, the commissioners court minutes were kept on loose sheets of paper. In 1995, the first book, Book A, was rebound. The 22 loose sheets that contained the earliest minutes were bound into it, though, unhappily, in incorrect order. The original pages of Book A were numbered from 1 to 110. The loose sheets, however, were never numbered. For reference, these sheets have been assigned lower case Roman numbers, but numbered in chronological order rather than in the order that they were bound into the book.

11 Colorado County Commissioners Court Minutes, Book A, p. [ii].

12 James M. Day, comp. and ed., Post Office Papers of the Republic of Texas 1836-1839 (Austin: Texas State Library, 1966), pp. 36, 65. The earliest reference to the Egypt Post Office is dated February 17, 1837. For two statements regarding the origin of the name Egypt, see C. C. Cody, "Rev. Martin Ruter, A. M., D. D.," The Texas Methodist Historical Quarterly, vol. 1, no. 1, July 1909, p. 21, which quotes from a letter written by Ruter on December 10, 1837; and H. A. Graves, comp., Reminiscences and Events in the Ministerial Life of Rev. John Wesley DeVilbiss (Galveston: W. A. Shaw & Co., 1886), p. 33 which reproduces part of a reminiscence attributed to DeVilbiss.

13 Day, comp. and ed., Post Office Papers of the Republic of Texas 1836-1839, p. 37; Matagorda Bulletin, September 27, 1838; Andrew Forest Muir, ed., Texas in 1837 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1958), p. 81; Telegraph and Texas Register, May 2, 1837, which contains the first printing of the first of the three ads, and June 8, 1837, which contains the first printings of the second and third ads; Colorado County Deed Records, Book A, p. 139. The statement, in a brief biographical sketch of Armstead Carter, that Columbus contained only three or four houses in 1838 must be taken as a slight underestimate (see A Twentieth Century History of Southwest Texas (Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1907), vol. 2, p. 361). In March 1836, Sam Houston's army had moved the home of Martha Bostick from its original site inside the bend to the north of Columbus into the fledgling town, for, as J. W. E. Wallace later stated, "the purpose of shelter during the difficulties of the time." The house may have been destroyed during the hostilities (see Colorado County District Court Records, Civil Cause File No. 63: William B. Dewees v. Martha Bronson alias Bostick).

14 Matagorda Bulletin, September 27, 1838 and other issues through January 31, 1839; Colorado County Deed Records, Book A, pp. 9, 15, 21, 32, 40, 45, 54, 63, 69, 71, 73, 75-76, 83, 107-108, 110, 120, 127, 130-132, 134-135, 137, 146, 148, 160, 163, 168, 173, 180, 187, 189-191, 193, 196-197, 236, 246, 266, 269, 271, 274, 276-277, 280, 287, 291, 296, 300, 313-314, 325, 327, 330, 335, 337-338, 348, 355-356, 382, 394, Book B, pp. 16, 23, 30, 40, 52, 111, 115, 156, 208, Book F, p. 191, Book I, p. 331, all of which are conveniently summarized in Bill Stein and Jim Sewell, "Historical Atlas of Columbus," Nesbitt Memorial Library Journal, vol. 3, no. 2, May 1993, pp. 99-104.

15 Gammel, comp., The Laws of Texas 1822-1897, vol. 1, pp. 1074, 1377-1378; Petition from the Citizens of Colorado County, County Boundaries, May 10, 1838, Memorials and Petitions, Texas State Archives, Austin. Specifically, the new northwest border of Colorado County thereby became a line drawn from the northernmost point of the Joel Ponton Survey on the Lavaca River through the northernmost point of the Joseph Duty Survey on the Colorado River extended to the watershed of the Colorado and Brazos Rivers. The creation of Fayette County was a consequence of the settlement of La Grange and the area around it, which had developed much more rapidly than Columbus and its surrounding area (see Matagorda Bulletin, September 27, 1838, May 1, 1839, Morning Star, May 9, 1839).

16 Gammel, comp., The Laws of Texas 1822-1897, vol. 1, pp. 1409, 1417; Colorado County Book of Land Certificates, pp. 13-59, 132-152; W. A. Glass and Eltea Armstrong, Colorado County [Land Grant Map] (Austin: General Land Office, 1946).

17 Gammel, comp., The Laws of Texas 1822-1897, vol. 1, p. 1212; Colorado County District Court Records, Civil Cause File No. 38: William Hudgeons v. William B. Dewees; Minute Book A & B, pp. 91-92, 111, 117; James Webb and Thomas H. Duval, Reports of Cases Argued and Decided in the Supreme Court of the State of Texas [Texas Reports], vol. 1 (Galveston, 1848), pp. 192-198. To be fair to the efficiency of the supreme court, it should be pointed out that the case actually went to the court twice. They first considered it in 1844. On June 10 that year, the court requested additional documents from the district court in Colorado County. By the time the request was honored and the case came up again, it was 1847, and the republic had joined the United States.

18 Colorado County District Court Records, Minute Book A & B, p. 3. The Colorado County incident was certainly not unique. The June 22, 1839 edition of the Morning Star contains a report of a criminal who was flogged and branded in Houston.

19 Colorado County District Court Records, Criminal Cause File No. 6: Republic of Texas v. Leander Beeson and Spencer Townsend; Minute Book A & B, pp. 7-9.

20 Colorado County District Court Records, Criminal Cause File No. 14: Republic of Texas v. John Lyle; Criminal Cause File No. 18: Republic of Texas v. John F. Smith; Minute Book A & B, pp. 10-11.

21 Colorado County Commissioners Court Minutes, Book A, pp. 17, 27, 29, 36, 64.

22 Barker, ed., The Austin Papers, vol. 2, p. 299; Texas Gazette, May 15, 1830: Gammel, comp., The Laws of Texas 1822-1897, vol. 1, pp. 292-293, 1371-1375, 1453-1454. Mina, the town to which Milam was to ensure navigation, shortly became known as Bastrop.
    On November 28, 1838, three men from the United States, Wilson Kirk Shinn of Clarksburg, Virginia, Hugh Crolley of Baltimore, Maryland, and North Evans of Washington, D. C., petitioned the president of Texas, Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, for a charter to make the Colorado River navigable, proposing that their company be named the Shinn Colorado Navigation Company. Shinn, according to his own statement, had examined the river the previous winter. Nothing became of Shinn's effort, probably because by the time his petition was drawn up and sent to Texas, another company had already been created (see 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. 2, pp. 304-306).

23 Gammel, comp., The Laws of Texas 1822-1897, vol. 1, p. 1372; Matagorda Bulletin, January 10, 1838, March 7, 1838, March 14, 1838, April 11, 1838. The commissioners who were to conduct the sale of stock at Columbus were Joseph Worthington Elliott Wallace, Robert Brotherton, and Stephen Townsend; those at Mercer's house were Mercer, Thomas Rabb, and William Jones Elliot Heard.

24 Matagorda Bulletin, October 18, 1838, March 14, 1839, May 9, 1839; William C. McKinstry, The Colorado Navigator (Matagorda: Colorado Gazette, 1840), p. [ii]; Richmond Telescope, July 3, 1839; Petition of the Citizens of the Colorado Valley, n. d. [c. 1843], Memorials and Petitions, Texas State Archives, Austin. Besides Wadham, two of the other men at the small convention, Colin De Bland and Joseph Worthington Elliott Wallace, had intimate connections to Colorado County. The men described themselves as delegates, though it is not apparent that they were elected or appointed by anybody. Their published resolutions declared that "the construction of a Rail Road from Houston to the Brazos operates directly against the best local interests of Western Texas to the aggrandizement of the former place alone" and that "the present Houston and Brazos Rail Road is intended to be made an individual means of monopoly and speculation."

25 Telegraph and Texas Register, October 6, 1838; Matagorda Bulletin, May 9, 1839; Dewees, Letters from an Early Settler of Texas, pp. 223-226. See also A Twentieth Century History of Southwest Texas (Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1907), vol. 2, p. 361, which contains a biographical sketch of Armstead Carter that mentions the same Indian raid and refers to it as the last.

26 James O. Breeden, ed., A Long Ride in Texas (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1994), p. 45; Matagorda Bulletin, May 1, 1839; Day, comp. and ed., Post Office Papers of the Republic of Texas 1836-1839, p. 64; [Houston] Morning Star, January 9, 1840, January 16, 1840, January 17, 1840, January 22, 1840; Colorado County Deed Records, Book B, pp. 300, 302, 304, 307, 309, 312; Austin City Gazette, May 6, 1840. The Republic of Texas generally established mail routes by legislation, but no act creating a route through Columbus was passed until February 6, 1840. However, as we have seen, in April 1836, Beeson's Crossing was included on one mail route. Probably very shortly afterward, since that place was nearly out of existence, the mail was informally diverted to the north to the incipient town of Columbus. Certainly by December 1837, the mail went through Columbus, and, a year later, Rezin Byrne, who was in fact a mail carrier, was apparently functioning as a postmaster in Columbus (see Day, comp. and ed., Post Office Papers of the Republic of Texas 1836-1839, pp. 37, 200; James M. Day, comp. and ed., Post Office Papers of the Republic of Texas 1839-1840, p. 20, Matagorda Bulletin, December 20, 1837).
    There may have been a newspaper known as the Columbus Sentinel and Herald published in Columbus in 1839. On August 22 that year, the Colorado Gazette and Advertiser, which was published in Matagorda, quoted an item from a paper it identified as "the Columbus Sentinel and Herald of the 11th inst." Though there is serious doubt that a newspaper from Georgia could reach Matagorda in eleven days’ time, there was a paper called the Sentinel and Herald published in Columbus, Georgia between 1832 and 1841 which probably was the source of the item (see Thomas Streeter, Bibliography of Texas (1955. Reprint. Woodbridge, Connecticut: Research Publications, Inc., 1983), pp. 191-192 and John Melton Wallace, Gaceta to Gazette: A Check List of Texas Newspapers, 1813-1846 (Austin, 1966), p. 34).

27 Dewees, Letters from an Early Settler of Texas, p. 236; Colorado County Deed Records, Book B, p. 291; W. Eugene Hollon and Ruth Lapham Butler, eds., William Bollaert's Texas (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1956), p. 183. Whitfield, who was apparently a land speculator, made several land deals in Colorado County in early 1840. On January 29, 1840, he bought an undivided one half interest in four blocks in Columbus and in large tracts outside the city from Dewees, on condition that he or some other purchaser buy the property outright before January 24, 1841. He made a similar deal with John Louber Gilder six days later. Between those deals, he purchased the 1476 acre tract that Leander Beeson was entitled to by virtue of a certificate issued to him by the Colorado County Board of Land Commissioners, but had not yet patented (see Colorado County Deed Records, Book B, pp. 265, 277, 285; Colorado County Book of Land Certificates, p. 47).

28 Richard S. Hunt and Jesse F. Randel, A New Guide to Texas (New York: Sherman & Smith, 1845), p. 53; Ferdinand Roemer, Texas, trans. Oswald Mueller (San Antonio: Standard Printing Company, 1935. Reprint. Waco: Texian Press, 1967), p. 81; Alwin H. Sörgel, A Sojourn in Texas, 1846-1847, trans. Wolfram M. Von-Maszewski (San Marcos: German-Texan Heritage Society, 1992), pp. 43, 222. In their advertisement in the [Houston] Morning Star of January 9, 1840, the proprietors of Columbus had claimed that there were 500 people and 60 buildings then in town. Obviously, they were exaggerating. People may certainly have left the city in the intervening five years, but it is unlikely that they would have deigned to destroy their houses as they left. A hurricane struck Galveston in September 1842, and did rather a lot of damage, however there is no evidence to suggest that it proceeded any distance inland (see Telegraph and Texas Register, September 21, 1842, September 28, 1842, October 5, 1842, or [Houston] Morning Star, September 24, 1842, September 29, 1842).

29 [Houston] Morning Star, August 1, 1839; Day, comp. and ed., Post Office Papers of the Republic of Texas 1836-1839, pp. 65, 67; Petition to the Congress of the Republic to create Lavaca County, n. d. [c. 1841], Memorials and Petitions, Texas State Archives; Colorado County Commissioners Court Minutes, Book A, p. 83. For more on Margaret Hallett, see the many books of Paul Carl Boethel, most particularly History of Lavaca County (Austin: Von Boeckmann-Jones, 1959). Kessler's Bluff Post Office was in the Roland Thompson Survey, where Charles Kessler purchased land on August 2, 1841 (see Colorado County Deed Records, Book C, p. 102). Kessler was no ordinary immigrant. His brother, Henry, had run two important early businesses in Houston, Kessler's Arcade and Kessler's Round Tent, and had, reportedly, served on Houston's city council. After Henry's death, on October 30, 1840, Charles had inherited some $2000 worth of land and property, including his brother's $400 gold watch (see Harris County Probate Records, Record Book E, pp. 386-388; Telegraph and Texas Register, October 27, 1838, December 1, 1838; Gustav Dresel, Gustav Dresel's Houston Journal, Max Freund, trans. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1954), pp. 32, 89, 108, 131, 144).

30 Gammel, comp., The Laws of Texas 1822-1897, vol. 1, pp. 541-542, 1080; Colorado County Deed Records, Book A, pp. 125, 176, 303; Colorado County Marriage Records, Book B, pp. 2, 11; Colorado County Book of Land Certificates, pp. 31-32, 45, 49-50; Colorado County Probate Records, Final Record Book D, p. 37; August Schröder, ed., Beiträge Zur Westfälische Familienforschung (Münster, 1966), p. 66, items 162, 163, 165, p. 275, item 3999. In addition to Wolters, Pieper, and Beimer, four other Germans, Grunder, Caspar Heimann, Bernard Schneider, and Johann Heinrich Beimer, Bernard's deceased brother, all received certificates for various amounts of land on February 17, 1838 (see Colorado County Book of Land Certificates, pp. 30-32). In Texas, Schneider, for whatever reason, apparently changed his surname from that of his father, Honerman, to the maiden name of his mother and the Beimers shortened their surnames from Silkenbömer (see Schröder, ed., Beiträge Zur Westfälische Familienforschung, p. 66, item 162, p. 275, item 3999, p. 298, item 4520). Johann Heinrich Beimer's illegitimate daughter, however, used the name Wilhelmina Silkenbömer on her marriage license (see Colorado County Marriage Records, Book B, p. 85). In addition, Zimmerscheidt's original name appears to have been Zimmerschitt. He changed his name only slightly, probably because he came to understand that its pronunciation caused titters among English speakers.

31 Peter Pieper, Colorado District First Class File 38, and Bernard Beimer, Colorado District First Class File 5, both in Original Land Grant Collection, Archives and Records Division, Texas General Land Office, Austin; Colorado County Deed Records, Book C, pp. 125, 132, 136, 139, 141, 143, 145, 147, 149; Book D, p. 34, Book E, pp. 77, 216; Colorado County Bond and Mortgage Records, Book B, p. 104; James Webb and Thomas H. Duval, Reports of Cases Argued and Decided in the Supreme Court of the State of Texas [Texas Reports], vol. 1 (Galveston, 1848), pp. 50-57; Colorado County District Court Records, Civil Cause File No. 168: Friedrich A. Zimmerscheidt v. Republic of Texas, Minute Book A & B, p. 272, Civil Cause File No. 450: John Hennings v. Friedrich A. Zimmerscheidt. Welchmeyer had been associated with the Kesslers, or at least with Kessler's Arcade, in Houston (see [Houston] Morning Star, April 26, 1839 and subsequent issues).

32 Colorado County Bond and Mortgage Records, Book B, p. 230; Bill Stein, Wolfram M. Von-Maszewski, Marie Rose Remmel, and others, transcribers, James C. Kearney and Wolfram M. Von-Maszewski, translators, "Excerpts from the Kirchenbuch of Louis Cachand Ervendberg," Nesbitt Memorial Library Journal, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 46-47; James M. Day, comp. and ed., Post Office Papers of the Republic of Texas 1836-1839 (Austin: Texas State Library, 1966), p. 65. Though the Cummins Creek Post Office was said to be in Fayette County, William Frels was its first postmaster. The 1986 booklet entitled The History of Frelsburg (New Ulm: New Ulm Enterprise Print, 1986) states that the community was once also called Kraewinkel. This name does not appear in any contemporaneous source. As Anders Saustrup has pointed out, Krähwinkel was the name of the provincial town in August von Kotzebue's 1803 play "Die deutschen Kleinstädter" and has since been used, in an amusing and vaguely derogatory manner, to describe similarly provincial small towns (see Jean Gross and Anders Saustrup, trans. and eds., "From Coblenz to Colorado County, 1843-1844: Early Leyendecker Letters to the Old Country," Nesbitt Memorial Library Journal, vol. 1, no. 6, August 1990, pp. 200-201). Some literate members or observers of the community may have used the name as a joke, a joke which went undetected by the less literate, who subsequently and innocently passed the name down to their descendants.

33 Petition of Sundry Germans for the incorporation of Hermans University, Memorials and Petitions, Texas State Archives, Austin; Gammel, comp., The Laws of Texas 1822-1897, vol. 2, pp. 948-950. The university was named after Arminius, or, as the Germans called him, Hermann, whose defeat of the legions of Publius Quinctilius Varus in the Teutoburg Forest in the summer of AD 9 prevented the conquest of most of what would become Germany by the Romans.

34 C. C. Cody, "Rev. Martin Ruter, A. M., D. D.," The Texas Methodist Historical Quarterly, vol. 1, no. 1, July 1909, pp. 20, 21, 27, 33, which quote from journals and letters written by Ruter; Colorado County Deed Records, Book A, p. 259, Book E, pp. 330, 549; Colorado County Marriage Records, Book B (the Egypt weddings appear on pp. 13, 20-21, 30-31); Dewees, Letters from an Early Settler of Texas, pp. 137, 307; Zachariah Nehemiah Morrell, Flowers and Fruits from the Wilderness (Boston: Gould and Lincoln, 1872), p. 73; John S. Menefee, "Early Jackson County History," Jackson County Clarion, May 20, 1880 (or quotation on p. 219 of Louis Wiltz Kemp, The Signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence (Salado: The Anson Jones Press, 1949)). One must wonder whether it was Dewees or his secret co-author, Emanetta Cara Kimball, who made the remark about the sermon into a mild complaint. Morrell, a preacher who began his ministry in Texas in 1836, but who, unhappily, spent little time in the Colorado County area, provides a good picture of the early colonist's response to his efforts. He tells of an 1838 religious service that was intentionally and continually disrupted by a number of men on the porch until he struck one, who stuck his head in a window, with a cane, and remarks that, after two years in Texas, "if a single soul had been converted under my ministry I did not know it" (see Morrell, Flowers and Fruits from the Wilderness, pp. 83, 89-90).

35 Colorado County Deed Records, Book B, p. 228; Bill Stein, Wolfram M. Von-Maszewski, Marie Rose Remmel, and others, transcribers, James C. Kearney and Wolfram M. Von-Maszewski, translators, "Excerpts from the Kirchenbuch of Louis Cachand Ervendberg," Nesbitt Memorial Library Journal, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 41-64, which presents a transcription of the register Ervendberg kept of his ecclesiastical activity, the original of which is in the State Archives in Austin. Ervendberg's cupidity is referred to in a letter by Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels to Ottfried Hans Freiherr [John O.] Meusebach, in vol. 59, Solms-Braunfels Archiv, The Center for American History, University of Texas, Austin. Ervendberg stayed in Comal County for a decade. In 1855, he abandoned his wife and his flock and ran off to Mexico with a 17 year old girl who had been entrusted to his orphanage a few years earlier. In February 1863, bandits broke into his home, stole a considerable sum of money, and killed him.

36 "1840--Daily Journal--1846 of the Late Rt. Rev. J. M. Odin," Southern Messenger, June 15, 1893; Baptismal Records of St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church, Houston, 1841-1860, Records No. 12, 39-52; Jean Gross and Anders Saustrup, trans. and ed., "From Coblenz to Colorado County, 1843-1844: Early Leyendecker Letters to the Old Country," Nesbitt Memorial Library Journal, vol. 1, no. 6, August 1990, p. 188; Colorado County Deed Records, Book G, p. 9. In late December 1843 or early January 1844, a ship carrying 129 German immigrants, 124 of whom were Catholic, arrived in Galveston. The newly arrived Catholics immediately arranged to celebrate their arrival with a Mass, then went west to look for land. Probably, many of these apparently devout Catholics ended up in the Cummins Creek settlement and provided the stimulus for the development of the Catholic congregation there. Supporting such an assertion are the facts that in March 1844, two months after the settlers left Galveston, Father Ogé made a trip to Cummins Creek, and two months after that, a church was being built (see Letter of Jean Marie Odin to Jean-Baptiste Étienne, January 12, 1844, Episcopal Collection, Papers of Jean Marie Odin, Catholic Archives of Texas; "1840--Daily Journal--1846 of the Late Rt. Rev. J. M. Odin," Southern Messenger, June 29, 1893).
    The fact that the Germans practiced Catholicism further isolated them from the Anglo community. An anti-Catholic fever was rising in the United States in the 1830s. The feeling was fuelled by Maria Monk's 1836 bestselling book Awful Disclosures of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery in Montreal, which told how, as a Roman Catholic nun at the awful Montreal nunnery, she had been compelled to participate in the routine lecherous behavior of nuns and priests in secret underground chambers. Monk, who appeared in New York in the company of a zealous Protestant preacher, coyly accepted the sympathy and adulation of the community for the ordeal she told everyone she had survived. Her celebrity was only slightly tarnished by the revelation that she had never been in the convent, but had in fact been a prostitute. Monk's theme, of secret hypocrisies within the Catholic church, meshed nicely with that of the famous preacher Lyman Beecher, whose 1835 book, A Plea for the West, told of secret Catholic conspiracies to take over the democratic governments of the United States. These books were but two of the numerous publications which devoted themselves to combatting what they called Popery.

37 Gammel, comp., The Laws of Texas 1822-1897, vol. 2, pp. 529-530, 650-651; Election Returns, Secretary of State Papers (RG 307), Texas State Archives, Austin.

38 Colorado County Deed Records, Book E, pp. 18-23.

39 James Wilmer Dallam, A Digest of the Laws of Texas Containing a Full and Complete Compilation of the Land Laws Together with the Opinions of the Supreme Court (1845. Reprint. Austin: Gammel-Statesman Publishing Co., 1904), pp. 473-486; Minutes of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Texas from January Term 1841, Texas State Archives, Austin; Gammel, comp., The Laws of Texas 1822-1897, vol. 2, pp. 683-684; Election Returns, Secretary of State Papers (RG 307), Texas State Archives, Austin; Colorado County Deed Records, Book D, p. 332, Book E, pp. 48-51. The case was styled Stockton v. Montgomery when it was considered by the supreme court. Curiously, though the report of the case specifies that it was appealed from Colorado County, no mention of the case occurs in the Colorado County district court records, nor does any cause file seem to be extant.

40 Colorado County District Court Records, Criminal Cause File No. 205: Republic of Texas v. George W. Thatcher. Duggan was a half-brother of Montgomery's mother.

41 Colorado County District Court Records, Criminal Cause File No. 205: Republic of Texas v. George W. Thatcher.

42 Colorado County District Court Records, Criminal Cause File No. 205: Republic of Texas v. George W. Thatcher; Minute Book A & B, p. 215.

43 Colorado County District Court Records, Criminal Cause File No. 16: Republic of Texas v. Colin De Bland; Criminal Cause File No. 75: Republic of Texas v. Mason B. Foley; Criminal Cause File No. 76: Republic of Texas v. Colin De Bland; Criminal Cause File No. 77: Republic of Texas v. Isam Tooke; Criminal Cause File No. 78: Republic of Texas v. Isam Tooke; Criminal Cause File No. 175: Republic of Texas v. Bernard Beimer; Criminal Cause File No. 198: Republic of Texas v. Carl Gieseke. The man whom Beimer assaulted was probably actually Otto Henkhaus.

44 Dewees, Letters from an Early Settler of Texas, pp. 247-248, DeWitt Clinton Baker, comp., A Texas Scrap-Book (New York: A. S. Barnes and Co., 1875), p. 327; Telegraph and Texas Register, June 22, 1842, June 28, 1843; Hollon and Butler, eds., William Bollaert's Texas, p. 261; Petition of the Citizens of the Colorado Valley, n. d. [c. 1843], Memorials and Petitions, Texas State Archives, Austin; Gammel, comp., The Laws of Texas 1822-1897, vol. 2, pp. 937-940. See also A. B. Lawrence, Texas in 1840 (New York: 1840), p. 93; Francis S. Latham, Travels in the Republic of Texas, 1842 (Austin: The Encino Press, 1971), p. 19. Regarding the identity of the keelboat, see the following footnote.

45 Telegraph and Texas Register, March 27, 1844, May 8, 1844, May 22, 1844; La Grange Intelligencer, April 4, 1844, May 2, 1844. The origin of the keelboat Edward Burleson and the fate of that known as the David Crockett is unknown. Possibly, the former was simply the latter renamed. The June 28, 1843 edition of the Telegraph and Texas Register reports on a keelboat "which has long been running between La Grange and the head of the Raft" and identifies it as the property of "Mr. J. Heald." His identity has not been established.

46 Colorado County Commissioners Court Minutes, Book A, pp. 60-63, 65, 77-78, 82, 85, 90-95. Texana was the county seat of Jackson County from the county's organization in 1836 until 1883.

47 Colorado County Commissioners Court Minutes, Book A, pp. [v], 60, 65, 79, 93-97, 102-104; Colorado County Bond and Mortgage Records, Book B, pp. 20. 328; Colorado County Deed Records, Book A, p. 300; Colorado County Probate Records, File No. 21: Peter G. Silvey. Sutherland was apparently not too concerned with his ferry. In 1845, the county twice ordered him to place a proper boat in the water or face losing his license (see Colorado County Commissioners Court Minutes, Book A, pp. 108-109, Book 1, p. 2). In 1845, Turner's ferry would be taken over by Sion R. Bostick and Suggs' by Asa Townsend. In 1846, Bostick's would go to John Hope (see Colorado County Commissioners Court Minutes, Book A, p. 102, Book 1, pp. 1, 54, 59; Colorado County Deed Records, Book E, p. 422, Book F, p. 331).

48 Dewees, Letters from an Early Settler of Texas, pp. 251, 253; Telegraph and Texas Register, May 7, 1845; Election Returns, Secretary of State Papers (RG 307), Texas State Archives, Austin; Journals of the Convention Assembled at the City of Austin on the Fourth of July, 1845, for the Purpose of Framing a Constitution for the State of Texas (Austin: Miner & Cruger, 1845. Facsimile reprint. Austin: Hart Graphics, 1974), pp. 3, 377; Colorado County District Court Records, Civil Cause File No. 361: George W. Brown v. James S. Montgomery; Colorado County Marriage Records, Book B, p. 71; Colorado County Probate Records, Final Record Book C, pp. 143-144, 199-200; Colorado County Deed Records, Book F, p. 273, Book G, p. 121, Book H, pp. 308, 323; Colorado County Bond & Mortgage Records, Book D, p. 159. Elizabeth C. Brown was to remarry, to Edward Musgrove Glenn, an attorney some eighteen years older than herself, on June 18, 1851 (see Lavaca County Marriage Records, Book A, p. 52). Elizabeth Glenn's obituary, in the May 22, 1884 issue of the Colorado Citizen, provides her birthdate, April 1, 1828.

49 Election Returns, Secretary of State Papers (RG 307), Texas State Archives, Austin; Texas National Register, November 15, 1845; Members of the Texas Legislature, 1846-1962 (n. p., 1962), pp. 3-4.