Archives for November 2014

Haden H. Edwards was born 1812 in Virginia. At the outbreak of the Texas Revolution he was elected captain of a company of volunteers that served at the Siege of Béxar in December 1835. After the revolution he fought in several Indian campaigns and attained the rank of brigadier general. In January 1844 President Sam Houston sent Edwards on a trading mission among the Indians of the Clear Fork of the Brazos River. At the start of the Mexican War Edwards enlisted as a private in Capt. William F. Sparks’s Company E of Col. George T. Wood’s Second Regiment, Texas Mounted Rifles, but left the service with a disability discharge on August 31, 1846.

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Stephen Dennison in 1812. He traveled to Texas by way of New Orleans as a member of Capt. Thomas H. Breece’s company of New Orleans Greys. He took part in the Siege of Béxar and later served in the Alamo garrison as a member of Capt. William Blazeby’s infantry company. Dennison died in the battle of the Alamo on March 6, 1836.

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Thomas Stovin Saul joined the Revolutionary Army at Gonzales and on October 8 was elected orderly sergeant for the Washington company. He served under James G. Swisher at the Siege of Béxar and was honorably discharged on December 23, 1835. He was appointed administrator of David Crockett’s estate and appeared before the land board to urge Crockett’s military claims on February 6, 1838. Saul was not listed in muster rolls and did not receive any donation or bounty lands. He died before January 21, 1840.

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Charles Keller Reese was born 1810 in Kentucky. He and his brother Washington joined Capt. John York’s company at Gonzales and served at the Siege of Béxar. They reenlisted in Capt. Robert James Calder’s Company K of Col. Edward Burleson’s First Regiment, Texas Volunteers, on March 13, 1836, and fought at the battle of San Jacinto. Washington Reese was killed by Comanches in Burnet County on August 27, 1839, while serving as a guide to the family of John West. In 1842, in response to Adrián Woll’s raid on San Antonio, Reese and his sixteen-year-old brother William enlisted as privates in Capt. John S. McNeill’s company of Col. James R. Cooke’s First Regiment of Brig. Gen. Alexander Somervell’s South Western Army and took part in the Somervell expedition. On December 14 Reese and Thomas Jefferson Green were the first Texans to cross the Rio Grande and plant the American flag on Mexican soil. When the army was reorganized on the Rio Grande for the Mier expedition with William S. Fisher in command, Reese was elected captain of Company F. His brother William, William Preston Stapp, and Joseph Berry were members of his company. Reese was perhaps the most controversial figure involved in the dismal history of the Mier prisoners. By Green’s account, Reese distinguished himself at the battle of Mier by taking an active role in the fighting, staunchly opposing surrender, and advocating an escape plan before the prisoners were marched south into the interior of Mexico.

Samuel H. Walker, however, described Reese’s behavior at Mier as “childish.” Reese was, in Walker’s words, “noisy & clamorous” in his arguments against escape once the party was south of Monterrey, too deep in Mexican territory to make good their escape to Texas. “You have sinned away your day of grace,” Andrew Phelps McCormick heard him say; “what was courage and wisdom on the Rio Grande would be madness and weakness here.” Walker supposed the escape plot scheduled for February 3, 1843, was foiled by Reese’s warning of the Mexican guards, and on February 10, the evening before the uprising at Salado that precipitated the Black Bean Episode, Reese was quoted as saying, “This can be stopped, and I will do it.” He left the compound with a Mexican officer, and when he returned the guard was doubled. “This is circumstantial evidence,” wrote fellow captive Joseph D. McCutchan, “but I think sufficient, at least, to lay suspicion on the man who acted thus.” On May 4, 1843, Walker wrote to Albert Sidney Johnston from Mexico City that the guards had been warned of the Texans’ intention to break out at Salado and that “it is supposed” they were informed “by Capt. Reese of Brazoria whose conduct has been dishonorable.” Although Reese refused to take part in the escape attempt, Green claimed that “while the assault was going on he exposed himself as much as anyone,” and after the guards were disarmed, he determined to join the escapees. Both he and William were well armed and well mounted (through his influence with the Mexican commander, Walker believed), but, according to Green, Reese again changed his mind and surrendered to the Mexicans. Green, however, warmly defended Reese’s actions, claiming that he remained at Salado only because he failed to convince William not to risk the hazards of the journey back to Texas. Reese, Green wrote, was “too tried a soldier and devoted a patriot to allow a suspicion either of want of bravery or patriotism.” Reese was, in Green’s estimation, “a man of uncommon fortitude and daring.”

Virtually all of the Mier men were later incarcerated in Perote Prison, where, with his cellmate Green, Reese became a leader in the escape plot of July 2, 1843. He first planned to escape over the wall with Green but later joined the group of sixteen men who tunneled through the prison wall. Failing to establish a rendezvous with the guide they had arranged to meet, Reese, Green, John Twohig, and Daniel Drake Henrie together started on foot toward the coast. The escapees reached Veracruz, where they found passage to New Orleans on the steamer Petrita. From New Orleans they returned to Brazoria on the Lone Star. William Reese was released through the good offices of United States ambassador Waddy Thompson on March 24, 1844.

He died on October 14, 1858.

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William Joel Bryan was born 1815 in Missouri. Bryan served in the Texas Revolution in 1835 with the Brazoria County Volunteers and was with his uncle, Stephen F. Austin, during the Siege of Béxar. He was with Sam Houston in the retreat of the army across Texas, but was ill with measles at the time of the battle of San Jacinto. During the Civil War he fed Confederate troops stationed at the mouth of the Brazos at his own expense. In 1865 he granted the Houston and Texas Central a right-of-way through his land in Brazos County, and a projected townsite, later called Bryan, was named in his honor. He died on March 3, 1903, and was buried in Gulf Prairie Cemetery at Peach Point.

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