Archives for November 2014

William M. Logan was born 1802 in Tennessee. Logan arrived in Texas in November 1831 and settled near Liberty. Shortly afterward, he became involved in a dispute with John Davis Bradburn, the military commander at Fort Anahuac. Bradburn was harboring three runaway slaves from Louisiana. Logan, acting as a slave catcher, claimed the three as runaways, but Bradburn refused to relinquish them without proof of ownership and the authority of the governor of Louisiana. However, when Logan returned with the documents, Bradburn again refused to hand the three over on the grounds that they had requested the protection of the Mexican government and had joined the Mexican army. Bradburn’s actions caused both resentment and alarm among Anglo-Texans and has frequently been cited in later years as one of the immediate causes of the Texas revolution. In 1835 Logan enlisted in Andrew Briscoe’s company of Liberty volunteers and served as lieutenant during the Siege of Béxar. In March 1836 at Liberty he was elected captain of the Third Infantry, Second Regiment, of the Texas volunteers who fought at San Jacinto. He died 1839 in Houston. A historical marker in his honor was placed on the southeast corner of the Liberty County Courthouse in Liberty.

Handbook of Texas Online

Samuel Augustus Maverick was born 1803 in South Carolina. His maternal grandfather was General Robert Anderson who served in the Revolutionary War. He graduated from Yale and studied law in Virginia, and was admitted to practice at the bar of South Carolina in 1829. He traveled to Alabama and, hearing of the problems in Texas, resolved to go there. He arrived by ship at Velasco in 1835 and subsequently contracted malaria.

He surely heard of the general dissatisfaction of the Anglo-Americans in the various settlements scattered over Texas, especially the group headed by John A. Wharton of Brazoria who advocated calling a convention of elected delegates to secure “peace if it is to be secured on constitutional terms, and to prepare for war if war be inevitable.”

He learned that even Stephen F. Austin, the great “impressario,” had lost patience with existing conditions: the difficulty of transacting state business in the distant capital of Saltillo, the regulations controlling immigration, and the changeable Mexican government itself. Austin’s imprisonment in Mexico, after years of careful law enforcement and loyalty to Mexico in his colonization efforts, must have opened his eyes to the hopelessness of continuing to hold Texas as a territory or state of such a government. Finally, when the citizens of Gonzales called Austin to command their forces in the attack on General Perfecto de Cos, in command of Mexican forces in San Antonio, he consented to lead them in the siege.

Samuel had traveled to San Antonio to seek a better climate for his illness and arrived there September 8, 1835, shortly before the Siege of Béxar began.

Upon arriving in San Antonio, he stayed at the home of John W. Smith and entered into the life of the city, attending mass at the Cathedral with the soldiers, and hearing the military band. His journal mentions Comanche Indian raids — proving that life was not all idyllic in San Antonio.

General Cos, a brother-in-law of Santa Ana, arrived in San Antonio October 8 and placed a guard at Smith’s doors, making prisoners of Maverick, Smith, and Cox. Forces of Anglo-Americans under Austin, Burleson, Bowie, and others were gathering outside the town, and from time to time skirmishes took place between them and the Mexican soldiers. Through the help of a Mexican boy, Maverick exchanged messages with the various American leaders.

Maverick kept a diary that provides a vivid record of the siege (See The diary of Samuel Maverick).

He and Smith were released on December 1 and quickly made their way to the besiegers’ camp, where they urged an immediate attack. When an attack was finally made on December 5, Maverick guided Benjamin R. Milam’s division. He remained in San Antonio after the siege and in February was elected one of two delegates from the Alamo garrison to the independence convention scheduled for March 1, 1836, at Washington-on-the-Brazos. He left the embattled garrison on March 2 and arrived at the convention on March 5.

After the war ended, he met Mary Ann Adams and married her August 1836. She was 18, he was 33. He died on September 2, 1870, after a brief illness, leaving his wife and five children. He was buried in San Antonio’s City Cemetery Number 1.

Handbook of Texas Online
Samuel Maverick, Texan: 1803-1870

Jonathan Cochran Pool was born 1806 on Cherokee lands (now Newton County) in Georgia. In 1832 Pool was involved in the Anahuac Disturbances and the battle of Nacogdoches. He joined the army of Texas in 1835 and was at the Siege of Béxar. On November 26 he participated in the Grass Fight, an incident associated with the siege. Pool was one of 300 volunteers who assaulted San Antonio with Benjamin R. Milam on December 5. He was wounded on December 7, the day Milam was killed. Pool later joined Sam Houston’s forces and was with him until shortly before the battle of San Jacinto, when he was dispatched by Houston to scout Indians and report their movements. He served in the Army of the Republic of Texas from September to December 1836. On September 25, 1861, he enlisted in Company A of the Eighth Texas Cavalry, Terry’s Texas Rangers, for the duration of the Civil War. He died at his home in Falls County on February 21, 1886.

Handbook of Texas Online

Thomas Henry Borden was born 1804 in New York. During November and December 1835 he participated with the Texas army in the Grass Fight and the Siege of Béxar under Benjamin R. Milam. He died on March 16, 1877 in Galveston.

Augustus H. Jones was born 1813 in Georgia in 1813. On October 1, 1835, he joined Ira Westover’s Matagorda Volunteers. From October 31 to November 12, 1835, Jones was a member of the Lipantitlán Expedition, and he fought at Nueces Crossing. In a letter to James W. Fannin, Jr., Jones bragged that forty Texans had opposed about seventy Mexican troops and had “flogged them like hell.” In December of 1835 he participated in the Siege of Béxar. After the Texas Revolution he returned to Texas to serve as a first lieutenant in the Army of the Republic of Texas; in 1846 he saw action in the Mexican War. He died in Gonzales in October 1877.

Handbook of Texas Online