The English Texans
Thomas W. Cutrer
The English Texans
Thomas W. Cutrer
The English Texans
by Thomas W. Cutrer
Copyright ©1985
The University of Texas Institute of Texan Cultures at San Antonio
Jack R. Maguire, Executive Director
Production Staff: Sandra Hodsdon Carr; David Haynes; Meredith Rees;
Tom Shelton; Deborah Large, indexer
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 85-50542
International Standard Book Numbers
Hardbound 0-86701-012-6
Softbound 0-86701-013-4
First Edition
This publication was made possible in part by the Houston Endowment, Inc.
Printed in the United States of America
The English Texans
THE TEXIANS AND THE TEXANS
A series dealing with the many peoples who have contributed to the history
and heritage of Texas. Now in print:
Pamphlets-The Afro-American Texans, The Anglo-American Texans, The Belgian
Texans, The Chinese Texans, The Czech Texans, The French Texans,
The Greek Texans, The Indian Texans, The Italian Texans, The Jewish
Texans, The Mexican Texans, Los Tejanos Mexicanos (in Spanish),
The Norwegian Texans, The Spanish Texans and The Swiss Texans.
Books-The Danish Texans, The English Texans, The German Texans, The Irish
Texans, The Polish Texans and The Wendish Texans.
Contents
Preface: Ingram's Walk
7
Chapter 1: Revolution and Republic
13
Chapter 2: Colonial Enterprise-The Immigrants
31
The Chroniclers: A Portfolio of English Writers
on the Republic of Texas
49
Chapter 3: Divided by a Common Language
63
Chapter 4: Cowboys and Englishmen
83
Chapter 5: Civilizing the Wild Frontier
127
The Welsh in Texas
154
Notes
157
Bibliography
171
Articles
175
Unpublished Manuscripts, Theses and Dissertations
179
Photo Credits
180
Index
183
Preface:
Ingram's Walk
0 n the second day of October in the year 1567, Captain Sir
John Hawkins set sail from the English port of Plymouth on
his third slaving expedition to Africa and the New World. After
making his first landfall on the coast of Guinea, where he traded for
a cargo of blacks, Hawkins steered for the Spanish colonies of South
America and there exchanged his store of slaves for Peruvian gold.
Having turned a handsome profit, the English captain turned his little
fleet for home. As the six ships were clearing the Caribbean, however,
they were struck by a powerful storm and driven into the Gulf of Mexico.
The English took shelter in the harbor of Veracruz, where they
paused to refit and resupply, when they were attacked by a squadron
of the Spanish navy. Four of Hawkins's ships were immediately sunk.
Of the two remaining, the Judith, commanded by the youthful Francis
Drake, sailed straight for England, arriving there with no further mishap.
The Minion, however, under the direct command of Captain Hawkins,
was overburdened with English sailors picked from Veracruz harbor
after their disastrous fight with the Spanish and was pitifully under­supplied
for a voyage across the Atlantic. 1 "With manie sorrowful hearts
wee wandred in an unknowen Sea by the space of fourteene dayes;'
Hawkins reported, "tyll hunger enforced us to seeke the lande ... :•z
7
The defeat of Sir John Hawkins at San Juan de Ulloa, 1568
At their own request 114 English mariners were set ashore some
30 miles to the north of Tampico in the Spanish province of New Spain.
They resolved to face the uncertain dangers of a wild and unexplored
continent ra:ther than hazard themselves at sea where they believed
that "if they perished not by drowning, yet hunger would inforce them
in the ende to eate one another?'3 So began one of the most incredible
adventures yet to befall civilized man: an 11-month trek across 3,000
miles of often hostile wilderness. Only three of the 114 survived to return
to England. Of these three, only one, David Ingram, was alive to report
to English authorities in 1582.
David Ingram's narrative of his singular experience, a walk from
Tampico to Cape Breton, off Nova Scotia, inflamed the imagination
of the English-speaking world and opened its eyes to the great riches
and scenic wonders of the land to the north of the River of May-the
land we now know as Texas. Ingram was astounded by its vast size,
8
I I
its unexploited wealth and its great natural beauty, and, like many others
who have come under its spell, he was wont to exaggerate its already
fabulous resources. In his journey across Texas Ingram reportedly saw
"great rockes of Chrystal, Rubies, being four inches long, and two inches
broad:' a "great aboundance of pearls:' "sundry pieces of golde some
as big as a man's fist" and other precious minerals by the shipload.4
Ingram was not only the first Englishman to visit Texas, but the first
Texas braggart in the English tongue.
Much of what Ingram reported to Queen Elizabeth's ministers,
however, was strictly accurate and no less fabulous. There were, in this
land to the north of the River of May-known to the Spaniards as
the Rio Bravo del Norte and to later English-speaking visitors as the
Rio Grande~'great pleanty of Buffes, Beares, Horses, Kine, Woolves,
Foxes, Deare, Goats, Sheeps, Hares, and Conies~ The hides of the beasts,
said Ingram, "are good Marchandize:'5 a recommendation which went
unheeded by his countrymen until the middle of the 19th century.
More important, the "ground of the Country is most excellent,
fertile and pleasant:' except to the south where the grass is "burnt away
Hawkins' voyage to the Indies and lngrams Walk, 1568
9
with the heate of the Sunne:' Ingram was most impressed by the great
diversity of the land and by its richness. All of the country, he told
Queen Elizabeth's ministers, "is good and most delicate, having great
plaines, as large and as fayre in many places as may be seen:' There
were also "great huge woods" in this place "of sundry kinds of trees"
and along the vast rivers was luxurious grass which "groweth faster then
it can be eaten:'6
The "Relation of David Ingram of Barking, in the Countie of
Essex, Sayler;' for all of its wondrous account of the land between the
Rio Grande and the Sabine rivers, was little noted when the English
began their exploration and settlement in the New World. They were
relatively late in their colonizing efforts in the western hemisphere. By
1607, when the first permanent English colony was founded at James­town,
Virginia, France had a solid claim to the lands watered by the
St. Lawrence to the north. Spain, the preeminent colonizer of the 15th
and 16th centuries, had a firm grasp on South America and Mexico,
and a legal claim, if not a thriving settlement, on all of Texas. Indeed,
the Gulf of Mexico was a Spanish lake on which all other nations sailed
at their own risk.
Spanish domination of the Gulf ended, however, with the end
of the Seven Years' War. The Treaty of Paris of 1763 brought the English
occupation of East and West Florida, thus creating a permanent threat
to Spanish possessions ringing the Gulf of Mexico. Sensing its military
weakness, the Spanish government ordered reinforcements to its coastal
garrisons and fortification of points vulnerable to English attack. Of
all Spain's New World colonies, Texas was most lightly defended and
closest to British naval bases, and so was viewed as the most likely target
for English expansionism. With its few Spanish subjects constantly beset
by Indian raiders from the north, Texas had only limited resources for
repelling an anticipated English invasion.
In the late 1760's English ships intruded into Texas waters with
increasing regularity. Although these were only merchant vessels seeking
trade in furs with local Indians, Spanish officials became increasingly
sensitive to pressure from their English rivals. In April of 1769 the
English schooner Britain was seized by the Spanish garrison of the
Presidio la Bah fa in Matagorda Bay. 7
In 1772 Englishmen were reported among the Indians near
Natchitoches, Louisiana, and along the Trinity River, people and lands
claimed by the King of Spain. From Mexico City the viceroy ordered
10
an investigation of these English incursions, and soldiers sent out from
La Bahia discovered English arms in the possession of the Indians, but
could find no Englishmen. 8
Two years later the viceroy received word that a shipload of
Englishmen had remained on the Neches River long enough to raise
a crop, and in 1777 a second English vessel, this one loaded with bricks,
ran aground and was abandoned in that same river. Another Spanish
expedition to locate and expel the interloping English found only a
single English sailor who claimed to have been marooned from a passing
Jamaican vessel. 9
These incidents may indicate only a casual exploration of the
coast by the British navy or an attempt, as the bricks would suggest,
to found a colony or trading post in Texas as early as the time of the
American Revolution. In any case, rumors of the presence of English
ships and seamen on their northeast frontier stirred considerable interest
among the Spanish officials in Mexico and contributed, no doubt, to
the already bitter enmity between these two great colonial rivals.
Another 50 years would pass, however, before the Spanish fear
of English-speaking aliens implanting colonies in the land beyond the
Rio Bravo would become reality. By that time Mexico had become an
independent republic, and the "Englishmen" who crossed the Sabine
into the Mexican province of Texas were English in ancestry, language
and tradition only. Although a late starter in the race for sovereignty
of the New World's northern continent, England dominated the trade
and capital, language and literature, religion and bureaucracy of the
Atlantic coast of North America. Despite the successful revolution of
her colonies in 1776 and the inevitable modifications caused by distance
and dispersion, the culture of the United States remained unmistakably
English well into the national period.
Even after the revolution, English immigrants were welcome
in their former colonies. There they found institutions similar, if not
identical, to the ones that they had left behind. Not only did the United
States and England share a common language, but Englishmen found
representative government, Protestant churches and a system of com­mon
law in the new republic to be familiar. The Americans' most revered
military institution- the militia-and best-established military tradi­tion-
the fear of a standing army-both came from England and were
to have a forceful impact upon Texas's development and revolt from
Mexico. As historian Charlotte Erickson has pointed out, "English
11
immigrants regarded themselves as belonging to the same ethnic stock
as a majority of the native-born whites, and they met few obstacles
to participation in the same social and institutionallife:'10 The English
immigrant to the United States was, in fact, so quickly assimilated into
the existing culture that a sense of identity with the old country and
of ethnic difference from the people of the new rarely existed past the
second generation. Thus, by the year 1821, when Stephen F. Austin
began to lead American colonists into Texas, the English among them
were often invisible as immigrants, and their children were largely
indistinguishable from those of the native-born white population.
The Last of England by Ford Madox Brown
12
Chapter 1
Revolution and Republic
The winter of 1820-1821 found Connecticut-born impresario
Moses Austin in San Antonio seeking permission of the Span­ish
authorities to settle 300 American families in the Mexican
province of Texas. Permission was granted, but Moses Austin died the
following summer, leaving the ambitious undertaking to his son
Stephen. Although Mexico's successful revolt against Spanish rule and
the unsettled conditions which followed Mexican independence delayed
confirmation of the Austin land grant and threw many obstacles into
the path of the colonization effort, many other factors favored the
Anglo-American settlement of Texas. A long depression, followed by
the panic of 1819, had left many Americans financially ruined and eager
to make a fresh start on the western frontier. A new and more costly
United States policy of private acquisition of public lands discouraged
many Americans from seeking titles to homesteads within the bounds
of the Louisiana Purchase, and tales of the riches of the land beyond
the Sabine were already reaching fabulous proportions in the eastern
states. In addition, the citizens of the United States, always an expansive
and westward-looking people, were beginning to think in broad terms
of the ultimate growth of their country from 13 Atlantic Coast colonies
to a North American empire bounded to the west only by the Pacific.
13
So quickly and thoroughly were early English immigrants assim­ilated
into the mainstream of American culture that it is now impossible
to determine just how many Americans who came to Texas prior to
its revolt against Mexico were native English. Certainly, however, a
significant proportion of Austin's colonists were of English birth, as
were those of a second successful American impresario, Green DeWitt,
and when the Texas Revolution came in 1836 these men and women
played a prominent role in the fight for freedom. Of the 187 Texans
to die at the siege of the Alamo, 16 were Welsh or English. 1
Valentine Bennet's family was of the minor aristocracy in the
north of England but moved to the United States in time for him to
fight against his home country in the War of 1812. Like many Americans
of his day, Bennet found the East too confining and followed the frontier
first to Louisiana, then to the Ohio Territory and finally to Brazoria
in Austin's Texas colony. On June 26, 1831, Bennet became the first
English Texan to shed his blood in the cause ofTexan freedom when
he was severely wounded in the storming of Fort Velasco, the first open
armed defiance of the colonists against Mexico. Recovering from his
wound, Bennet became one of the "immortal eighteen'' in the "Come
and Take It" fight at Gonzales and served as a lieutenant of Texas Volun­teers
at the battle of Concepcion. During the siege of Bexar Bennet
was promoted to the rank of major and appointed quartermaster of
the Texas army. General Edward Burleson praised Bennet for "the dili­gence
and success" with which he supplied the army, and it was Major
Bennet who handed the axe to Deaf Smith with which the chief of
scouts felled Vince's Bridge, a decisive event in the battle of San Jacinto. 2
Charles Shearn, born in Bath in 1794, immigrated to Texas in
1834 and the next year became a signer of the Goliad Declaration of
Independence. Shearn joined Colonel James Fannin's ill-fated army and
was captured by the Mexicans but was spared his comrades' fate at
Goliad because he was a British subject. Following the battle of San
Jacinto, however, he became a citizen of the Republic of Texas and served
as chief justice of the Harris County courts from 1837 to 1843.3
Another Englishman to barely escape death at Goliad was
Joseph Lancaster. Born in Devonport in 1816, Lancaster was apprenticed
to a printer until1831 when he stowed away on a ship bound for New
York. On his way west he worked on newspapers first in Kentucky and
then in Alabama, where he joined the Red Rovers to fight for Texas's
freedom. Acting as a courier between Colonel Fannin and General
14
Charles Shearn Thomas William House
Houston, he was saved from capture and execution by a sympathetic
Mexican woman. Thus Lancaster lived to fight at San Jacinto and
eventually to return to Alabama to resume his career in journalism.4
John Hallett was born in Worcestershire, the younger son of an
English nobleman. Commissioned into the Royal Navy at the age of
12, young Hallett deserted to an American ship and fought against
the British in the War of 1812. Following the United States' second
war with the mother country, Hallett left the sea, married and moved
to Texas, settling first at Goliad but moving in 1833 to Austin's colony.
There he homesteaded a site on the Lavaca River which was soon to
become known as Hallettsville, the seat of Lavaca County. The old
sailor died not long after his move to Austin's colony, but his oldest
son, John Hallett Jr., fought under General Sam Houston at San Jacinto,
the battle which won Texas independence. s
Perhaps the most notable of all Englishmen to establish their
homes and loyalties with the frontier republic was Thomas William
House of the English shire of Somerset. Born in 1814, House, much
like John Hallett, ran away to sea at an early age but jumped ship in
New York. There he served as a baker's apprentice until he was recruited
by the world-famous St. Charles Hotel in New Orleans as a pastry chef.
15
Hallettsville
Austin home of Edward Mandell House
16
By 1836 House was establishing a solid reputation as a master chef in
a city known for its culinary delights, when events beyond the Sabine
seduced him away to a life of adventure.
After service under Burleson and Houston in the Texas Revo­lution,
House remained in the new town of Houston where he reestab­lished
his bakery business, acted as agent for British capitalists investing
in Texas and soon expanded his bakery business into dry goods, whole­sale
groceries and cotton speculation. He bought plantations, ranches
and wharves in Houston and Galveston, and by 1860 in all of Houston
his personal fortune was exceeded only by that of William Marsh Rice.
House is credited with producing and selling the first ice cream in
Houston as well as with establishing that city's first bank. He served
as Confederate mayor ofHouston6 and, perhaps most importantly, was
father of Colonel Edward M. House, "kingmaker" of Texas Governor
James S. Hogg and United States President Woodrow Wilson. Edward
was considered "the Texas Talleyrand" at the Versailles Convention at
the end of World War I. 7
Edward Mandell House
Men of English birth fought side by side with their American­born
cousins to make the independence of Texas a reality; English
17
judicial tradition influenced the constitution of the new republic, based
on United States statute and upon the laws of England as well. The
Constitution of the Republic of Texas was a direct and lineal descendant
of the Magna Carta, the Petition of Rights and the Bill of Rights, all
of which had become part of the English law prior to 1700. The consti­tution
written by the founders of the Texas republic in 1836 was built
upon a framework of traditional Anglo-American ideas modified by
the influences of Jacksonian democracy and by the traditions of Spanish
law and custom. Specific provisions of the 17 -point Declaration of
Rights, for example, may be traced directly to sections of the Magna
Carta defining and guaranteeing due process of law and limiting the
power of the executive to suspend laws. The prohibition against the
quartering of soldiers in private homes was derived from the English
Bill of Rights. 8
By and large, the English government was well disposed toward
the new republic. Her Majesty's ministers plainly foresaw that Texas,
as a predominantly agricultural country, would be a lucrative market
for England's manufactured goods, while her production of raw mate­rials,
principally cotton, literally the fiber of British industry, was
potentially immense. 9 And Texas, in dire economic straits, sorely needed
English recognition and commerce. In 1838 President Mirabeau B.
Lamar counseled Lord Palmerston's envoy, William Kennedy: "Tell your
rulers to agree to a liberal treaty with Texas and she will pursue a com­mercial
system by which trade will be freed from its shackles in the
valley of the Mississippi, and the country beyond the Rio Grande?'10
Nevertheless, several special interest groups in England opposed
diplomatic recognition of the new sovereignty and even attempted to
exert their influence with Parliament to induce British arms and eco­nomic
might to force Texas back into the Mexican federation. English
holders of Mexican bonds, for example, were especially concerned over
an independent Texas. In 1836 Mexico was indebted to British subjects
in the amount of approximately £30 million. This debt was secured
by bonds pledging 45,000,000 acres of unoccupied Texas land. In case
of default, the English landholders were to gain title to land in Texas
commensurate with the amount of their loan. With the victory of the
Texas army at San Jacinto, of course, all Mexican and hence British
claims to Texas lands became instantly nullified. Any attempt by Mexico
to alienate those acres specifically mortgaged to English capital and
"any attempt at usurping them by a foreign power;' the bondholders
18
claimed, "imposed upon England, as a matter of mere attorney practice,
the necessity of imposing a bar to such misappropriation?'11
Not only would Mexicds ability to pay her British creditors be
diminished by Texan independence, but also English capitalists worried
that trade between Mexico and Great Britain might be disrupted. British
commercial interests in Mexico were great, and trade between British
and Mexican ports was of tremendous profit to English shipping inter­ests.
Fearful of the loss of commerce, even though mindful of the insta­bility
of Santa Anna's regime in Mexico City, certain factions of English
merchants hoped for Mexicds "early reconquest of her truant province"12
after the Texas Declaration of Independence on March 2, 1836.
Other Englishmen, concerned primarily with England's own
colonial empire, urged that the crown refuse to recognize the sovereignty
of Texas and that Lord Palmerston, Queen Victoria's Foreign Minister,
dispatch a naval force to the Gulf to help Mexico recover her lost state.
Texas's successful fight for independence, they argued, would set an
intolerable precedent for other colonial states with a mind toward their
own freedom. The Texas Revolution, according to one Tory propa­gandist,
afforded "an example which other nations may follow to the
prejudice of this great colonial empire" as well as "exposing to imminent
hazard the important interests of our countrymen throughout Mexic0:'13
Also of great concern to the guardians of the British Empire
was the weakening of Mexico as a foil to the power of and a check
against the westward expansion of the United States. The British also
feared that Texas might be annexed to the United States. The merger
of the two republics would form a single nation which even the might
of British arms and diplomacy could not rival on the North American
continent. At a time when the United States was pressing its claim
for sovereignty over the Oregon territory-jointly claimed by the British
crown-some English diplomats insisted that their country must be
"deeply interested in Mexicds welfare" because their own territory,
Oregon, "was exposed to the same danger as that of Mexico, and from
the same source?' The responsibility of the British government must,
therefore, be to aid Mexico to resist what many saw as an American
expansionist plot. With Texas and Mexico reunited, they contended,
Santa Anna's government "would have weighed in the scale as a counter­poise
to the United States, in the full integrity of her strength, in place
of being placed at her mercy?'14
19
Finally, in addition to financial, diplomatic and strategic reasons
why England should support Mexicds claim to sovereignty over Texas,
came the humanitarian appeal. Because the Mexican constitution of
1824 had at least nominally outlawed slavery, English abolitionists saw
the revolt in Texas as a major defeat for the cause of emancipation.
England in 1836 was the unquestioned leader of a worldwide crusade
to abolish the international slave trade. In 1807 the transportation of
slaves in English ships had been prohibited, and at the Congress of
Vienna in 1815 England had convinced the European powers to outlaw
the trade in blacks as well. In 1833 all slaves within the British empire
were emancipated with compensation to their owners. English aboli­tionists
were therefore quite disturbed at the prospect of recognition
of a new slave-holding nation which might not choose to abide by the
articles of the Congress of Vienna. Slavery had never actually been
discontinued or even strongly discouraged in the Mexican province
of Texas, and, with independence, English humanitarians feared that
the vigorous young republic would push its boundaries farther to the
west, thereby opening new territory to the "peculiar institution?'
Further, the English liberals were very concerned over the fate of
the Indians of Texas. For hundreds of years the Apaches and the
Comanches had effectively blocked most Spanish and Mexican coloni­zation
north of the Rio Bravo. Additionally, the Comanches and their
Kiowa allies launched such punishing raids into Coahuila, Nuevo Leon
and beyond that Federal authorities in Mexico City had allowed Ste­phen
Austin's Anglo-Americans to enter Texas largely to serve as a buffer
between themselves and the Indians. The colonists became so adept
at Indian warfare that within ten years the Apaches and Comanches
were checked, and the less warlike Karankawa and Tonkawa tribes were
facing extermination. From across the thousands of miles of ocean,
humanitarians in England saw only the brutality of the Americans
and the approaching doom of the tribes, never the savagery and terror
inflicted by the Indians on the white settlers along the Brazos, Trinity
and Colorado rivers. To the English, a return to Mexican rule would
bring justice to the Indians and peace to the border-a belief totally
unsupported by history or by the ethic of the Mexicans, the Indians
or the American Texans. Thus, wrote one English supporter of Mexicds
Texas claims, a successful reinvasion of the breakaway province
ought to be hailed with joy by every British subject­the
British creditors of Mexico would be restored to
20
their territorial rights-the British merchant would find
a country cleared of cheats, rogues, and vagabonds ...
and well supplied with a metallic currency-the British
philanthropist would see slavery abolished in Texas,
and the remnants of ancient nations of red men pre­served
from extinction under the joint protection of
Mexico and Great Britain. 15
Happily for the new government of Texas, neither Lord Palmer­stan
nor the majority of his advisors were of this mind. More common
in northern and western Europe was the belief, as stated by Austrian
novelist Charles Sealsfield, that the Texans were perfectly right in
seceding from Mexico, for what Nordic people could bear being ruled
by "bigoted, idle and ignorant peons" who were "both morally and
physically inferior to themselves?' A war against such people, he argued,
"was no war at all;' for a brigade of Anglo-American Texans could easily
defeat a whole army of the "pigmy, spindle-shanked" Mexicans, "none
of them so big or half as strong as American boys of fifteen?'16
Such blatant ethnic prejudice was hardly unfamiliar to 19th
century Europe, and despite the highly vocal minority of abolitionists
and other humanitarians in England, the general consensus with regard
to Texas's liberty was largely in line with Sealsfield's opinion. G.W.
Featherstonhaugh, author of Excursions through the Slave States, for
example, stated that "as Mexico is essentially a revolutionary govern­ment,
and as no party at the capital will probably for a long time be
strong enough to do more than attend to its own interests, it is almost
self-evident that if ever she has the inclination, she will never have
the power to govern-at a distance of 1,800 miles-a race of active and
intrepid men, who are hostile to her laws, religion, and manners?'17
More succinctly, Francis C. Sheridan, grandson of the famous Irish
playwright, Richard B. Sheridan, rebutted the argument that the Ameri­cans
had "stolen'' Texas from Mexico with the declaration that "if it
were theft, it was a compulsory one?'18
Arguments for England's recognition of Texas independence
were, to Englishmen in general and eventually to Lord Palmerston, more
convincing than the arguments against recognition. Francis Sheridan's
perception of a potential Anglo-Texan alliance, for example, was most
compelling if none too complimentary to the Texans. "If the recognition
of this republic was ceded by Great Britain & emigration there encour­aged
& protected;' he maintained, "Texas w[oul]d become comparatively
21
speaking anglicised. The natural vanity inherent in Americans w[oul]d
be greatly tickled by treating their brethren of the States with indiffer­ence,-
bragging of their intercourse with England and Englishmen-&
alluding at their Banquet speeches & Congress orations to the amicable
feeling existing between the two countries:'19
The struggle between the two factions, however, was a long
and bitter one, hotly contested for four years. As early as the spring
of 1837 Great Britain had sent William Kennedy as an unofficial repre­sentative
of the consular service to Texas in order to assess the new
country's viability as a permanent figure upon the world's stage and
England's own best course of action toward it. So impressed with Texas's
promise and vitality was the diplomat that he personally invested in
a league of Texas land. 20 His favorable report, however, did not rush
Palmerston's ministry into full diplomatic relations with Texas.
In an attempt to woo English attention, President Houston
appointed former North Carolina aristocrat, Texas general and secretary
of state, and future governor James Pinckney Henderson as agent to
France and England. Henderson arrived in London in October 1837,
to find considerable interest in his cause already current in England.
The closely related factors of commercial benefit and political counter­weight
to growing American influence indicated to the Texas agent some
willingness on the part of Great Britain to recognize his government.
]ames P. Henderson
22
Slavery and the slave trade remained, however, as a substan­tial
barrier to Texas recognition. Soon after his arrival in London
Henderson obtained an audience with Palmerston, at which time the
Texas agent staunchly championed Britain's efforts at stamping out the
international slave trade. He stated in the strongest terms his own
government's position opposing the kidnapping and sale of Africans
in their own land and its view of the transatlantic trade in Negroes
as an act of piracy. The continuation of chattel slavery in Texas and
the importation of blacks from the United States, however, were institu­tions
which Texans were not willing to forego. Palmerston was impressed
by Henderson's presentation and held out some hope of a treaty of
commerce with Texas, if not full diplomatic recognition. Palmerston,
accordingly, presented Henderson's petition to the British cabinet on
December 27, only to see it flatly denied.
Disappointed but undaunted, Henderson took another tack. If
Her Majesty's government would not open trade with Texas by treaty,
might it not be possible to do so by simple agreement, he asked Palmer­stan.
Such an agreement, while not binding England officially to recog­nition,
would serve the same purpose to the infinite relief of the belea­guered
republic. In practice, ships flying the Lone Star flag would be
welcome in English ports and their cargoes cleared through customs
as were those of officially recognized nations. Although England would
still consider Texas a province of Mexico, Henderson proposed, British
port officials could "shut their eyes to the circumstances of [ships] having
Texan papers:' Reciprocally, English ships would be welcomed to Texas
ports, an arrangement which Henderson hoped would both revive the
languishing Texas economy and increase English awareness of and
respect for the Lone Star Republic.
Lord Palmerston rightly considered the proposal somewhat
unusual, but at last gave it his blessing and sent it along to the Board
of Trade which approved it in April. The Texas government, of course,
quickly ratified the agreement, and President Houston signed it into
law on July 4, 1838. The quasi recognition of Texas by the world's
preeminent power was, for the struggling young republic, a diplomatic
triumph of the first order.21
Texans were soon drinking to "The health of the youthful
Sovereign of the British Empire!" and referring to Queen Victoria's
nation as their "grandmother country." Many a distinguished after-dinner
speaker, Kennedy reported, looked eagerly forward to England's full
23
~~
~
~~ t\oblitlu•nyu~r.lb"""":S.•·""'~
l'l"'"'•'ll"lJJ!lll.
and complete "recognition of the right which patriotism had established
by an untarnished sword;' which would admit Texas to the family of
nations in legal as well as commercial fact. 22
Her Majesty's government was willing to grant Texas full diplo­matic
recognition if such recognition did not impair England's favorable
financial and diplomatic relations with Mexico. As a condition of such
recognition, England wished first to see a treaty of peace agreed to
between Mexico and her former province and Mexicds explicit recogni­tion
of Texas's independence. England, however, was willing to use its
economic and diplomatic might to secure such an agreement on Texas's
behalf. To this end Sir Richard Packenham, the British ambassador
to Mexico, offered his good offices as negotiator between Mexico and
Texas. As the question of Mexican bonds for Texas territory held by
British subjects continued to be a sticking point in Anglo-Texan negotia­tions,
and as the Texas government was willing to pay Mexico $5 million
to establish a permanent peaceful border at the Rio Grande, the wily
24
Packenham perceived a means by which all three parties to the negotia­tions
might come out winners.
If British bondholders would accept $5 million in Texas lands
(the very lands by which the bonds had originally been secured), and
if Mexico would accept Texas cash, English investors would drop their
opposition to Texas freedom, Mexico's financially embarrassed govern­ment
would be enriched by $5 million, and Texas would gain legal as
well as de facto status as an independent nation and a stable and secure
southern border, as well as England's full diplomatic recognition. The
arrangement would cost Texas $5 million in cash and $5 million in
land; Mexico would give up only its unenforceable claim to an ungovern­able
northern province, and Great Britain would lose nothing. 23
England's offer was unhesitatingly declined by Mexican author­ities,
and each wind from the west blew reports of renewed hostilities
along the Rio Grande into the port of London. James Hamilton, Texas's
bond salesman in England, wrote home in April 1840 that "every false
rumor of Mexican and Indian invasion brings us to a standstill?' All
such rumors of war were not precipitated by Mexican hostilities, for
Texans were tired of the perpetual guerrilla warfare waged along their
southern border and their status of unrecognized sovereignty. The war
party in Austin was clamoring for an incursion into Mexico to end
once and for all this state of limbo, but the Texas agent in London
warned that "a premature invasion of Mexico would dash our well­digested
schemes to the ground, and subvert, in one hour, my incessant
and irksome labor for the last eighteen months?'24
Apparently heeding his plea, Hamilton's fellow Texans refrained
from a rash move against Mexico, thus increasing Texas's esteem in the
eyes of the world community and strengthening its agent's diplomatic
hand in London. In October Hamilton submitted to Lord Palmerston
a rough draft of a treaty of recognition and commerce, and finally,
despite some last-ditch delays by the English pro-Mexican faction, the
first of three treaties was signed by Her Majesty's government. This
treaty was quickly followed by a second promising English mediation
between Mexico and Texas, and a third pledging Texas's support of the
suppression of the slave trade. These treaties were speedily ratified by
the Texas Legislature, and although the Mexican government signaled
its scorn of the agreements by sending General Adrian Woll across the
Rio Grande to temporarily reoccupy San Antonio, they represented
the greatest international diplomatic achievement of the Texas republic.
25
Thanks to the goodwill of England, Texas statesmanship assured in
the Court of St. James the liberty that Texas arms had won on the
field of San Jacinto. 25
This new phase in Anglo.:fexan relations was inaugurated by the
arrival in Galveston in the summer of 1842 of England's first charge
d'affaires and consul general in Texas, a remarkable young officer of
the Royal Navy named Charles Elliot. A man "blessed with aristocracy
of talent and birth'' and possessed of "intense experience and forceful
reactions; Captain Elliot was destined to play a major role in the political
and diplomatic history of the Texas republic. Lord Aberdeen, Palmer­stan's
successor as foreign secretary, instructed Elliot to collect and trans­mit
to the foreign office "Information upon all matters of political Interest
and importance;' and the charge lost no opportunity to enlighten his
superiors in England about conditions in Texas. From a general lack
of interest in 1841, England was converted through Captain Elliot's
letters to a position of utmost concern with happenings in Texas and
consequently of vigorous diplomatic and commercial activity there. 26
Captain Charles Elliot
26
A political dreamer, a sincere philanthropist and yet a strong
English patriot, the new charge committed the next four years to
establishing a lasting peace between Mexico and her former northern­most
state, Texas independence from both Mexican and United States'
sovereignty, and the abolition of slavery within the boundaries of the
republic. Elliot quickly arrived at the conclusion that Mexico lacked
the strength ever to reconquer her breakaway province and that her
"predatory" raids into Texas were actually counterproductive. They
accomplished nothing of positive value and only irritated allies and
enemies alike. Although the charge informed Aberdeen that "when
the Character of the Mexican Government and people is considered;'
it would seem that reason "would have long since made it a matter
of indifference to Texas whether Mexico acknowledge its independence
or not;' Elliot threw himself into the diplomatic struggle to put a stop
to the "fruitless and desultory" war which still existed between Mexico
and Texas. 27
Humanitarianism was not Elliot's sole motivation. Although
England never desired to annex Texas herself, as was greatly feared in
the United States, she was most anxious to prevent such an annexation
by the United States. Thus Her Majesty's foreign office did its utmost
during 1843-1845 to induce Mexico to recognize Texas independence,
hoping thereby to lessen the desire of Texans for annexation. Besides
wishing to see a strong independent Texas as a blockade to U.S. expan­sion
to the west, Englishmen such as Charles Elliot envisioned the
emancipation of slavery in the Texas republic and, from that beginning,
the ultimate destruction of chattel slavery on the North American
continent. Although Captain Elliot truthfully reported to London that
Texas slaves were seldom ill-fed or ill-used by their masters, he proposed
that Britain advance a loan to Texas with which to purchase and eman­cipate
slaves in Texas. In return for emancipation, Her Majesty's govern­ment
would exert pressure on Mexico to recognize Texas independence,
applying the argument that "the abolition of Slavery in Texas would
... be a greater triumph, and more honourable to Mexico, than the
retention of any sovereignty merely nominal~ With free labor established
in Texas, Elliot believed, "what with the opportunity of procuring labor
from Mexico;' Texas would soon outstrip the states of the Deep South
in the production of cotton. Thus the raising of that staple and the
keeping of the slaves who nurtured it would become unprofitable, and
the institution would die out.28
27
The sudden gust of interest in Texas from London roused the
United States. In his annual message to Congress in 1842, President
John Tyler issued a warning to England to keep her hands off of both
Texas and Oregon. Secretary of State Daniel Webster was convinced
that "a European power" was seeking to gain control over Texas and
damage American interests there, and Andrew Jackson feared that Texas
might become "worse than a colony of England, involved in constant
conflict with the United States?' John C. Calhoun, the foremost spokes­man
for the cotton states, felt that Texas had been "invaded" by "British
gold" and by "interested and wily diplomacy:' and that of all possible
diplomatic crises, an Anglo-Texan alliance "would be the most disas­trous?'
Presidential aspirant James K. Polk believed "in truth and in fact"
that Great Britain intended to make Texas "a dependency of her own?'29
President Houston shrewdly played both English and American
fears to Texas's advantage. To Charles Elliot he confided that to defuse
the threat of U.S. annexation, it was "only necessary for Lord Aberdeen
to say to Santa Anna, 'Sir, Mexico must recognize the independence
of Texas!' and thus obviate the necessity of protection by the U.S?' "Her
Majesty's Govt. might rest assured:' Elliot reported to Aberdeen, that
with Texas independence recognized by Mexico, President Houston
"would never consent to any treaty on this project of annexation to
the United States?'30
London, 1840
28
To the United States, however, the Houston administration
hinted darkly that if Texas's safety were not guaranteed by immediate
annexation, the infant republic must look across the Atlantic for pro­tection
from Mexico. Thus, on April22, 1844, President Tyler was moved
to send an annexation treaty to the Senate "to further the mutual securi­ty
and prosperity of the United States and Texas:' If annexation failed,
Tyler told the Senate, Texas would surely seek friendship elsewhere. 31
Charles Elliot was vastly relieved to learn that on June 8 the
Senate, largely because of the slavery issue, had defeated annexation
by a sizeable margin. The foreign office quickly heightened its efforts
to draw Texas closer to England and drive a wedge between the two
banks of the Sabine. Aberdeen advised Texans that "the dignity and
prosperity" of their country "are more secure in its own keeping than
under the institutions of any other government, however peaceful. ...
It must be long; he counseled, ''before a newly settled and comparatively
thinly peopled country would command the attention and the weight
which would make up for the abandonment of the privilege of self­government-
if indeed such a result should ever be attainable:' He also
urged France to join England in exerting pressure on Mexico to recognize
Texas's freedom and cease her attacks across the Rio Grande. So great
were Elliot's personal efforts to keep Texas out of the Union that he
later drew President Polk's rebuke for "open intermeddling" in Texas
policy. Despite the best efforts of her diplomats, however, England failed
to sway Mexico from its anti-Texas policy, and on February 28, 1845,
Congress passed a joint resolution which President Tyler signed the
following day, offering statehood to the Lone Star Republic. 32
Once spurned, Texans were less eager than they had been a year
earlier for annexation. Many influential Texans-Elliot's close friends
Anson Jones, the new president of the republic, and Ashbel Smith,
its secretary of state, foremost among them-advocated Texas's contin­ued
independence if peace with Mexico could be secured. Toward that
end, Elliot, Jones, Smith and the French charge, Count Alphonse de
Saligny, prepared an ultimatum-memorandum for presentation to the
Mexican authorities. In return for Mexico's acknowledgment of Texas
independence, the young republic offered its pledge never to allow itself
to be annexed by the United States.
In secret and with great haste Captain Elliot personally carried
the proposal to Mexico. Sailing out of Galveston on March 29, 1845,
Elliot landed at Veracruz and made his way overland to Mexico City,
29
racing against the day the Texas voters would ratify annexation. Despite
being robbed on the road to the Mexican capital, Elliot presented the
Texas proposition to Minister of Foreign Affairs Luis G. Cuevas, who,
after frustrating delays, on May 17 signed the document which at last
assured peace and freedom for Texas. 33
Elliot sped back to Washington-on-the-Brazos with news of his
greatest diplomatic triumph, only to have his enthusiasm dashed by
President Jones's assessment of Texas's political situation. In Elliot's
absence, he said, public opinion had swung around to almost unani­mous
support for union with the United States, and no treaty with
Mexico could turn that tide. Despite high praise from Lord Aberdeen
for "dexterity and activity" while serving as charge, all three of Charles
Elliot's great dreams were shattered. On July 4, 1845, a Texas convention
voted for annexation; Texas legally entered the Union on December
29, 1845, although transfer of authority from the republic to the state
did not take place until February 19, 1846. Three months later, largely
in reaction to the treaty of annexation, full-scale war broke out along
the Rio Grande between the United States and Mexico. With the
formalities of annexation complete, Charles Elliot closed the offices
of Her Majesty's consulate in Texas and returned to London. 34 As he
sailed home across the Atlantic, his dreams in tatters, he passed hun­dreds
of his countrymen bound for Texas with visions of a new and
better life in a great new territory.
Chapter 2
Colonial Enterprise­The
Immigrants
Besides Charles Elliot, two other British subjects sojourning in
J"exas during the epoch of the republic were destined to leave
their imprint upon Texas diplomatic history: Arthur Ikin and
William Kennedy. Ikin first came to Texas in January 1841, bearing the
commercial treaties negotiated between Palmerston's foreign ministry
and the Sam Houston administration. So impressed was the president
by the English envoy that on February 4 he returned Ikin to London
as consul for the Republic of Texas. While in this capacity, Ikin published
Texas: Its History, Topography, Agriculture, Commerce, and General Statistics,
a volume highly laudatory of the newly recognized republic. 1
William Kennedy first traveled in Texas in 1839 as secretary
to the Earl of Durham. In the same year that Ikin's book appeared,
Kennedy published The Rise, Progress, and Prospects of Texas which also
presented the country in the finest light and encouraged British immigra­tion
to Texas. In 1842 he replaced Ikin as Texas consul in London and
later in that year was returned to Texas as British consul in Galveston.Z
Not only were Ikin and Kennedy of service to the Republic as
diplomats and as propagandists of the Texas cause, but both men greatly
encouraged their countrymen to immigrate to Texas, and both attempted
to found English colonies there.
31
TEXAS:
HISTORl·~ TOPOGRAPHY, AGRICULTURE, COMMERCE,
AND GENERAL STATISTICS.
TO WHICU la .A.D.DSD1
A COPY OF THK TttEA.TY OF CO.lllliiEJlC.&
ENTERED IN'l'O BY THK REPUBLIC OF 'l'BXAS AND
GREAT BRITAIN.
O:EilGll:SD :FOR 'l'lU USJ! OJ' THE B&tTl$1:( XSllCll.l.T,
AlfD .U A. OUIDJ: 'l'O JtlflGRAlfTI.
BY ARTHUR !KIN,
LONDON:
SHERWOOD, GILUEllT, AND PIPER,
PATERNOSTER ROW.
1841.
In 1836 Arthur !kin's father, Jonathan, had purchased a tract
of Texas land from Judge John Woodward, the Texas consul in New
York. Realizing that British recognition of Texas independence would
enhance the value of their lands, the Ikins spent years working toward
that end. With the eventual English recognition of Texas, the first of
a planned series of colonial immigration groups sailed from London
for the lkin holdings. Landing at Galveston in the winter of 1839-1840,
they learned to their dismay that they "had not a shadow of a title"
to the lands which Arthur and Jonathan lkin had supposedly sold to
them. The swindler, in this case, had been Judge Woodward, and the
lkins were quickly absolved of any charge of evildoing. The problem
of a shipload of settlers stranded in Galveston remained, however, so
in June 1840 Jonathan lkin applied to President Lamar for a tract of
public land on which to settle his English colonists. Due largely to their
work toward British recognition, the lkins were granted a colonization
contract by the republic, and Arthur resumed his role as "chief land
salesman and leading emigration advocate for Texas?'3
32
in for a poor man?'4 And no section of the American continent was
more loudly praised than was the Republic and later the State of Texas.
Typical of the English newspaper response to Texas's prospects is this
item from the Times of London:
Few countries present so many attractions to emigrants,
and if they do not prosper they would fail anywhere.
Splendid arable and grazing lands may be purchased
at merely nominal prices; labor is in demand and highly
paid, living is inexpensive, and there are openings on
all sides for the profitable investment of capital.
Land speculators contributed to the general enthusiasm for Texas, for
example, Arthur Ikin with his incandescent evaluation of the republic's
"milder climate and more fertile soil" and the inducement of "the British
language, religion, and common law, as well as the attraction of free
institutions and low taxation; to which may be added, a less complicated
political, and a more liberal commercial system?'5
Disinterested English travelers, too, returned with extravagant
praise for Texas's resources. Matilda Charlotte Houstoun, for example,
told her English readers that "it cannot be denied, that as a field for
settlers, Texas has considerable advantages over almost every other
country. Its climate ... is excellent, and the settler has to encounter
neither the extreme cold of the winter season, nor the scorching summer
heat of the more northern states of America and Canada?' This world
traveler and journalist told the readers of the London News that she
could ''but regret that some thousands of our starving population cannot
be conveyed to this country;' for although the colonization of Australia
and New Zealand were no doubt advantageous to Great Britain, the
same good fortune seldom attended the poor colonist. 6
Steamship and railroad companies as well as colonization enter­prises
aided the immigration effort. The railroads of Texas each contri­buted
to an advertising agency $25.00 for each mile of track they oper­ated
to help support the propaganda machine which they had estab­lished
in Europe. 7
So great was the English interest in Texas and the American
West that Robert Montgomery Bird's Nick of the Woods, an 183 7 novel
ofindian fighting on the American frontier, quickly went through nine
English editions. English writers, seeing a profitable market, soon began
producing imitations of the American "Western" with Percy St. John
and Mayne Reid among the most successful writers of the genre. Reid,
34
in fact, published more than 70 novels of the American West, each
plentifully spiced with violence and high adventure. As Ray Allen
Billington pointed out, "these best-sellers played a larger role than any
other writings in shaping the European image of the American frontid'8
A great deal of money and effort were invested in making the
Englishman aware of Texas in the mid-19th century and in interesting
him in immigrating to this largely wild and unsettled place. All such
efforts, however, would probably have failed had conditions then exist­ing
in the old country not generated a restlessness in its population
and predisposed a large segment of its young men and women toward
casting their lot in a new and strange land. To a people overburdened
by tithes, taxes and landlords, and too often crowded into smoky
industrial slums, the promise of abundant, cheap and fertile land was
exciting beyond description. Although few fled outright starvation at
home, almost none who came to Texas failed to vastly improve their
social and economic station in life. The greatest number of English
immigrants to Texas had been farmers in Great Britain, where the
average farm consisted of one to ten acres. A 40- to 60-acre plot in
Europe was considered huge, while in Texas a whole 640-acre section
of undeveloped prairie land was to be had for as little as $5.00.
Not only English ploughmen and husbandmen were drawn to
the bright dream of owning a farm of their own. For quite a large number
of mechanics and factory workers, land on the Texas frontier was a
safety valve against urban and industrial discontent,9 and even among
the landed gentry a farm in Texas was a pleasing solution to the problem
of the second or third son with no prospect of inheriting a piece of
the ancestral domain. Under the English law of primogeniture the eldest
son is entitled to the exclusive right of inheritance of all of his parents'
real estate. Although this system held together the ancestral domains
of the English aristocracy and provided social and economic stability
from generation to generation, it also considerably reduced the prospects
of all female and younger male descendants. Primogeniture was quickly
abandoned in America's more democratic environment, and at least
one Englishman in Texas wondered "where the English got their notion
that the eldest son or daughter were more important than any of the
other children?' Lillie Barr Munroe knew several young men in Austin
during the 1850's, "younger sons of great families, as fine men as could
be:' whom she felt to be virtually exiled to the New World. Such an
arrangement was, to her mind, "silly stuff' and entirely "outside justice?'10
35
Unfortunately for the English agriculturist and mechanic, Texas
was too often oversold by enthusiastic land speculators. The avarice
of unscrupulous land agents coupled with the naive expectations of
British emigrants made hardships and failures among those who made
the long trip from England almost inevitable. 11 William Kennedy's
declaration that Texas's "black waxy soil" covered the surface to a depth
of 20 feet with "nothing like a hillock or stone to bother the plowman;'
surely was stuff of much bitter reflection by Englishmen who had
acquired poor Texas land, and the paeans to Texas's natural beauty sung
by Dr. Edward Smith, an English traveler in Texas in 1849, were yet
more fanciful. Smith chanted the praises of "the twining of beautiful
cactus" and noted that even the "dreaded rattler and moccasin snakes
have most beautifully painted skins, and the tarantula, to my eye, an
elegant form and color?' This intoxicated wanderer even paid homage
to the "green headed prairie fly" and admired the "unsurpassed ...
lightness and elegance of form'' of the mosquitoP 2 Fraudulent land
salesmen circulated throughout England, selling titles to nonexistent
or already owned acreage, while others grossly misrepresented the quality
of their offerings. Ignorant of speculators' guile, many British settlers
were sold land advertised as arable, only to arrive in Texas and find
that their freehold was, in fact, nothing but poor grazing country.
Although many land companies advertised only for agricul­turists
and even went so far as to warn tradesmen not to leave England,
many city-dwellers deliberately fled from the industrialization going on
around them in an attempt to return to an older, simpler way of life. 13
"In those days it was generally supposed that any man could naturally
farm, just as it was expected that every girl naturally knew how to cook
and clean house;' commented one English immigrant. 14 Too often these
urban-bred agrarians failed to recognize the sacrifices in standard of
living that frontier existence demanded. 15 Since cheap land was Texas's
main attraction to British settlers, many did not select their farmsteads
with great wisdom, either with respect to its potential for raising profit­able
crops or as a suitable location for carrying on a civilized sociallife. 16
Especially demoralized by the hardships of the passage and the
want of social amenities in the new land were the women of the ''better"
English classes. Isabel Holdsworth, recounting the story of her family's
move from England to Frio County when she was a young girl, describes
her father as "an adventurous spirit" who "having heard of the wonderful
opportunities for acquiring land in the practically unsettled state of
36
Emigrants at dinner on shipboard
Texas ... determined to give up his profession, dispose of his property
in England, and risk his fortune in a new country?'17
The weather was stormy in crossing the Atlantic, and the
mother of the family was continually seasick. Her three children looked
after themselves, ordered their own meals and "enjoyed the novelty of
our experience?' The arrival in Texas was more auspicious, for the new­comers
believed in that spring "Texas had put on her most inviting
aspect to impress her new settlers with their good fortune!" Their road
from Galveston to the village of Derby cut through vast fields of
wildflowers, but on arriving at their destination the mother experienced
a feeling of utter abandonment. Although the children "ran merrily
about, pouncing on flower after flower;' Mrs. Holdsworth "felt both
apprehensive and forlorn" as she sat amid her baggage and wondered
what was to be their fate in the new country. 18
Many ftontier wives had attended finishing schools in England \
and had led sheltered lives before coming to Texas. Unaccustomed to
manual labor and highly conscious of social status, these immigrant
women generally made poor pioneers. Worst of all for them was the
deprivation of friendship. "By far the severest burden'' of frontier exis­tence,
wrote one middle-class English lady, was that "I had no friends
with feeling like my own, no brother or Sister to whom I could speak
of my heart sickness, my pains and fears?'19
37
Nevertheless, the majority of the English settlers, perhaps
because they had invested their all in their new land and had no
recourse but to stay, persevered. "Notwithstanding the fact that my
mother had never done any household work and had been accustomed
to the comforts and conveniences of civilization:' continues Isabel
Holdsworth, "she now lived in a tent and learned to cook over a
campfire:' Her father, too, who had been a schoolmaster in England
and "who had been unused to any form of mannuallabor" soon became
inured to the rough work of farm and ranch. 20
Isabel Holdsworth's family was by no means exceptional in its
exposure to "tarantulas, scorpions and snakes:' Typical also were the
great distances which they had to travel for lumber, drinking water
and companionship. The sense of isolation was deadly, with the nearest
neighbor four miles distant, the mail service irregular at best, and school­ing
all but nonexistent. Other English immigrants recall having to haul
water to the Panhandle or purchase it at 25¢ per barrel, 21 living below
ground in dugouts for their first years in Texas, experiencing winters
so severe that families had to stack their furniture on one side of their
house and move their horses in with them to keep the valuable beasts
from freezing. 22 Disease, too, was a great hazard to immigrant families
on the frontier. Malaria, cholera and typhoid were especially endemic
to Texas, and even when not fatal, an attack of one of these dreaded
plagues could debilitate the victim for years. 23 Holidays were especially
depressing to many newcomers, for recollections of festive occasions
in the old country made the isolation of the new harder to bear. "On
Christmas day:' one English rancher lamented, "no Mexican can be
got to work for love or money, so the fiesta, as they call it, was kept
as best we might in that out-of-the-way place; not without memories
of other Christmas days, so different from these, and distant friends,
and holly-decked churches in far-off England:'24
One old-time resident of Wharton County remembered that
"many first-class English families came here, and when they found we
had mass only once in four Sundays, they left:'25 But others, made
of sterner stuff, shared the determination of the English pioneer who
told a San Antonio newspaper reporter that "we were told when we
came here that we would not live in Philadelphia:'26 Those who stayed
helped to bring Texas to its present greatness; those who returned to
England attempted to warn their countrymen of the perils awaiting
38
the unprepared. In 1842 The Emigration Gazette and Colonial Advocate
ran the following caveat:
The writer of the CAUTION m THE PUBLIC is one
of three survivors out of ninety-seven Englishmen who
were induced to emigrate to the inhospitable swamps
called Texas in 1841. To detail the misery and hardships
that the present writer and his deluded associates were
exposed to on their arrival in the country, and the
CERTAIN SICKNESS IF NOT DEATH that awaits
those who may be tempted to emigrate to that land
of fevers and disease of all kinds, would be quite impos­sible
within the limits of this caution; which is meant
simply to warn the working class against the manifold
schemes now put forth by a base set of YANKEE
TEXAS LAND SHARKS, to delude them. 27
As late as 1879 the London Standard continued to warn its
readers that those who had recently immigrated had been "deceived"
and that Texas "is unfitted for English settlers of the better class?' Never­theless,
distaste for commercial life, desire for independence, love of
leisure, faith in subsistence farming or a taste for adventure continued
throughout the 19th century to draw English craftsmen, domestic
workers, farmers, merchants and professional people to Texas in appre­ciable
numbers. 28
The exodus of the English to North America was by no means
a new thing in the mid-19th century. Between 1628 and 1642, 80,000
British, fully 2 percent of the total population of England and Wales,
departed Great Britain; 58,000 came to America. Although "the great
migration'' diminished considerably during the 18th century, by the
end of the colonial period 60 percent of all Americans were of English
birth or descent. In the decades immediately following the American
Revolution, English immigration to the United States slowed to a trickle,
but in the second quarter of the 19th century, 410,000 English and
Welsh sailed to America. The second half of the century brought 631,000
additional British to these shores. Of this last group, however, only
6 percent settled in the South and Southwest. 29
The earliest English arrivals in Texas were often repulsed by the
climate, the conditions of pioneer life and the potentially deadly tension
between Texas and the Mexican republic. Not until after the United
39
f.
(.:' ..... . ... :·.
~: .
,.
The last day in Old England
States' war with Mexico, ending in 1848, did Texas become attractive
to large numbers of English emigrants. 30 In 1860 the total native English
population of San Antonio, Galveston, Houston, Austin and New
Braunfels, then the principal Texas towns, was only 249 as compared
to 282 Irish, 587 Mexican and 2,936 German natives. 31 The next 20
years added but 155 new British families to this sum from a total of
31,907 immigrant families of all nations.32 The years between 1850 and
1890 saw a rise of native English living in the Plains states west of the
Mississippi from 3 to 11 percent of all English in America. Most of these
immigrants were in the Midwest because as of 1890 no county in Texas
boasted even as many as 1,000 English- or Welsh-born citizens. 33
As a means of populating the vast and vacant expanses of Texas,
the Mexican government had adopted the expedient of granting impre­sario
contracts to prominent or merely ambitious applicants. The
impresario was deeded large tracts of unsettled land on which he pledged
to settle a fixed number of families. The government of the Republic
of Texas at first renounced, but later reinstated the impresario system.
Before Texas gained its independence, however, several English gentle­men
had procured Mexican impresario grants in Texas, and some patents
granted prior to the revolution were revoked by the new republic. In
the words of one historian of the European settlement of North Amer­ica,
"for magnitude and magnificence of speculative projects, for diversity
and flamboyance of salesmanship, and for colorful and controversial
40
opinions, Texas had no peers."34 Nonetheless, several colonial enterprises
were conceived and attempted in hopes of making Texas a "young
England:' Unfortunately for planners and colonists alike, none of these
were successful, and some were tragic failures. 35
Major General Arthur G. Wavell, an English army officer,
attempted the first program of colonizing Texas with British farmers
in the 1820's. Wavell was in Mexico City as early as 1821 working for
the Mexican government. 36 There he met and befriended Stephen E
Austin who was seeking Texas lands and permission to settle English­speaking
immigrants on them. The English soldier, whose knowledge
of the Spanish language and Mexican administrative procedure far
exceeded that of Austin, was able to render the prospective American
colonizer considerable assistance, and Wavell and Austin struck an
agreement to form a joint stock company to help develop Austin's grant.
The company never materialized, but Wavell, fired by Austin's success,
petitioned the Mexican government for a tract in northeast Texas to
which he promised to bring 450 British Catholics. Wavell secured official
approval for his scheme on March 9, 1826, and hired his close friend,
Benjamin Milam, to serve as the proposed colony's resident manager.37
Wavell raised $2,000 in English capital to finance his project and,
with Milam's assistance, located hundreds of families on the grant,
although few of these were British as planned. With Milam's heroic
death at the siege of Bexar in 1835, the colony began to wither, and,
with Texas independence, the legality of the claim was called into ques­tion.
Wavell petitioned the republic, reminding it that but for his aid
'~ustin certainly, and probably Milam, the martyr of your cause, would
have forever abandoned Texas;' and asked that his grant be recognized
by the new government.38 The republic, however, voided Wavell's
Mexican impresario contracts, and the colony soon fell apart. "Con­ceived
by a soldier of fortune, supported by a reckless adventurer, and
designed to transport independent-minded English-speaking Britons
into a government-restricted, Spanish-speaking territory;' one historian
of Texas colonization has noted, "the first major attempt to promote
British emigration to Texas quite naturally failed:'39
Although the war for Texas independence frustrated any colo­nizing
attempt during the mid-1830's, by the beginning of the new decade
several English companies were preparing to move colonists to their
New World holdings.40 WilliamS. Peters, his three sons-in-law and 16
other associates, about half of whom were English and the remainder
41
,[
' I I
William S. Peters
American, secured in 1841 a grant of land extending south from the
Red River into present-day Cooke, Denton, Grayson and Collin coun­ties.
In return the Peters Company was to locate 600 families on the
grant within three years. In November the grant was extended to include
parts of Tarrant, Dallas, Ellis and Johnson counties with the promise
of 200 additional families. In July of 1842 a ten-mile strip was added
to the western and a twelve-mile strip to the eastern boundaries of the
grant, and the three-year time limit was pushed back to date from the
acquisition of the newest lands. Finally, on January 16, 1843, the grant
was extended to a princely 16,000 square miles with five years given
to the company to find and relocate settlers. Further evidence of the
brilliant salesmanship of the Peters Company or the extreme naivete
of the Texas Legislature is to be found in the republic's proviso that
"the grantees would limit themselves to the introduction of not more
than 10,000 families!"4 1
Peters and his associates, incorporated in London as the Texas
Agricultural, Commercial, and Manufacturing Company, now began
42
to turn their attention to populating their vast new holdings. Newspaper
advertisements and pamphlets began to appear all over England prom­ising
great rewards to the potential emigrant. An agent of the company
would meet migrant parties at Galveston or New Orleans and guide
them to their new homes along the Red River. Comfortable housing
was to be built by the company and provided to the settlers immediately
upon their arrival. Food, fuel and clothing were to be supplied to the
colonists until their first crop was harvested, and in addition to the
160 to 240 acres promised to each family, each group of 100 families
would receive 1,280 acres for religious and educational purposes. All
of the largess, including transportation to Texas, would cost the colonist
£50 per adult and an additional £12 for each child. The settler also
pledged to live on his land for at least three years and to fence and
cultivate at least 15 acres. 42
Those Englishmen unfortunate enough to have taken the
company at its word found conditions in Texas considerably short of
those promised by Peters and his associates. With all food imported
to the colony at tremendous expense across hundreds of miles of hostile
Indian territory, "many died of starvation, whilst placed in one of the
most fertile spots under the sun:' Under these circumstances, reported
Edward Smith, scout for the Universal Emigration and Colonization
Company, another English company also looking to colonial enterprise
in northeast Texas, "many Europeans emigrated to that part of the
Henry Oliver Hedgcoxe, agent for the
Peters Company
43
country, and died there; or returned to their former homes, disgusted
with the dangers and privations of Texas:'43
Despite the wonderful incentives, very few Englishmen accepted
the Texas Agricultural, Commercial, and Manufacturing Company's
offer, and by 1848 only 2.3 percent of the colony's inhabitants were
European-born, and the majority of those who were had previously
lived in the United States. By 1844 the colony had been divided between
two rival factions of the company, one of which survived only because
of an influx of American settlers from the eastern states and the other
of which failed absolutely with its lands reverting to Texas for breach
of contract.44
Even with the lessons of Wavell, Peters and several similar
failures before them, one more British company made the grandest
attempt of all to establish a piece of England on Texas soil, and its
failure was the most spectacular of all. The Universal Emigration and
Colonization Company was the brainchild of a man otherwise lost to
history, known only as Mr. Kitly. Under his "practical plan of coloniza­tion;'
100 English families plus single laborers and mechanics were to
be established on 200 square miles of Texas, somewhere on the grant
already forfeited by Wavell and Peters. 45
In April 1849 the company dispatched Dr. Edward Smith to
discover potential sites for establishing the proposed colony and to report
on its prospects for success based upon the quality of the soil and the
region's other resources. Dr. Smith's report to the company was couched
solely in superlatives. The soil, he announced, was "universally alluvial"
and "in no state have we found finer cattle than in Texas:' Texas steers,
in fact, "are much superior to ours;' being "exceedingly large and always
in prime condition:' Texas horses, too, "are of a superior quality;' and
game of all varieties "is in countless numbers over the country:' Water,
he claimed, was "very excellent and very abundant;' markets for all
of the farmers' produce were both highly profitable and permanent,
and land was to be had "on most easy terms, and required credit is
but little:'46
Under the impetus of such glowing praise, the Universal Emi­gration
and Colonization Company quickly procured 27,000 acres along
Cow House Creek, some 100 miles north of Austin, from New York
land speculators Richard B. Kimball and James Riley. No sooner were
these acres deeded over than the company began enlisting emigrants
to settle them. As its chief recruiting agent, the company chose a well-
44
artist, student of Indian culture and recognized authority on
western American life, George Catlin. Between 1829 and 1838 Catlin
had painted some 600 portraits of distinguished Indians in their native
clothing, as well as many landscapes based upon the scenic beauty of
the American West. In 1840 Catlin sailed to Europe, where he spent
the next 12 years exhibiting his paintings and lecturing on American
Indian lore.47
The summer of 1850 found Catlin in the English Midlands,
regaling his audiences on the wonders of the Brazos River bottoms.
Although at that time Catlin had not yet visited Texas, his thrilling
word pictures enthralled thousands of English listeners, and by Septem­ber
the first 117 colonists were poised to sail from Liverpool aboard
the Black Star liner, John Garrou. 48
The company planned to send an agent ahead to Cincinnati to
purchase wagons, farm implements, draft animals and supplies, and
to meet the colonists at New Orleans to lead them to Cow House Creek.
At the same time another agent was to have overseen the construction
not merely of housing for the immigrants, but a full-scale city! ''As many
of the families going out are persons of means, education, and perhaps
I may add, delicate habits; an officer of the emigration company reported
to the Texas State Gazette, "we do not like to expose them too much
to the ills of a new climate, and so will make what provision we can
before hand?'49
Catlin himself was to have led the pilgrims to their new Eden,
but at the last moment abdicated in favor of Sir Edward Belcher a ' Captain of the Royal Navy, and Lieutenant Charles Finch Mackenzie
of the 41st Welsh Regiment. Almost from the beginning other plans
of the colony miscarried as well. The John Garrou landed in the fall
of 1850 at Galveston rather than at New Orleans, leaving the settlers
without transportation at the approach of winter. The 30 English fami­lies
began their weary trek up the Brazos sustained only by the promise
of "a comfortable home [in] a country free from state church, heavy
taxation and aristocratic rule?' The promise of a brighter future was
but dim compensation in the face of the heavy rains, bitter cold, road­less
and bridgeless rivers that the colonists faced, and many were dis­heartened
from the start. Among the first to leave the colony and return
to England was the company's officer in Texas, Sir Edward Belcher. so
Arriving at last at what the company was pleased to call the
"City of Kent" in the district of "New Britain:' the colonists discovered
45
"Solomon's Nose," site of the City of Kent, near Kopperl, Bosque County
only an outline of the settlement which they had been led to expect.
All lots, cross streets and squares were measured accurately and marked
with cedar stakes. The town track proper embraced about 40 acres,
and more land was divided into excellent small farms both up and down
the Brazos. There was not, however, a single building erected, and for
building material, "not even a riding switch" was to be found on the
whole 27,000 acres, one colonist reported. Very quickly the colonists
of "delicate habits" were pitching tents, excavating dugouts and weaving
houses of wattled willow to see them through the miserably harsh central
Texas winter. 51
The country around the "City of Kent" was well suited to cotton,
grain and livestock raising, and the colonists planned, as well, to
establish "manufactories on an extensive scale?' Lieutenant Mackenzie's
well-meaning but naive military discipline, the colonists' cultivated and
often leisurely habits, crop failure in 1851, vicious Comanche raids and
an overabundance of liquor conspired, however, to destroy the colony
utterly before the end of its first 12 months.
The son of one of the citizens of Kent recalls how the venture
was lost because of Mackenzie's mismanagement. The colonists planted
46
100 acres in corn that first season and made an excellent crop. "But
alas, to show how the English could not meet conditions as they were:'
just as the corn was in roasting ear, Mackenzie bought a herd of cattle
and horses ("on recommendation of their Texas friends who were eager
to annex the Englishman's coin") and turned the stock loose on the
range. These animals, of course, very quickly invaded the unfenced
cornfields and completely destroyed the crop.
Mackenzie owned the colony's only log house and employed the
colony's only hired hands. Each morning he would have his men fall
in near the house for roll call. They would then march in double file
to the fields. Mackenzie, "escorted by his valet, who always carried his
gun:' would call out" 'Forward: and just as the enemy [sic] would start
to march . .. Mackenzie's ... wife would call out, 'Captain, that hen
refuses to set? Then he'd holler, 'Halt? The men would halt and wait
until this momentous subject was settled, when once more he would
order them to march:' These interruptions generally occurred three times
per morning, consuming scores of man-hours per week. "Just such army
and navy tactics:' the citizens of Kent complained, "prevailed in every­thing
the colonists undertook to do:•sz
Hunger, unsanitary conditions and hostile Indians took a ter­rible
toll that year, and before the end of 1851 the "City of Kent" was
again as desolate as it had been before the coming of the English. Some
moved back to better-established areas of the state, and others returned
to England. Some few stuck it out on the frontier and ultimately became
successful in the Texas cattle boom of the 1870's. But more of the 117
Englishmen who came to Cow House Creek are there yet, buried near
the present city of Waco, victims of a frontier that they were in no
way prepared to face. 53
Texas continued to have an almost hypnotic power over the
English imagination, with both land speculators and potential settlers
nearly mad for Texas information and for Texan lands. In most cases
these men and women came as independent, self-sufficient individuals
or as single family members rather than as part of an organized effort
at colonization.
47
WILSON-EXETER 1828
BEALES,ROYUELA 1832
BEALES' RIVER
GRANT 1832
48
The Chroniclers:
A Portfolio of
English Writers on
the Republic of Texas
49
Curiosity, a love of adventure, a sense of duty or simple greed
drew a host of English men and women to the Republic of
Texas. A remarkable number of these visitors kept jour-nals
or diaries, wrote reports for their government or company,
or published tomes on the nature of the country and its citizens.
The degree of partisanship, both pro- and anti-Texan, runs to both
extremes, and the magnitude of exaggeration concerning the land's
fertility or barrenness, the air's purity or putridity, and the people's
honor or knavishness is, at this date, staggering.
As William Kennedy warned "persons who meditate the
important act of removal to a new and distant settlement:' Texas
was not without its "interested eulogists, skillful in softening defects,
or throwing them into the background:'1 Likewise the Republic
had many detractors, who for a variety of reasons sought with
their pens to see the British-American enterprise fail and Mexican
sovereignty reinstated.
The reader seeking to know more about Texas, therefore,
ought "not merely to peruse the various publications intended
for the information of emigrants, but [to] endeavor to ascertain
the object of their authors in submitting them to the world:'2 This
advice, timely 150 years ago, is no less valid today.
51
Charles Hooten
A novelist and essayist of small reputation, Charles Hooten
sailed with 30 companions from London in December
1840 and arrived in Galveston the following March. Of
the 30 travelers in his party, Hooten reported, at least 27 hoped
to obtain land and spend "the remainder of their lives [as] good
citizens of the new Republic?' Not one, said Hooten, was able to
accomplish this goal, although many died in the attempt. "May
I never again see such ruin of body and fortune, such wreck of
heart, as it was my fate to witness in Texas!"3
Hooten attributed this failure in part to the ease with
which Texas land might be obtained. The English settler, "to whom
the idea of possessing landed property is quite new;' Hooten
observed, was most likely to exhaust all of his capital in buying
vast acreage. Fancying himself "equal with some old feudal baron,
or the peer of an English Lord;' the new Texas freeholder was in
fact without the means to cultivate or even to defend his estate. 4
To Hooten, the land, the elements and the inhabitants
of Texas were leagued in diabolical conspiracy to destroy the
English immigrant. The heat, the "brick-burned-earth;' and the
"pestilent, sweltering bayous, in which the fish that cannot escape
get cooked (though not literally boiled) to death" contributed to
"the complete and total unfitness of this wretched country as a
location for English emigrants?'5
"Broken in health, spirit, and means;' Hooten returned to
England in November 1842, there to write St. Louis Isle, or Texiana,
through which he hoped to persuade his countrymen "through
the influence of facts;' that "for an Englishman to emigrate to Texas
... is to commit an act of 'temporary insanity? "
Critics of Hooten's book, both Texans and other readers,
have long doubted its author's sanity. One recent commentator
in an objective, scholarly critique, characterized Hooten as "able,
but debauched and half-crazed?' Once in Texas where, this scholar
speculates, he was "no longer restrained by the stable English soci­ety;'
he degenerated "into a crude, dissolute, if not savage man?'
Whatever his motivations or mental condition, the unfortunate
52
Hooten failed to recover from his Texas experience and died of
an overdose of morphine at his Nottingham residence in 1847.6
Captain Fredrick Marryat, R.N.
l f Charles Hooten had maligned Texas in the British press,
he at least did so after spending the better part of a year
in the republic and suffering there significant personal and
financial losses. Fredrick Marryat, on the other hand, set out to
vilify Texas, having neither set foot on its soil nor, so far as is
known, having ever met a single Texan .
Already a well-known novelist and a successful naval
officer, Marryat set out in 1837 on a tour of the United States
and Canada to gather material for a series of travel books which
he intended to author. The fruit of his travels was The Narrative
of the Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet in California, Sonora,
and Western Texas. Although he never set foot in Texas, he boldly
characterized the Texans as "miscreants, cowards, murderers, unjust
a_nd delinquent people?' Without exception they were "inhospitable,
tipplers and brawlers?'?
NARRATIVE
TRAVELS AND ADVENTURES
MONSIEUR VIOLET,
CALIFORNIA, SONORA, & WESTERN TEXAS.
WRITI'EN BY
CAPT. MARRYAT, C.B.
=-
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. I,
LONDON:
LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, & LONGHANS.
P.I.T.&Jr;NO.'l'AI: :lOW.
1843.
53
Not only was Marryat's venom directed toward the Texan
character but toward their cause, freedom from Mexico, as well.
Texas's secessionist movement, he announced, was motivated by
reports of Texas's great wealth of "gold mines, diamonds, &c!' to
the greedy speculators of the United States. "If ever there was proof,
from the results of pursuing an opposite course, that honesty is
the best policy;' he told his English readers, "it is to be found in
the present state of Texas:'8
Significantly, the motive behind Marryat's vindictive
attack on Texas was an attempt to forestall British recognition
of the fledgling republic and the hope that she would be recon­quered
by Mexico and thus lost to the westward-looking United
States. A rock-ribbed English Tory, Marryat made no effort to
conceal his prejudices or his intentions. "My object;' he boldly
stated, "was to do injury to democracy!'9
Nicholas Doran P. Maillard
During a six-month sojourn in 1840 Nicholas Doran P.
Maillard made a slight but favorable impression on the
people of Richmond, Texas. Claiming to be an English
lawyer, the stranger talked to everyone, took copious notes, wrote
what on that culture-starved frontier passed for poetry, and, more
important, mixed an excellent drink. For a time he even edited
the Richmond Telescope. Then, pleading the death of a relative,
he returned to England. 10
Two years later there was published in London a book
entitled The History of the Republic of Texas, From the Discovery of
the Country to the Present Time and the Cause of Her Separation From
the Republic of Mexico by N. Doran Maillard, Esq., Barrister-at­Law,
of Texas.
According to one student of Texas history, "Of all the
snide, scurrilous and cutting attacks ever made against the fair
name of the Lone Star Republic (and there have been several)
his was the topper!'11 Like Marryat, Maillard sought to discredit
Texas in the eyes of the civilized world in hopes of precluding
English recognition. Unlike Marryat, however, who acted from
54
genuine if misguided political conviction, Maillard almost surely
was acting on instruction from English bankers threatened with
the loss of £10,000,000 if Mexico should default on loans secured
by Texas land. His justification for his diatribe against Texas, of
course, was never admitted to be purely monetary gain. Rather,
he represented himself as one "led away by the exaggerated
accounts ... promulgated respecting Texas and the Texans:' and
seeking only "to prevent more of my own countrymen from sharing
in the ruin and wretchedness of too many others who have already
emigrated to Texas, and at this moment are either pining there,
in want and sickness, or have begged their way out of it ... ;•tz
Misrepresenting the issues and events of the Texas Revolution as
greedy treason and Texans as "habitual liars, drunkards, blas­phemers,
and slanderers, sanguinary gamesters and cold-blooded
assassins:'13 however, Maillard earned his fee.
Francis C. Sheridan
Where there is smoke, there is most often fire. The English­man
with a mind to emigrate to or invest in the Republic
ofTexas, therefore, might have been well advised to look
for other locations for his capital or his home except for the writ-ings
of a half-dozen or more fellow Englishmen who saw Texas
in a kinder light. Many were the English land speculators who,
although coming no closer to Texas than had Captain Marryat,
painted its praises in hues more bright than its detractors' were
dark. These men were boosting Texas in the English press for rea­sons
as crassly commercial as was N.D.P. Maillard. More objective
visitors, however, after careful and unprejudiced examination of
Texas, her climate, soils and peoples, pronounced the republic a
haven for surplus British pounds and population.
Surely the wittiest and perhaps the best-balanced judg­ment
of Texas during the 1840's was recorded in the private journal
of Francis C. Sheridan, an Irishman in the British diplomatic
service and grandson of the noted Irish playwright, Richard B.
Sheridan. As colonial secretary to the Governor of the Windward
Islands, Sheridan was sent to Texas by the Palmerston ministry
55
in order "to contribute the opinion of an eyewitness" to the debate
as to whether or not to recognize the republic. 14
Sheridan's stay in Texas, primarily in Galveston, lasted
through the early months of 1840, at the end of which time he
recommended recognition to Lord Palmerston. His recommenda­tion
was not, however, without reservation. He did not believe,
he confided to his journal, that "such a quantity of rogues popu­lates
or ever did populate any corner of the globe" as could be
found in Texas.ts
Any fellow countryman intending a visit or move to Texas
he advised "to believe as little of the accounts given it, as his
credulity will permit of:' Although he admitted a great deal of
truth in the land speculators' presentation of Texas in the English
press, he declared there to be "a great deal more falsehood?' So
great was Texas's need for settlers and so intense the speculators'
quest for profits that from their descriptions of the land "one would
suppose Texas was a perfect paradise?'16
William Kennedy
Among Texas's staunchest partisans of all her English
visitors was William Kennedy, Her Majesty's Consul in
Galveston from 1842 through 1847. Kennedy first visited
Texas in 1838 at the behest of the English government to examine
the region's potential for colonization. "After examining the charac­ter
of the soil, and inquiring into the general resources of the
country:' Kennedy directed his attention to the "government, reli­gion,
laws, police, and manners?' He reported in what Maillard
calls "Mr. Kennedy's two well puffed up volumes,"17 "a stable govern­ment,
religion respected, laws well administered, protection
afforded to property and person, and the general tone of manners
the same as in the United States?'18
This glowing account brought a wave of English immi­grants
to Texas, seeking land for the establishment of cattle and
sheep ranches. Those who followed Kennedy's advice to central
Texas "were men of wealth and culture, genial and enterprising,
who did much toward the development of the county?'19
56
J~~..~~ [;-...~ $._ ._.._.4. 4 .
1;-vftj{ t:J£..· ?~~,.:£.
TEXAS:
RI SE, PROG RESS, AND PRO SPECTS
REPUBLIC OF TEXAS.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
WJLL l AM KENN EDY, ESQ.
::::::;_;.:'.:;.!:".:::::.':.::-~::::.:~::::.=;::::!
Wt-r <l I-,., ..... ., ..... ""'"' ,.,_,""" ,...._ .....
c-t >f"-"· •*" lt.,.W.• I~ Jlrtl t
VOL. I.
LONDON '
R. HAST ING S. 13, CAR EY STREET,
Like those of writers less complimentary toward Texas and
her people, William Kennedy's motives for venturing his opinions
in print are perhaps somewhat suspect. Kennedy had invested
heavily in Texas real estate and in 1842 attempted to interest 600
English families in settling on his Texan holdings. Although the
project failed, one might reasonably suspect that much of the praise
which Kennedy lavished on Texas and her prospects was in fact
nothing more than the customary hyperbole practiced by the
salesmen of real estate.
William Bollaert
William Bollaert first came to Texas in 1840 to examine the
country and report to the British government but soon
came to love the place. A writer, chemist, soldier, geog­rapher,
ethnologist and antiquarian, Bollaert was ideally suited
to report on Texas's coastline, Indian tribes, botany and natural
history, and his native curiosity had given him "a strange inkling
to see the new republic:'20
57
Bollaert filed his report with the Admiralty and returned
to Texas in 1842 "to assist in the survey and examination" of a
41/z million-acre tract to the west of San Antonio "with a view
to colonize it with emigrants from Europe?'21 The second Mexican
invasion of Texas prevented Bollaert from immediately undertaking
his tour of inspection, so, a firm supporter of Texan independence,
he enlisted in the Texas Navy and served as sailor aboard the sloop
Lafitte. "The recollection of having smelt a little powder in the
. ----·
.. · 7e~;. ,;~
:..:. · ~;:: ."
"Texan Squadron" by William Bollaert
Old World prompted me to lend a willing, although feeble, hand
in the New;' he later recalled. Following Texas's second war with
Mexico, Bollaert took up his deferred exploration of the area
surrounding Columbus, Bastrop, Austin and San Antonio, and
his job of advising English immigrants on the advantages of
settlement there. 22
By 1844 the imminence of Texas's annexation to the
United States quelled the impulse for much British investment
in the republic, and Bollaert's failing health caused him to alter
his plan for permanent residence in Texas and return to England.
He always maintained the greatest respect for the "handful of
American farmers, who in an incredibly short period erected their
conquest into an independent Republic?'23
58
Matilda Charlotte Houstoun
Among Texas's most acute English observers were a pair
of ladies: Matilda Charlotte Houstoun, world traveler and
author of numerous travel books, and the Honorable
Amelia Matilda Murray, maid of honor to Queen Victoria. Mrs.
Houstoun, who visited the republic in 1842, believed that "no
country has been more calumniated and misrepresented than
Texas?'24 Although taken somewhat aback by the "free and easy"
manner of American democracy, Mrs. Houstoun was favorably
impressed by the hospitality, generosity and good will of the
Texans. In Texas and the Gulf of Mexico she recounted the tale
of an Englishman who, "not possessed of much ready cash:' found
that "a good song, or a budget of news, invented or remembered:'
would always be taken in payment for a night's lodging and an
ample meal. 25
She severely castigated the Texans who were "too indolent
either to plant vegetables, shoot game, or catch fish:' but found
them willing to undertake any project except those which demand
"steady and settled habits of industry?'26 In fact, she opined, "where
an Englishman would sink, past redemption, in the mire of despon­dency:'
the Texans, "to their praise and credit be it spoken, continue
to struggle through?'27
Owning neither Texas lands nor Mexican bonds, Mrs.
Houstoun probably viewed the Lone Star Republic with a consid­erably
less prejudiced eye than many of her male fellow visitors,
and her commentary is, therefore, probably among the most
accurate and reliable.
Amelia Matilda Murray
~~you will think me adventurous to undertake this:' wrote
Amelia Matilda Murray to an English friend in 1855,
"but these new countries are so interesting to a person
fond of Natural History and fine scenery, that one makes up one's
mind to undergo some inconvenience and difficulty?' At age 66,
59
therefore, this lady-in-waiting to Queen Victoria landed at Galves­ton
for a whirlwind tour through Houston, Washington-on-the­Brazos,
Huntsville and Nacogdoches, and then down the Red
River to New Orleans.
She found Texas a beautiful country, resembling "Somer­setshire,
Kent, and Winsor [sic] Forest by turns" and reported that
she "should much prefer settling in Texas to any other part of
the Union ... unless it was the highlands of Virginia?'28
Of the people, she was less fond. Like Mrs. Houstoun she
was somewhat offended by the easy familiarity of frontier democ­racy,
finding "the servant class" almost too impudent to be toler­ated.
To the Negroes she found it "necessary to scold or speak
sharply before they will bestir themselves:' and white servants she
found to be proud and easily offended by what she, as an English
aristocrat, thought the simplest and most logical demands.
Unlike the English gentlemen who traveled the frontier,
accepting Texas's crude but generous hospitality as they found
it, Lady Amelia abominated the state's hotels, finding them "care­less
and troublesome beyond measure?'29
Prejudiced only by the beliefs and habits of her class and
not by hope of financial gain, Lady Amelia's account of Texas
as she saw it is factual if highly opinionated. Although generally
favorable in her treatment of the Texans, her aristocratic back­ground
made her severely critical of institutions dear to the
democratic A~erican tradition.
Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
Among the English women in Texas Charles Hooten noted
"many a longing eye, that too often gazes afar upon the
vision of its birthplace?' Only very few, he wrote, "are the
emigrant females of Texas who would not gladly go back again
to the respective places from which they came?'30 One English
woman who would surely qualify as an exception to Hooten's
generalization is Amelia Barr, the daughter of a Lancashire Presby­terian
minister who spent the happiest years of her life in Texas.
60
Mrs. Barr, with her husband, Robert, and their two daugh­ters,
arrived at the mouth of Buffalo Bayou in 1856 and from there
traveled overland to Austin where Mr. Barr became secretary to
the legislative Ways and Means Committee. On their trek into
the interior Mrs. Barr "was transported" by the beauty of the Texas
scenery. The prairies and hills, the flowers and wildlife "went to
the heart like wine;' she rhapsodized, but best of all were the
people. On the steamer trip up the bayou toward Harrisburg, the
Barrs passed the site of San Jacinto, where "Houston and his eight
hundred gentlemen, wiped out the Spanish army under Santa
Anna, and gave American settlers in Texas that religious and civic
liberty which was their right?'31
The boat's captain, she wrote, bared his head as they sailed
by the battlefield and related "the gallant, stirring story" of the
Texas Revolution which she later fictionalized in Remember the
Alamo, one of her 70 published novels.
Deeply impressed by the example of "men who had at
least once in their lives scorned the mean god Mammon;' and
risked their lives for "their God and their country;' Mrs. Barr com­mented,
"We are going to live among heroes ... . After a life among
weavers and traders, will not that be a great experience?"32
The Barr family spent five idyllic years in Austin prior to
1861 and during the Civil War behaved with all of the heroism
of their bravest Texan neighbors. With the fall of the Confederacy
and the region's attendant economic collapse, they sought to better
their fortunes in Galveston, where the awesome yellow fever
epidemic of 1867 killed Robert Barr and his two young sons within
a 24-hour period.
Texas lost its charm for Amelia Barr, and she and her
daughters moved to New York where she began her literary career,
one of the most prolific of the 19th century. Nevertheless, as her
novel of the Texas Revolution and several chapters of her auto­biography
All the Days of My Life indicate, the beauty, hospitality
and bold spirit of the Lone Star State always remained among
her fondest memories.
61
Amelia Barr
62
Chapter3
Divided by a
Common Language
Although English colonization efforts without exception failed
in Texas, individual Englishmen continued to leave their moth­er
country for new homes in the American West. From the
end of the Mexican War until the outbreak of the Civil War, depressed
economic conditions in England and a boom in international cotton
and grain prices induced hundreds of English families to "renounce
forever all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign Prince, Potentate, State
or Sovereign whatsoever, and particularly any and all allegiance to the
Queen of Great Britain and Ireland" and to swear an oath at Galveston
or Indianola to "bear true allegiance to the United States and support
the Constitution of the same:'
Thomas Steele, one such young man who departed from Old
England bound for America, wrote to his father, "I wish I could transport
you here for one half-hour to see some of my fellow emigrants all full
of hope and Spirit:' Yet, he continues, but for the "John Bullisrn'' of
their spirits, each seems "as unfitted for such an enterprize one would
think as their greatest enemy could wish:' Rather than seasoned farmers,
the force of pioneers that England was sending to America, Steele
observed, was composed chiefly of clerks, haberdashers, chemists "and
one bookseller from Dover:'1
63
Leaving Old England for America
Despite Steele's misgivings, however, one historian of the trans­atlantic
migration, Charlotte Erickson, has opined that "perhaps no
other immigrants came so well prepared psychologically as the English:'
The skilled workers and farmers who settled here were able to retain
or raise the income level and social rank that they had enjoyed in
England while the smaller group "who found life without servants
unacceptable or who were offended by the brashness of American ways
usually could afford to return home:' Indeed, few apparent obstacles
blocked the English immigrant from full assimilation into American
culture. Similarity in language, customs, and economic and political
organization would seem to have offered the British almost instant
acceptance in their new American communities. Especially in the rural
society of the Texas frontier, English newcomers were unlikely to feel
any pressure from American natives to conform to any local customs
or attitudes except those condoning slavery. The English were freely
accepted into frontier churches and were welcome to take part in local
political activities. "Indeed;' says Erickson, "it is difficult to imagine
circumstances more propitious to the rapid assimilation of an immigrant
group than these British immigrants met in rural America:'2
Yet for all of the promise of wealth and happiness held out to the
English emigrant by the State of Texas, tragedy too often attended the
64
newcomer's attempts to establish himself there. English traveler Charles
Hooten was one of a "glad, active, and hopeful band" which came to
Texas in 1841. Less than two years later he returned to England to write
of the utter failure of his party's hopes and of the absolute falsehood
of "glorious Texan promises:' Most of his companions had died in Texas.
Those who survived, he claimed, were broken in health and resources,
and held but one last faint hope: of "once more reaching the home
of their birth alive:'3
The question endlessly debated in both the Texan and the
English press was whether Texas itself was culpable for many circum­stances
such as Hooten described, or whether the unprepared English­man
carried the seeds of his own destruction in his baggage from home.
William Bollaert, another English traveler and stout partisan of Texas,
presented a counter argument to Hooten's diatribe against the state.
"Two Englishmen left their native country:' reads Bollaert's parable, "one
on his way to Texas, the other to Illinois:' On their arrival at New
Orleans the Texas-bound traveler listened to tales such as Hooten's,
immediately took fright and returned home on the next ship bound
for London. The other was fascinated by what he heard of Texas and
determined to pay the place a visit. After remaining a few days in
65
Two Englishmen go into a
store at Weimar.
"Aw, ave you got henny Lea
& Perrin's Worster sauce?"
''No: don't keep it, sir; never
heard of it."
''Never 'eard of it! By Jove,
what a blawsted country!"
Turning to the other exile,
" 1\rry, let's go back to hold
Hengland:'
Galveston he moved into the hinterlands. "He was delighted with the
country, and has settled in the vicinity of Gonzales, on the Guadalupe
River, and when heard of last, he was about to be married to the
daughter of a rich old Mexican rancher?'4
The moral of Bollaert's probably apocryphal tale is obviously
that a land such as Texas required a settler of boldness of spirit, deter­mination
and industry. These it would generously reward. All others
the frontier would reject with whatever degree of harshness the situation
demanded. In the era of first and hottest debate over Charles Darwin,
Herbert Spencer and the theory of "the survival of the fittest:' Texas
was a living laboratory, daily demonstrating that the strong should
prosper while the lesser individuals would be rightly relegated to history's
scrap heap.
Of all English commentators on the chances of their country­men
prospering in Texas, Arthur lkin was probably most balanced in
his appraisal and advice. "The greater number of English emigrants,
from their previous habits of life, and their incapability of forming a
just idea of the real state of things:' he observed, "make at first but very
indifferent settlers, and but poor judges of the advantages or drawbacks
of any particular settlement?' The "more hardy and enterprising"
Americans and Scots, the "more easily contented" Germans, and those
English settlers who had faced the Canadian winter and the Australian
drought, however, lkin assured his readers, would testify that there is
no other new country "where the hardships are so light, and the ultimate
reward so certain, as the Republic of Texas?'5
However easy, relative to the experiences of their countrymen
on other continents or of non-English-speaking immigrants in America,
relocation in Texas for Englishmen might have been, physical and
emotional hardships were undeniable. Even those who came to Texas
directly from English farms found American agricultural methods
different from those to which they were accustomed, and the breaking
of virgin land was a task unperformed by the British for centuries. 6
Although few English immigrants suffered from food shortage,
meals were uniformly monotonous since exotic produce was almost total­ly
unavailable on the frontier. No matter to what they had been accus­tomed
in the old country, almost all farmers and their families wore
only homespun in Texas. Although the more hardy among these
pioneers came to regard anything homemade as morally superior to
manufactured items, doubtlessly many farm women longed bitterly for
66
the more comfortable, not to mention fashionable, fabrics they had
worn at home.
Housing for the immigrant family was almost invariably of a
lower standard in Texas than they had known in England, at least in
the early years. Few proper English ladies were prepared for the reality
of a log cabin or a dugout. A house without proper floors, plaster,
fireplace, windows or furniture was a genuine hardship, and more than
one English matron lamented to friends at home of the necessity of
"barbarizing in a log hut" until a real house could be constructed. 7
Another bitter adjustment required of the English immigrant
was the acceptance of the lower level of services, both private and public,
provided in Texas. "The poorest man in the old country thinks nothing
of a road or path, or a drink of water from a well;' wrote one disgruntled
pioneer who noted that Texas seldom provided these accommodations.
Transportation and communication links were invariably poorer in the
American West than in England, and the lack of forges, mills, breweries
and public houses were also the topic of much complaint.8
The want of cultural amenities, too, was severely felt by gently
bred English immigrants. As late as 1856, one newcomer recorded, there
were but two pianos in all of Austin. No bookstore existed, and books
were not evident in private homes. Too few were theaters, concert and
lecture halls, and public entertainments of any kind.9
67
Far worse in most cases than physical privation and hardship
was the psychological wrench felt by English settlers in remote Texas.
Although the British seldom lived apart from native Americans, lone­liness
was often quite intense and the feeling of isolation profound.
As one lonely immigrant phrased it, "The English tongue is practically
all that is English in America!' Indeed, Erickson speculates, the immi­grant
who came from a non-English-speaking nation might possess "a
built-in shield against painful encounters" with Texas society. "The
Englishman in America;' she believes, "was more exposed because his
difficulties were not so apparent!' The English Texan was, however, an
easily identifiable aberration from the Anglo-American norm. 10
Francis Sheridan recorded in his diary that the Texans were
"delighted at the visit of ... Britishers;' and "would much sooner see
an Englishman in Texas than any one from the U. States!'11 Although
the typical representative of the English race was perceived to be honest,
energetic and of a practical turn of mind, other traits which he brought
from Great Britain were not so well calculated to engender success in
taming a vast frontier.
Mrs. Houstoun suggested that "our countrymen in particular
... should settle in herds, because they generally have a defect in the
character which stands in the way of their success as settlers!' This
"defect;' which she did not find among the Americans, was "the difficulty
they find in adapting themselves to occupations to which they have
been unaccustomed:'12 This characteristic had its positive aspects. Much
admired was the English gentleman "who despite the crudeness of his
surroundings refused to succumb to environment;' and "who despite
the questionable character of many of his early associates, refused to
be victimized by the looseness and immorality" of his Texan neighbors. 13
The other side of this coin, however, was the Englishman's
incapacity to adapt himself to new conditions or ideas. One vivid but
none too serious example of the unwillingness of English gentlemen
to adapt to the ways of the frontier was recorded by Amelia Barr. Of
considerable amusement to her were the dissimilarities in her husband's
style of dress and that of his friend, a member of the state legislature:
Mr. Barr's high silk hat "typified the quality and fashion of all the
garments beneath it;' she recalls, and she was certain that he was the
only man in Austin in 1857 wearing gloves. His Texan companion by
way of"picturesque contrast" was dressed in a white flannel shirt, dark
tweed trousers and a broad leather belt "without furnishings." Whether
68
in defiance or ignorance of prevailing gentleman's fashion, the Texan
legislator wore "very low cut shoes" rather than the obligatory Welling­tons,
and Mrs. Barr "hardly [thought] his hands had ever dreamed of
gloves?' On his head the Texan wore "a handsome black sombrero, with
a silver cord and tassel round it?'
The lady admitted that she was "forcibly impressed" with the
fitness of Texan garb for the Texas climate, but stated that her proper
British husband was "wedded to his waistcoat, ashamed to go to the
street without a proper coat, and quite sure he would not feel respectable
without his suspenders?'14 In the words of one Texan, ''An Englishman, \
as a rule, is a pig-headed, self-conceited animal, who religiously believes
himself better than all creation?' Although he conceded that once
through the "process of adaption'' the English settler could be as good
as the best Texan, he also maintained that he "is no use as a workman
till he has been here three years, and got the pride and stupidity knocked
out of him?'15
Captain Charles Elliot agreed, finding his countrymen over­refined
for success on the frontier. "English people are broken in, or
should I say broken down to do but one thing in the world:' he wrote.
This want of flexibility led Elliot to observe that "in this country they
made but sorry work of it in taming the wilds, compared with the
Houston, 1856
69
American races:' Elliot's experience had taught him that the English
system of military, social and political training rendered men unfit for
"roughness and reverses:' The English "must all work together perfectly
or it will hardly work at all:' The Texans, on the other hand, "jolt and
jar terrifically in their progress, but on they do get, and prosper too,
under circumstances when our people would starve to death:'16
Mrs. Houstoun, too, was favorably impressed by the vigor and
determination of the native Texan. On a visit to the new republic in
1842 she noted that "not a day passes without being marked by some
endeavor (often a successful one) of these energetic settlers to raise their
country into strength and prosperity:' The much-remarked American
zeal, however, was one of the few Texan traits which the British accepted
as unalloyed virtue. 17
Texanophile Charles Elliot found the natives to be "rough and
wild;' but much admired their courage and consistency. Captain Elliot,
in fact, could "hardly know any more fearful and humiliating subject
of reflection" than th/helplessness of the English settler against "these
scheming, enterprising, and ... better informed" Texans. 18 Another
military man, Lieutenant Colonel Arthur ].L. Fremantle of Her Majes­ty's
Coldstream Guards, years later agreed that "in spite of their peculiar
habits of hanging, shooting, and c .... there was much to like" about
the Texans. During his travels in the Confederate States in 1863,
Fremantle found Texans to possess "a sort of bon-hommie honesty and
straightforwardness, a natural courtesy and extreme good nature, which
was very agreeable:'19
N. Doran Maillard, on the other hand, strongly averred that
there was "not a subject connected with the history of Texas, that has
been so grossly misrepresented, as that of the character . . . of the white
population:' In his 1842 History of the Republic of Texas this English
observer declared Texas to be "a country filled with habitual liars,
drunkards, blasphemers, and slanderers; sanguinary gamesters and cold­blooded
assassins; with idleness and sluggish indolence (two vices for
which the Texans are already proverbial); with pride, engendered by
ignorance and supported by fraud:'20
English novelist and world traveler Fredrick Marryat was also
of Maillard's opinion. "It is much to be lamented;' he wrote in 1843,
"that Texas had not been populated by a more deserving class of indi­viduals:'
Had this been the case, he believes, Texas might early have
become one of the powers of the earth, but the region's potential was
70
lost when it became "the resort of every vagabond and scoundrel who
could not venture to remain in the United States:' This supposed influx
of social jetsam fixed the cultural status of the republic, in Marryat's
mind, at least, as "wholly destitute of principle or probity;' beyond the
means of "more respectable settlers" to amend. 21
Only slightly more complimentary was Francis Sheridan's
humorous view of the character of the native Texan. "I would not wish
to convey to the reader the idea, that the population of Texas univer­sally
speaking are a set of ragamuffins;' he confided to his diary while
on a visit to Galveston. "On the contrary, there are individual instances
of talent, worth & responsibility, & on the exertion & character of
these men depend the future prosperity of Texas:' On the whole, how­ever,
Sheridan did not believe "such a quantity of rogues populates
or ever did populate any corner of the globe:•zz
Hardly a single aspect of the Texan character, in fact, escaped the
close scrutiny of the English immigrant or tourist, and concerning each
of these aspects controversy was sure to exist. As might be surmised
from the differences of opinion among Elliot, Fremantle, Maillard,
Marryat and Sheridan, the honesty of the average Texan was a source
of warm debate.
Anti-Texan Englishmen, such as those cited above, pointed to
Texas as the ultimate haven for scoundrels-a haven for the fugitives
from justice from half the civilized world. So great was the concentration
of outlaws and cutthroats, these image makers insisted, that each Texan
greeted the other with the question, "What war yer name afore yer
moved to these parts?" and the initials G.T.T.- "Gone to Texas'~ were
known as an internationally used symbol for runaway criminals.
While even Colonel Fremantle agreed that Texas was "the most
lawless state in the Confederacy;'23 other English travelers tended to
rank Texans "very high'' in honesty. Charles Hooten, for example,
normally no friend of Texas or the Texans, commented that "it is at
once a remarkable and pleasing fact to record, that petty larcenies of
any description are as rare, either in towns or in the prairie, as in
[England] they are common:'24
Instruments of the much-noted Texas mayhem were fascinating
to English observers. "Every person we met carried a six-shooter;' mar­veled
Colonel Fremantle, "although it is very seldom necessary to use
them:'25 Ironically, the ubiquitous Bowie knife, so much remarked by
English diarists, letter writers and novelists, was most often manufac-
71
G. T. T.
tured in Sheffield or Birmingham "and brought over in British Ships
as a profitable Speculation?'26
As to the veracity of th~ average Texan-whose tendency to
exaggerate, boast or out-and-out lie about his state's natural wonders
has long been legendary-the English were equally mixed in their reac­tion.
Although many were put off by the tellers of tall tales, others
were delighted by them. Edward Smith explained the Texan's tendency
to hyperbole, reminding his readers that the limitless resources of the
state and the enviable prosperity of its citizens gives the habit of using
"exaggerated expressions of feeling, and the positive and comparative
are less frequently employed than the superlative?'27
Other habits of speech were also much discussed by English
auditors. The fastidious Hooten remarks the "peculiar characteristic
of the state of refinement and social intercourse" of Texans to be "their
inveterate habit of swearing and cursing?' Awed by "its very excess, its
depth and recklessness;' he notes that the substance of communication
often "flows into and becomes lost in an ocean of oaths, like a fresh
stream in a putrid sea-oaths too of a character so entirely new and
diabolical, that one would be apt to imagine the genius of Depravity
herself had been taxed to her utmost powers to produce them for the
especial use of this rising State?'28 Less loquacious but still in complete
72
agreement was Fremantle. The Texan "never opens his mouth without
an oath;' he recorded, and that "strictly American in its character:'29
Another of the Texan's social customs which both appalled and
fascinated the English was his capacity, or at least taste, for strong drink.
After trekking from Brownsville, "the rowdiest town of Texas;' to San
Antonio, Fremantle wrote that he had become "comparatively accus­tomed
and reconciled to the necessity of shaking hands and drinking
brandy with everyone;' a necessity, he remarks, which "does not exist
except in Texas:'30 Sheridan had noted 20 years earlier that the "passion
for erecting grog shops in Texas, supersedes the thirst of religious worship
& Temples wherein to exercise it;'31 and Marryat had observed that
when Austin became the capital of the republic, the tiny city's three
hotels played host mightily to the president, secretaries, judges, ministers
and members of Congress. All, said the English observer, were "more
or less tipsy;' and in the quarrels that inevitably broke out, "hardly
a night passed without four or five men being stabbed or shot:'32
Edward Smith, as usual taking a more charitable view of the
Texans, reported observing but one case of intemperance during his
visit to the Lone Star Republic. He does admit, however, to having
been told that "an intemperate use of whiskey is far too common in
every class of society:'33
Brownsville, 1865
73
Far worse to English sensibilities than the habit of excessive
drinking, a "depraved taste" which, after all, pervaded "most of the
classes" of England, were two other examples of Texan "degeneracy":
the "filthy habits" of overindulgence in tobacco and underindulgence
in bathing. Although in most instances the stoutest champion of Texan
virtues, Smith chides his favorites for their want of familiarity with
soap and water. "It is probable that the people of Texas are as cleanly
of their persons ... as those of other States;' he reported, "but they
are far from cleanly. They have great natural facilities for bathing, but
we scarcely found a Texan who took advantage of them:'34
Smith was perhaps the only 19th century English visitor to
Texas who made note of its citizens' distaste for the bath, but almost
all commented upon their indulgence in tobacco. Sheridan complained
bitterly that all of the Texan's time "is spent talking and chewing:' A
subject which he thought almost too "nasty" to record nevertheless
occupied Sheridan for many paragraphs. "No one who has not seen
& suffered by this most disgusting custom;' he maintained, "can form
the faintest idea how universal & incessant is the practice. Hig[h] &
low, rich & poor, young & old, chew, chew, chew & spit, spit, spit
all the blessed day & most of the night-& as the spitting-box is consid­ered
generally speaking a superfluous luxury the floors of the rooms
& fireplaces bear ample testimony to the beastly habits of their occu­pants:'
35 G.W Featherstonhaugh, in his two-volume Excursions Through
the Slave States, echoes Sheridan's disgust. Having found Texas's hotels
rather worse than primitive, Featherstonhaugh relates his discomfort
at having to share accommodations with a native traveler. "Of all of
the distressing situations in which I could be placed;' he wrote, "the
keenest of all would be to be compelled to pass the night on the same
bed with another man, and that man a stranger, a tobacco eater, and
perpetual expectorator:'36
Colonel Fremantle was amazed to note that "only five" of his nine
fellow passengers on a Texas stagecoach chewed tobacco during the
night, and these "aimed at the window with great accuracy, and didn't
splash me:' A bit unnerved by the continual crossfire of tobacco juice,
however, Fremantle confesses that the amount of sleep he got that night
"was naturally very trifling:' With the dawn "tobacco chewing became
universal;' and the chewers' accuracy "was sometimes a little wild:' This
proper Victorian gentleman was no little daunted by the "shower of
tobacco juice from the mouths of the Southern chivalry on the roo£:'37
74
UNITED STATES
MAIL LINE OF' STAGES
l ' RO:lf
7:
\~
~~~~0.-jfa::-y . .rq~.;-- "~----
Th e s uh .3c r ibers, contr ac tor.<:~ to carry n week ­y
mail from Port L::tvacn to NC'w Braunfnls, via
Vi ctoria, Cu:q·,,, GLlllZ:des, n.nt.l s(~g uin, purp:lHCS
rnnning a l ine of four hu rse stages on the above
t'uutc.
L<' aVf·s P ort Lavaca on Frid~ty 1 s , at G a. m.,
a nll arrin•s :\t New I; r::tu nfc ls on l\iunUavs' at
4 o'c lock, p. m. .
R3tnrning, lcavf'9 New Drnunfl·ls on Satnr­Ll
nv'~: , nl U a . 111., and arrives at Pun L1-vac a on
Tlll·:.;<.lay's ut 4 p. m.
RATES.
P ort L n.vncf\., 1\1. H. Niclto lson, agen t.
F'm L · ;vo~c a to Vicwtia, $·2 50- G. VV. '-\right
u Victoria to C uero, 2 .SO-I R. North .
" C urru to Gonzales, 2 SO-C. S. l ~ ro w n.
" G 1 nz · d ;_~ s to Sc>guin, 2 50-J. S. Gal ve n .
" S ·g-uin <o Urnuufds, 2 50--S. lU il l t'tt
u NL·w Bn1un fels to S an
Alltonitl, 2 50-
Evvry c :1rt! and nttcntion will be paid to th J
I comfort :.~utl co nn· ni cnce t) f" p: ~ ~ ~:wngc rs.
}L\RIUSON & OIWWN,
I Pr,>p rj etors.
Vic tnr i:1, Oct. '26 th, 1840 . .. __ _ ___ _
,SALTJUAR§H'§
LIXE OF UXITED STATES MAIL STAGES
D. A. SALTMARSH & Co., Proprietors.
Frum I ndianoln to San Antonio, virt La­vaca,
Victo ria., Yorktown, Sulphur
Spriu:1s a.nd Bclato.
TilE subscriber takes pleaeure In ~--'"
unuounung that he nas ou th1s ~
Line good Troy coaches, with good teams, and
polite drivers-l e<.~:ving I ndianola on the arrival
of the st v~nn ers fi·om New Orleau:-;1 for San .Antonio
and tonch in :~ at the above points. The country
tht·ongh which t}J i:; route passes is one of much
hcanty and interest to the traveler, (including the
Sulphur Springs,) and the roads are good.
For further particulars apply at the stage office,
Alhambra Hotel, Indianola.
J1 R. FRETWELL, A~cnt.
Indianola, Feb. 1852. Ll:tf.
Advertisement from The Indianola
Bulletin
Advertisement from The Texian
Advocate, Victoria,
January 11, 1850
Among Fremantle's fellow travelers was General Sam Houston,
whom the Englishman quickly sized up as "a remarkable and clever
man;' but one "much given to chewing tobacco, and blowing his nose
with his fmgers:•Js
If Fremantle was nonplussed by the chewing and spitting habits
of "the Southern chivalry;' William Bollaert was utterly aghast at the
many Texas "ladies" who dipped snuff ("which means putting it in their
mouths instead of their noses"). This English worthy, however, main­tained
his sense of gallantry and noted that those women he had ques­tioned
on the practice "had the grace to confess it was not a delicate
accomplishment!'39 N. Doran Maillard, a perpetual Texanaphobe,
described the women of Texas with far less gallantry, referring only to
their alleged want of style, grace and charm. Texas women, he reported,
"have little neatness or cleanliness of person to attract the eye." He further
libeled Texas womanhood with the outrageous opinion that "their figures
are scarcely to be described; coarse from neglect, or emaciated by self­indulgence;
their skins have borrowed from the sun;' he claims, "the
75
exact hue of the lemon; and if countenance be a true index of the mind,
their dispositions are also like the lemon:'4°
William Bollaert, however, came to the defense of the fairer sex,
expressing the view that such a cad as Maillard had not been admitted
to the society of ladies in Texas and had consorted only with the crudest
level of society. 4! Sheridan, always the clever cynic, described Texas's
women as "very pretty and all well-dressed, vulgar and awkward;' much
as one might suspect in a prosperous frontier society. 42 Kindest to the
women of Texas were the ladies who visited from England. Mrs.
Houstoun, for example, commented that "the fair 'ladies of the land'
are as delicate and refined in their habits, as they are well educated
and beautiful:'43 Mrs. Amelia Barr also noted a class of Texas women
who "chewed snuff without cessation;' but mitigated the vice with the
observation that the majority of women who "dipped" had likely formed
the habit "when it was their only physical tranquilizer through days
and nights of terror, and pain, and watchfulness:' The habit, once
formed, she allowed, was not easily broken. 44 Mrs. Houstoun also
observed with no little satisfaction that Texas women "have unbounded
influence over and are treated with marked respect and consideration''
by their suitors and husbands. This latter is scarcely surprising in an
area where men outnumbered women by a ratio of five to three.45
The Anglo-American settlers on the Texas frontier, overwhelm­ingly
of Southern origin and now living far from neighbors or centers
of communication, were starved for news and conversation. These two
factors combined to make Texan hospitality