CHAPTER V. SCOTCH-IRISH In IRELAND And In AMERICA by ANDREW PHELPS McCORMICK, 1897

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BELL


	Mary Eveline McKenzie entered life a few months before the Father of her 
Country closed his life.  She was, therefore -- though then all unconscious of the 
boon -- for a very short period, the contemporary of George Washington.  When 
she had come to know her country's story, the thought of this boon filled her 
patriotic heart till it last throb.  It has already been mentioned that her grandfather 
and her Uncle William were in the patriot army, and one was wounded and the 
other captured on the fatal field at Camden.  The air that surrounded her in her 
infancy was filled with the traditions of the heroism of her kindred and of her 
neighbors in the supreme struggle for independence through which they had 
passed.  She was also, to use a figure more forceful then than now, born with a 
silver spoon in her mouth.  An anecdote which doubtless antedates the patriarch 
Abraham, was sixty years ago currently connected with the elder John Jacob Astor, 
and then ran to the effect that on one occasion a soliciting committee called on Mr. 
Astor to subscribe to a public enterprise, when he promptly put down fifty dollars.  
The committee remonstrated, saying, "Why, Mr. Astor, your son William gave us 
five hundred dollars!"  to which Mr. Astor, with some deliberation, replied, "I am not 
surprised at the action of the young man and he can afford it; he has a rich father 
behind him."  All human conditions are relative; and, though differing greatly in 
degree, the condition of Mary Eveline's parents at the time of her birth, was similar 
to that of Mr. William Astor.  The domestic state on which she entered was a 
provincial one, but it was observed, admired and cheered when she, her parents' 
first-born, came on it in the role of leading lady.  She was trained and treated, and 
bore herself, as a star of the first magnitude from the instant of her appearance.  
When she was budding into womanhood, clouds began to checker her parents' 
sky, but no shadow was allowed to fall near enough to her to dim the radiance of 
her young life.  In the spring of 1818 she made a visit to the home of her uncle 
James Stevenson, in the Little River neighborhood in Christian County, Kentucky.  
At that time and locality, proficiency in horsemanship was not only a useful, but a 
necessary acquirement for the young persons of both sexes, and in this 
accomplishment she excelled.  She had a full clear, joyful voice for song.  Mr. 
Cushman had recently organized the Little River Church, and the frequent 
gatherings at that "Meeting-House" were not only times of spiritual refreshing, but 
were the most interesting social functions as well, in attending which her equestrian 
skill, and grace and her excellence in song were brought into full play.  During this 
visit a gallant young Lochinvar out of the West came, saw and was conquered.  He 
was a native of Chester District, South Carolina, where his parents, John Bell and 
Elizabeth -- who, before her married, was Elizabeth Hughes -- resides when he 
was born, August 22, 1791.  He was the first born, and they named him Josiah 
Hughes.  Soon after his birth they moved to East Tennessee.  His father died when 
Josiah was five years old, and in due time his mother again married.  She had two 
brothers who were hatters, and who, associated as partners, were settled in 
business in Nashville, Tennessee.  In his eleventh year Josiah went to live with 
these uncles, to whom he was apprenticed for the period of his minority, to be 
maintained and educated and trained to the hatter's trade.  His uncles were just 
and generous with him in the construction and execution of their contract.  He 
respected and esteemed them as worthy men and the best friends of his youth.  
When, in August, 1812, he attained his majority, they gave him a good saddle-
horse fully caparisoned, a full supply of "cloathes, coarse and fine," and a 
reasonable amount of ready money to meet his necessary cash expenses until he 
could find a location and begin a business career on his own account.  Congress 
has just provided (June, 1812) for the organization of the Missouri Territory.  There 
had been a prosperous settlement at St. Genevieve under the French and Spanish 
domination.  Mr. Moses Austin and his nephew, Elias Bates, with their families, had 
started the settlement forty miles west of St. Genevieve, then called "Mine a 
Burton," (now Potosi), in the last years of the last century, when that country was 
still under Spanish rule.  In 1808 a strong colony from the Catawba had settled 
Bellevue, near the site of the present town of Irondale.  There was a settlement at 
Murphy's (now Farmington) about half way between St. Genevieve and Mine a 
Burton.  There were also settlements at Cape Girardeau and New Madrid.  Almost 
the entire country intervening between these points was, in 1812, an unbroken 
wilderness, trod only by the moccasined feet of red men and by a few hardy white 
hunters.  It presented a promising field for the work and trade which Mr. Bell had 
been trained to do.  Thither he set his course, and having arrived, gave heed to the 
instruction of the inspired wise man who taught "What they hand findeth to do, do it 
with thy might."  After a time, when the Indians on the Missouri border had been 
incited or provoked to take part with the English in the war then pending, there was 
a call for troops, and Mr. Bell went a-soldiering.  By direct order, or acquiescence of 
the military authorities, he was permitted to carry with him such sutler's stores as he 
could market with his fellow soldiers or with the friendly hunters and trappers, red or 
white, he might meet during the campaign.  At the peace in the beginning of 1815, 
when his company was discharged, he had collected quite a store of furs and skins 
was able to set up a thriving business as a manufacturer of hats and general dealer 
in peltries.  By the spring of 1818 he had accumulated a snug capital, and was 
casting around a searing look for a point where he could do a larger business.  In 
the early settlement of Louisiana the French had established a post at 
Natchitoches, on Red River, for the distribution of supplies to colonists and to the 
neighboring tribes of Indians which were disposed to be friendly.  A prosperous 
farming settlement had grown up around it, and a considerable trade with the 
Indians had developed there under the French and succeeding Spanish rule.  After 
its acquisition by the United States, Congress, in 1804, erected a part of lower 
Louisiana into the Territory of Orleans, which, with somewhat enlarged boundaries, 
was admitted as the State of Louisiana in 1812.  By 1818 a combination of causes 
had made Natchitoches the distributing center for a large trade -- illicit, perhaps, but 
most profitable -- with the Northeastern Internal Provinces of Mexico.  Mr. Bell had 
an opportunity to dispose of his business in Missouri to advantage, which he 
embraced, and decided to go to Natchitoches and open a business house to share 
the harvest in that most remote part of the Southwest.  Before going away so far 
(for it was very far off then) he wished to see his mother, whom he had not seen for 
many years, and who was again a widow and still residing in Tennessee.  To reach 
her home, or any distant point, he at that day must needs travel on horseback.  
During his first year in Missouri he had made acquaintance with my grandfather, 
Andrew McCormick, and became attached to him and to his family.  They now 
resided in Christian County, Kentucky, through or near which his route lay, and to 
enjoy a reunion with these friends of his earliest manhood he decided to make their 
home in the Little River settlement a rest in his journey.  His friend had recently 
been elected, ordained and installed senior elder of the "Little River Church," and in 
the absence of the pastor the elder and his wife were the leaders in all sacred and 
social functions enjoyed by the congregated neighborhood at the meeting-house.  
The day after Mr. Bell's arrival he went with his host and hostess to attend the 
congregational singing school, and was presented by the elder's wife to the ladies 
who had met there, and, among them, to Mr. Stevenson's brilliant niece, Miss 
McKenzie.  Mr. Bell prolonged his stay with his friends that he might see Miss 
McKenzie again.  He did see her again, more than once, and was charmed with a 
spell that never relaxed.  He obtained her leave to visit her at her mother's home on 
the Tennessee River, and then resumed his journey to met his mother and to make 
his preparation for beginning business at Natchitoches.  He had a friend younger 
than himself who, though without capital, had in subordinate positions shown 
aptitude for business and upright conduct, with whom he now formed a partnership.  
During the summer they brought together at a convenient stopping-point a suitable 
stock of goods, which, with the junior partner in charge, were duly shipping to 
Natchitoches by water.  On the first day of December, Mr. Bell and Miss McKenzie 
were married, and started for their new home in the far South.  The business of the 
firm opened prosperously, and during the first and second year continued to do and 
promise well.  One bright morning just after the close of the second year, it became 
painfully manifest that the junior partner was unworthy of the trust that had been 
reposed in him.  He absconded, taking with him all the cash on hand, which it was 
discovered he had accumulated by wrecking the business.

	At this time Mr. Moses Austin was beginning to put in motion his scheme to 
plant a colony in Texas.  From the time that LaSalle made his settlement on the 
Labaca, in 1685, to the time that Lewis the Beloved unloaded Louisiana on his 
brother, Charles Bourbon of Spain, in 1762, a question of jurisdiction and boundary 
had hovered over Texas.  After the purchase of Louisiana by Mr. Jefferson in 1803, 
the question which had been put to sleep by the free gift of his Christian Majesty, 
began fitfully to awake.  It had now, however, been finally settled by the recent 
treaties between the United States and Spain.  After the conclusion of the De Onis 
treaty in 1819, Mr. Austin commenced to put matters in train for an application to 
the Government in Spain for authority to plant a colony in Texas.  Arkansas had 
been established and defined as a separate non-Indian territory in 1819.  
Hempstead County was then receiving its first settlers, and there were a few 
families at Long Prairie, on Red River, in that county.  Mr. Austin's plan was to 
remove a number of families in a body from the sections that had been Upper 
Louisiana under French and Spanish rule, through the new Territory of Arkansas to 
the locality selected for his colony, in case his prayer for such authority was 
granted.  As a preparatory step he sent his son, Stephen Fuller Austin, with some 
negro slaves to Long Prairie for the purpose of opening a farm near the boundary 
line, which it was thought would be useful to furnish provisions and afford facilities 
to emigrants.  Mr. Stephen F. Austin examined the situation thoroughly and 
became convinced that the route by way of Natchitoches or by water across the 
Gulf from New Orleans was much preferable to the route through Arkansas.  On 
sufficient inquiry, the elder Austin concluded he had best make his application to 
the authorities of New Spain at the capital of the Province of Texas.  With this view 
he arrived at Bexar early in December, 1820, and on presenting himself to the 
Governor, was ordered to leave that capital instantly and the Province as soon as 
possible.  On leaving the palace, in crossing the public square, he met the Baron 
de Bastrop, who had known Mr. Austin when he had become a Spanish subject in 
1797, and now took his documents and went with them himself to the Governor, 
and obtained leave for Mr. Austin to have a second interview, which being had and 
the matters held under consideration and consultation for several days, resulted in 
the Governor's consenting to receive Mr. Austin's memorial asking for permission to 
settle three hundred families in Texas, and in the memorial being strongly 
recommended by the local authorities at Bexar and despatched to the superior 
government of the Eastern Internal Provinces then resident at Monterey.  The 
Baron de Bastrop undertook to speed the further action on his memorial, which 
now promised certain success, and to have Mr. Austin duly notified.  Mr. Austin, 
therefore, started in January, 1821, on his return home, to push his preparation for 
introducing his colony.  In traveling through Texas he suffered exposure from bad 
roads, swollen streams and bad weather -- so much so that when he reached 
Natchitoches he was afflicted with a severe cold that had settled on his chest.  Mr. 
Bell had known Mr. Austin and his sons in Missouri.  He was fully advised of the 
general features and progress of the scheme, and of the purpose to enter Texas in 
the spring with as many of the three hundred families as could be secured, got 
ready and provided with the necessary supplies.  The inducements presented, 
coming just after the sad turn in his affairs at Natchitoches, led him to embark at 
once in this enterprise.  Mr. Austin went on to Mine a Burton, and his son 
proceeded to New Orleans, each to prepare at the different points for the 
movement in the early spring.  Mr. Bell closed up his business at Natchitoches.  
With the remnant saved from the wreck of it, he bought a family of negro slaves -- 
Moses and his wife Rachel, and their daughter, Malinda, and other children -- and 
with these and his own family he crossed the Sabine April 22, 1821, the day his 
second child, Elizabeth Lucinda, was four months old.  Mr. Austin's memorial was 
granted January 17, 1821.  The decree gave him permission to introduce three 
hundred families on most favorable terms, and the Governor was directed by the 
Commandant General, Don Joaquin de Arradono, to despatch a special 
commissioner to the United States to communicate to Mr. Austin the terms of the 
grant and to conduct the families in a legal manner into the country.  Don Ersmo 
Seguin was accordingly despatched, and duly arrived at Natchitoches, of which 
word was forwarded to Mr. Austin, at New Orleans, where he was still engaged in 
providing means for the enterprise.  The elder Austin had been hindered in his 
preparations by his serious sickness, which terminated fatally on June 10, a few 
after he had received authentic advice of the success of his memorial.  He left an 
earnest charge to his eldest son to go forward with the heroic work of founding a 
state.  This charge, and the knowledge of his changed relation to the work, Mr. 
Stephen F. Austin did not receive his arrival at Natchitoches, to which point he 
came from New Orleans to meet the special commissioner, Don Ersmo Seguin.  
Mr. Austin was now thirty years old; he was a bachelor, and he at once gave his 
heart, and to the patriotic cause, and became the father of his colony.  On the fifth 
day of July, with seventeen companions, and accompanied by the commissioner 
and some other gentlemen from Bexar, amongst whom was the eminent citizen, 
Don Juan Martin Berrimendi, Mr. Austin started for the capital of Texas, with the 
purpose to explore the country and make such further arrangements with the 
authorities in the province as might be necessary.  He took the upper or old historic 
San Antonio Road, so often referred to in the early documents, and given in 
Austin's second contract as the northern border of the colony.  This road crossed 
the Colorado River at Bastrop, and the Brazos and the mouth of the Little Brazos, 
and ran thence by Nacogdoches to Natchitoches.  Mr. Austin reached the Brazos 
August 1, and arrived the Capital August 12, 1821.  He was well received by 
Governor Martinez, who granted him a general permission to explore the country, 
sound the harbors at the mouths of the rivers Colorado and Brazos, and select 
such a location as he might consider the most advantageous for the new 
settlement.  He proceeded to make rapidly a thorough examination of this central 
portion of the province.  In that day it was of the first importance to have access to 
water transportation.  The Brazos is the chief of the rivers in Texas.  It empties 
directly into the Gulf, without the usual intervention of a bay or lake.  Toward the 
coast its immense valley is drained in part by Oyster Creek on the east, and the 
San Bernard, Cedar Lake and Caney rivers on the west, in the order named, all 
them emptying directly into the Gulf, and all except Cedar Lake navigable at that 
time by light draft boats for a number of miles inland, each having on each of its 
bank a strip, varying in width , of most fertile, self-draining, productive land.  The 
divides between these streams were what the Americans called peach slues -- 
elevated ridges of dark sandy loam -- along the winding crest of which was a 
depression resembling the partly filled channel of an extinct or diverted stream.  
These slues, marking the highest, most fertile land, most desirable for habitation 
and culture, checkered all the timbered bottom that stretched across these streams 
from Kincheloe's Bluffs -- now the town of Wharton -- on the Colorado, to the small 
prairie east of Oyster Creek, now and for many years past known as Ranche 
Prairie.  They often approached very near the banks of the Brazos River, and 
sometimes appeared to break across the smaller streams.  This belt of coast 
timbers is about fifty miles long, and has an average width of twenty miles.  Below it 
Bay Prairie, for the distance of forty miles, with a breadth on the Matagorda Bay 
shore of something more than twenty miles, decreasing as it proceeds inland, 
divides the timbers of Caney from those of the Colorado.  Several small prairies, 
which later received their names from the first settlers on them respectively, 
presented in the midst of this belt of cross-timbers openings attractive and useful to 
the early settlers.  Between Caney and Oyster Creek the lower or south line of the 
belt of timber bottom maintained an average distance of ten miles from the Gulf, 
forming a coast line of prairie, of which that part between the Bernard and Brazos 
engrossed the name of Gulf Prairie.  From the upper edge of this cross-timber 
starts the great expanse of level prairie, growing wider and less level as it extends 
north between the Brazos and Colorado, until it is arrested by that other belt of 
cross-timbers through or along which runs the San Antonio Road.  From the points 
where this road crossed the Brazos and Colorado rivers, the distance to the Gulf, 
measured along the meanders of those streams, is two hundred and fifty miles or 
more, and by a direct line about nine hundred and seventy.  The public policy and 
practice of administration at that time excluded from settlement and private grant all 
lands within ten leagues of the border.  Mr. Austin chose to plant his colony in the 
valley of these rivers south of the San Antonio Road, and extending west to the 
Lavaca and east to the San Antonio River.  His first concession prescribed no 
limits.  The government was not sufficiently informed as to the extent or character 
of the country, and chose to let the actual occupancy of the colonists define the 
territory embraced in the grant.  The second contract defined the limits as above 
indicated, and a subsequent contract extended the east and the west boundaries 
south to the sea so as to embrace the littoral leagues.

	Austin's first contract required that the colonists introduced should be 
Louisianans.  Therefore, after examining the country and selecting his location, he 
returned to Louisiana and published in the newspapers a notice of his 
contemplated new settlement and of the liberal grants of land he was authorized to 
offer to emigrants of the required kind.  He got together a company at New Orleans 
and sent them out by sea on the schooner "Lively," with supplies of provisions, 
seed corn, implements of husbandry and other needed stores.  He collected 
another company and proceeded in person with them up Red River to 
Natchitoches, and thence by the San Antonio Road to the Brazos, where he arrived 
in December, 1821, and began his settlement.  On account of the delay occasioned 
by the sickness and death of the elder Austin, Mr. Bell stopped in the "Red Lands" 
near the Sabine, planted a crop of corn and potatoes and continued his preparation 
to advance as soon as he could get authentic word from Mr. Austin.  At the end of 
that year he moved on towards the "promised land."  He left his wife and two infant 
children at Mound Prairie, just east of the Trinity, where they could be comfortable 
and secure while he went on with his slaves and stock to New Year's Creek, in 
Washington County, where he pitched his camp, broke land, raised a crop and built 
a comfortable log cabin for his family.  In March, 1822, Mr. Austin proceeded to 
Bexar to make his report to the Governor, where he was informed for the first time 
that it would be necessary for him to proceed immediately to the City of Mexico i 
order to procure from the Mexican Congress, then in session, a confirmation of the 
permission to Moses Austin and receive special instructions as to the distribution of 
land, the issuance of titles, and the conducting of the colony.  On Mr. Austin's 
arrival in Bexar in the previous year, he had received positive information of the 
recent Revolution, of the plan of Iguala of February 24, and of the complete 
independence of Mexico, and knew that the official acts of Governor Martinez 
relative to the new settlement dated in August, 1821, were from a governor of a 
province of the independent nation of Mexico, and not from a Spanish governor.  
For this reason, the requirement that he should proceed at once to Mexico, and the 
announcement that his concession was not complete until approved and confirmed 
by the Congress, was totally unexpected and very embarrassing.  The Mexican 
capital was distant twelve hundred miles; the only means of travel was on 
horseback through a country mostly without civilized occupants, and much 
frequented and roamed over by large tribes of Indians, often hostile and always 
treacherous, where there were no public roads or bridges or ferries across the 
many large streams, and to accomplish the journey even without any let or 
hindrance would consume forty days.  Not having suspected such a contingency, 
Mr. Austin had not made the necessary preparation for it.  Many families -- more 
than had been expected to come so soon or could be well placed and provided for 
without authorized as well as recognized headship -- had already reached the 
Brazos and the Colorado.  The case, however, was imperative and did not admit of 
hesitation.  Arrangements were made for Mr. Bell to take charge of the new 
settlement, and Mr. Austin to set out on his hazardous and toilsome journey to the 
Capital City.  For causes big with deep historic interest, but of which it were too 
long to tell, Mr. Austin was delayed in his negotiations and kept absent from his 
colony until August, 1823.  However, he had by his patient pluck and wise policy 
achieved complete success in the attainment of the object of his mission.  His 
concession was confirmed, he was clothed with full power to have justice 
administered in civil matters, the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the National Army of 
the military republic was conferred on him with jurisdiction in all matters military as 
well as civil, in his colony, the control of which was committed to him with the most 
ample powers, such as justice might require, until the government should be 
otherwise organized.  During this long period of doubt and consequent distress in 
the colony, Mr. Bell's charge was no sinecure.  Families continued to come in 
during the year 1822, and met sore disappointment.  Some turned back, and 
stopped, or diverted others who were coming; so that by August, 1823, the 
immigration to this colony had well nigh ceased.  But the fittest survived and stood 
fast.  On July 16 the new governor of Texas, Don Luciano Garcia, appointed the 
Baron de Bastrop commissioner on the part of the government to survey the lands 
for the settlers, and, in union with Colonel Austin, to issue titles to each one in the 
name of the government, conformably to the decree of February 18, 1823, and the 
Governor by an official act dated July 26, gave the name of San Felipe de Austin to 
the town which was to be laid off for the capital of the new colony.  As Colonel 
Austin suspected and predicted would be the case, the saint got all the honor 
conferred by this act of executive grace.  In August the impresario and the 
commissioner came together into the colony, the location for the capital was 
selected and the work of building it, or organizing local civil government, of 
surveying and distributing lands and extending titles, was actively begun.  By the 
next year the number of families that had come in more than filled the original 
contract for three hundred.  Mr. Bell continued to be Colonel Austin's trust friend 
and most efficient helper in the administration of the government of the colony.  He 
choose and had allotted to him a league, 4428 acres, on the right bank of the 
Brazos, embracing the site of the present town of Columbia, fronting not quite three 
miles on the river and extending back for quantity, and a half-league adjoining the 
league, and embracing the extreme southern point of the great prairie between the 
Brazos and the Colorado, before mentioned in this chapter.  From the nature of the 
case, the colonists had been squatters only till the appointment of the special 
commissioner to have surveys made and titles extended, and, with the utmost 
despatch, the work of surveying and allotting consumed some time.  It was, 
therefore, the summer of 1824 before Mr. Bell could get his grants on the lower 
Brazos surveyed and allotted to him.  He had thus remained through three cropping 
seasons on New Year's Creek, and opened a farm and built good cabins on a well 
selected spot, for, coming with the first, he had first choice -- and he was a man of 
experience and knew how to choose.  When now he had determined to move down 
to tide water, he had no difficulty in disposing of his improvements on New Year's 
creek to advantage.  With means thus acquired, and from other sources, he bought 
additional slaves, one of whom, Peter, proved to be a man of courage, integrity and 
character, who became invaluable to Mr. Bell as foreman.  In the latter part of the 
summer, or first part of the fall, of 1824, Mr. Bell, with his wife and their three 
children, and his slaves and other belongings, moved down the great prairie to its 
extreme southern limit, between the Brazos and the Bernard, and pitched his camp 
on the creek which now bears his name, at a point just below the union of its 
principal head-streams, about two miles from the entrance of this creek into the 
Bernard river, and about the same distance from the entrance into the Brazos of 
the creek, which about the same time took the name of Varner's Creek.  His league 
survey embraced the mouth of the last named creek, and he had wished to have 
his half league front on the Bernard and embrace the mouth of Bell's Creek, but the 
impresario would not consent for him to front on both rivers at the point where the 
prairie, the great highway, met navigable tide water on each of them.  He at once 
began to make a "landing" on the Brazos just below the mouth of Varner's Creek.  
From this point to the sea, following the stream, was thirty-five miles of deep, wide 
river, navigable at all seasons of the year by sea-going vessels propelled by sail or 
steam.  The river was, and is, permanently navigable for a distance of fifteen miles 
further up, but is not so accessible from the natural highways, the prairies on either 
side.  "Bell's Landing" at once became widely known throughout the Colony, and 
for all except the few persons who settled immediately on the bank of the river for a 
few miles above, it was the head of navigation and the most accessible and most 
frequented shipping point in the colony.  Mr. Bell made diligent and profitable use of 
this wise selection of his permanent location.  He cleared away the forest, leaving 
many stately live oak and noble pecan trees, erected sheds and rooms for storing 
freight, opened through his land a wide Avenue to the prairie, and put himself in a 
position somewhat similar to that of the noted coon-trap that was "set to catch them 
a-coming and a-going."  He turned his hand to whatever had money in it, and by 
example as well as advice made manifest the way to success in this "garden of the 
gods."  During the fall of 1824 he built a good dwelling-house for his family on the 
bank of the river at the Landing.  The family left the camp on Bell's Creek before the 
dwelling-house was quite ready for use, and lived in a tent under a large live oak 
tree that stood near the house, for a short time, just before the birth of his eminent 
son, James Hall Bell, and the current legend with the early settlers and their 
descendants has been that Judge Bell was born in this tent.  I had not doubted that 
such was the fact till a few days ago, when I received a letter from his sister, 
saying"  "it (the house) was ready, and we moved into it before Christmas of 1824.  
This was the house in which James was born in January, 1825."

	Mr. Bell laid out a town at this landing, and divided the land immediately on 
and near the river front into blocks with wide intervening streets adjusted to the 
course of the river.  The street projected at a right angle with the line of the river 
front from the point where the first landing-place was made, the called "Austin 
Street," at the intersection of which with the river-front street Mr. Bell's dwelling-
house stood.  To this town was given the name "Marion," but its popular 
designation continued to be "Bell's Landing" as long as its founder did business 
there, and after he had withdrawn to his plantation and laid off, near it at the prairie 
end of his Avenue, the town of Columbia, and began to build it up, the river town 
was called "The Landing," and later, when Mr. Bell sold to Walter C. White and 
James Knight a tract of land embracing both towns as platted, and all the 
intervening ground, with reservation, of course, of lots previously sold to other 
persons, the whole tract was divided into business and residence lots at the river 
and at the prairie end of it, and the intermediate ground into out lots, and 
designated as the "Columbia Town Tract."  The prairie end was the most populous, 
and held the name of "Columbia," without trimmings, until after the revolution, the 
removal of the capital to Houston, and the death of Mr. Bell.  "Marion" and "The 
Landing" had yielded to "East Columbia," but with that the river town was content 
as long as Mr. Bell lived.  A little over a miles from the river was the Peach ridge, 
which here marks the divide between the waters of the Brazos and the Bernard.  
The double crown of this ridge was a very fertile black-loamy soil, then covered by 
a dense brake of wild peach growth.  At the point where the ridge left the prairie 
glades that skirted the left bank of Bell's creek, before that stream took its westing 
for the Bernard, Mr. Bell commenced to open the plantation that afterwards and for 
many years was so well known as "Squire Bell's," and after his death as "Madam 
Bell's."

	The ridge carried a uniform average width of about five hundred yards of 
strictly peach brake land.  The ax of civilized man and the tread and browsing of 
herds of horned cattle have so utterly destroyed these peach brakes as they then 
existed, that the present generation can form no adequate conception of them.  
The matted mass of the wild peach, tied together by the interlocking of its own 
branches and by innumerable strong and hardy climbing vines, excluded all other 
vegetation, except where an oak, pecan or ash had found a casual opening 
through which they succeeded in lifting their heads to the sunlight.  Some of these, 
the live oaks especially, were very grand.  Sometimes in spots here and there the 
live oaks had shaded out the peach and formed a grove.  A few hundred yards 
southwest from the point where Mr. Bell built his dwelling house, the live oaks 
formed a beautiful grove covering an acre or two.  These trees, he spared, and his 
widow protected as long as she kept control.  Just south of his house - so near it as 
to shade its south entrance - stood several very large straight-bodies, towering live 
oaks, with well balanced, wide spreading tops.  My earliest distinct recollection of 
this place dates back to the year before Mr. Bell's death.  The dwelling-house and 
its immediate surroundings were then substantially the same as when he first 
occupied them in 1827.

	The relative situation of the fields to the dwelling-house and to each other 
were the same, though each of the fields had been enlarged from time to time, as 
he added to his force of slaves.  There were two main fields; the one extending 
north from the dwelling towards the prairie, called the prairie field, though little, if 
any, of it was prairie land; the other extending south, and called the lower field.  
Both these were west of the public road from Velasco through Brazoria and 
Columbia to San Felipe, which ran along the east fence of both, throughout the 
length of each, in a course nearly north and south.  These fields were separated 
from each other only by an open lane, running at right-angles to the public road, 
and about one hundred yards north of the dwelling.  There was a third field east of 
the public road and north of the line of the lane which separated the other two.  This 
field was called the gin field, because in the southwest corner of it stood the cotton 
gin house.  It was separated from the prairie field by a wide open lane, out of which, 
except in a narrow track for the public road, only the underbrush and smaller trees 
had been cleared, leaving a fine array of large trees of all the various kinds, which 
skirted the edges of the peach brakes.  About half-way the length of this wooded 
lane there was a never-failing pond of water that, in warm weather, was a joy to 
horseback travelers (a merciful man is merciful to his beast) and to the lads of the 
neighborhood who had learned or were learning to swim.  All of these fields were 
enclosed by the old style split-rail worm fences, staked and ridered all round the 
prairie field, and where the fences of the other fields were along the lane or public 
road.  In every inside corner of the fences along the east and west lane, and in very 
many of the inside corners of the fence of the lower field that ran along the public 
road, a good peach tree had been planted and kept renewed as needed, so that 
they were standing in full vigor and bearing, the bloom, leaf and fruit of which in this 
virgin wild it was beautiful to behold.

	The entrance to the premises was from the north.  Directly in front of the 
dwelling a stile over the lane fence admitted persons.  A little further west a pair of 
bars admitted animals and carriages.  The dwelling was about 200 yards west of 
the public road.  West of the dwelling, some little distance from it, were the stock 
lots joined to the lane fence.  In one of these were the cribs for corn and the stables 
for horses.  Between these and the house were the negro quarters, the blacksmith-
shop, the smoke-house and the kitchen.  These last were near to each other, and 
the kitchen only a few steps from the west end of the house.  South of the house, a 
little distance to the west of it, under the live oaks, stood a large single-room log 
house, called the office.  The dwelling was a double log house of the style very 
much used in all the early settlements in the United States.  Two log rooms, set in 
line with each other east and west, twelve or fifteen feet apart, with a roof extending 
over both of these rooms and the intervening space, with wide sheds on each side, 
the whole floored throughout, and a room enclosed with weatherboards on each 
end of each of these shed annexes, thus making six rooms and a very large hall, 
besides such loftroom as might be needed.  The hall in this house was used as a 
dining hall and as a reception hall, except on a few days in the year when the 
weather was too cool.  Just in front of this house, which looked towards the lane 
(north side) parallel with it, stood a row of very large fig trees, bearing medium-
sized blue figs -- the largest trees of that kind and the best fruit of that variety I have 
ever known.  Between this row of fig trees and the lane there was on each side of 
the walk leading to the entrance gate (stile), a space of about an acre dotted with 
trees that had been planted, not in rows, or squares, or circles, with a carefully 
studied relation to each other, embracing walnut trees in bearing, catalpas, Otahute 
mulberries, black locust and common ichinas.  South of the house and about 200 
feet from it, several acres were separately enclosed with a very tall and close 
fence, made of split cedar pickets.  This enclosure was an orchard, flower garden 
and fancy vegetable garden combined.  Here were growing quince trees, which 
bore abundantly; pomegranates, many choice varieties of plums, and the grafted 
and budded peach.  Here also was a great wealth of flowers of charming figure, 
hue and fragrance.  The vegetables were of great variety, profusion and perfection.  
Between this garden and the house, to the west of the house, there were a number 
of large wide-spreading fig trees that bore yellow figs.  There were also some 
flowering shrubs, altheas, crape myrtles and such like, but no flowers or other 
plants that could not hold their own against the tread of the concourse of strangers 
and pioneers who thronged these premises.  A skillful European gardener was 
employed to dress the fruit trees and flowers in the garden, and to direct the other 
work therein.  Where the treading or the shade was not too intense, the yard was 
covered with Bermuda grass.  To the southeast of the house there was left an open 
space, clear of trees, where a better house was to be built when proper material 
and workmen could be obtained.

	It was at this house that I first met Daniel Baker, the great evangelist, on his 
first visit to Texas.  It was Sunday morning, the third Sunday in March, 1840, that I 
heard him preach the first sermon I remember to have heard preached by anyone.  
During that service my two sisters and I -- seven, five and two years old, 
respectively -- stood in a row before him and, on the faith and vows of our mother, 
received the sacrament of baptism at his hands.  He had announced an 
appointment to preach at that place in the afternoon of this Sunday, to the colored 
people of the neighborhood.  At the appointed hour the hall was filled with white 
people, and the larger multitude of negroes stood in the shade of the fig trees in 
front the north entrance.  The preacher stood in the entrance, facing his colored 
congregation, and spoke with his wonted fervor and eloquence.  Old Aunt Rachel, 
the queen of the cooking department, had been detained with her skillets, ovens, 
pots and kettles in the kitchen on the left.  The unctuous voice reached her, but she 
could not catch all of the gracious words.  As soon as her wares were put in order, 
she put a fresh charge of home-made twist into her cob pipe, laid a live coal on it, 
and went forth following her pipe, with quiet ease and dignity, along the outer line of 
the colored folks, to get a position in front of the man of God, where she could 
better hear.  The first of his words that she did distinctly hear, accompanied by a 
commanding wave of his left hand, were:  "Go away from here with that pipe."  The 
old lady -- she was a slave, but a true woman -- turned, and with the same easy 
dignity, followed her pipe back to her kitchen, soliloquizing in a stage whisper, as 
she left the scene, "He had better give his mind of his Gospel."

	To this place Mr. Bell had moved his family in the year 1827.  Here he spent 
the last eleven years of his life, enjoying a degree of luxury and dispensing a 
hospitality that was truly royal.  It was good to be here.  The virgin soil was of easy 
culture and brought forth a hundred fold.  The native fruits, nuts, berries and grapes 
furnished pasturage enough, and to spare, the year round, for feeding all domestic 
stock not in daily use as work animals.  Horses, cattle, hogs and fowls required only 
such care as was necessary to keep them from running wild.  Literally, this place 
flowed with milk and honey.  It was beset on all sides with game too numerous and 
gentle to furnish sport in taking, but highly helpful to enrich the larder.  Bear, deer, 
squirrels, turkeys, geese, ducks, prairie-chickens, quail -- wild only in the sense that 
they had not been tamed by man -- were in full supply.  Of domestic fowls, I 
remember a drove of peacocks, great flocks of turkeys, geese, mallards, puddle 
ducks, pigeons and chickens of all kinds, from the game chicken to the noisy 
guinea.  All farm, garden, orchard, pasture, diary and poultry yard products -- 
everything to make man's face to shine and his heart glad -- did here abound.  
Wine, wheat, flour, salt and sugar were imported.  The native mustang grape grew 
luxuriantly everywhere, was prolific, and its fruit tempting to the eye and pleasant to 
the taste, but was found to be unwholesome and its use generally forbidden by 
physicians and prudent parents.  The manufacture of wine from it was not then 
attempted.  Ribbon cane grew well, but there were few attempts at making sugar till 
after annexation.

	From the first opening of this home it became the resort of all the more 
distinguished of the public men of the colony and of the State of Coahuila and 
Texas, both Mexican and American, of the most intelligent and enterprising visitors 
and emigrants, and of a host of worthy men in private life whose business called 
them to pass that way.

	Mr. Bell founded the town of Columbia, afterward the cradle of Independence 
and the first capital of the infant state.  To promote the growth of the town and to 
relieve his home from the press of transients, he built and opened a large hotel in 
Columbia.  The management of this hotel was transferred to Fitchit and Gill, and 
under their names became widely known and popular in the stirring times from 
1832 to 1837.  While the government was at Columbia in 1836, Mr. Bell had to 
provide at his home-place accommodations for President Houston and other chief 
men and their distinguished visitors.  For several months the office in the yard was 
President Houston's quarters, and it and the great hall wore the air of a sovereign 
republican court.  In this grand company the host and hostess suffered no eclipse.  
His provident comprehension and dispositions, his self-poised, courteous, dignified 
tone of authority met uniform recognition and deference; the charm of her brilliant 
gifts and graces, her high executive force and sweet 

motherly care, as one of the reigning heads of such a family, won the admiration, 
affection and praise of all who entered her home.  All the people praised her.

	In the summer of 1837, Mr. Bell went with his children, Lucinda, Thaddeus 
and James, to put them at school in Kentucky.  He placed his daughter in St. 
Catherine's Convent, near Bardstown, and his sons in St. Joseph's College, both 
which were then flourishing schools of high grade.  He improved this occasion to 
visit the friends of his  youth and early manhood in Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri 
and Louisiana.  The recent thrilling achievement of independence in and for Texas 
had aroused deep and general interest throughout the Mississippi Valley, and Mr. 
Bell received marked attention at every place he visited.  He met many eminent 
men of wealth and influence, who sought the privilege of entertaining him at their 
houses.  The whole trip was on continued ovation.  On his return home h is 
neighbors and many friends visited him to congratulate him and hear his story of 
the consideration in which the Texas cause was held by the people in "The States."  
He had much to tell, all of which he recounted fully one day when my father was 
present, and as he appeared to close the narrative, Madam Bell rose and passed 
out to look after the hospitalities.  He turned to my father and said, "Mac, I have met 
and been the guest of many fine ladies on my late trip, but no one of them can 
come up to the measure of Eveline's style and grace as a hostess."  At this time 
every circumstance affecting his family and his business was most satisfactory, 
except his own health.  He had been a man of iron nerve and constitution, which 
his ardent spirit had kept under intense strain and subjected to severe exposure in 
his arduous work in Texas.  He was still under fifty years of age, but the wear of 
three-score and ten years had been crowed into the forty-six years he had lived.  
Premonitions had not been wanting, but a seeming necessity, always deaf and 
blind to every law except its own, had kept him under high pressure until the 
summer of 1837 and the close of the visit to "The States" just mentioned.  Very 
soon after this the collapse came and the end approached rapidly.  He died May 
17, 1838.  Although I was just five years and six months old when he died, my 
recollections of his personal appearance and manner of speech and conduct is 
very distinct.  He was a man of full size, a little taller than my father, who was five 
feet eleven and three-quarter inches, net, in stature.  He stood erect, was neither 
lean nor fat; had a fair complexion, blue eyes, auburn hair, a courteous, dignified 
bearing and carriage, a clear, full voice always attuned in perfect accord to the 
occasion for its use.  He grappled his friends to him with hooks of steel.  He left 
what was at the time of his death a large estate.  It was valued by George B. 
McKinstry, the Surrogate, at the sum of $140,000.00.  He left a will in which his 
widow and my father were named as joint independent executors.  Three of his 
sons and one of his daughters had preceded him to the grave.  Of these, two of the 
sons, the first and the fifth born of his children, were swept away by the plague in 
the year 1833, memorable in Mexico (of which Texas was then a part) as the year 
of the "Big Cholera."  His daughter, Lucinda, and his sons Thaddeus and James, 
were still in Kentucky at school.  Only his youngest daughter, Amanda, then two 
years old, was at home.  Madam Bell went at once to Kentucky, and in the fall of 
that year brought the 

children home.  The next spring, April 4, 1839, her daughter, Elizabeth Lucinda, 
married Dr. James Wilson Copes.  These are the maternal grandparents of six of 
my children.  

	Among the early settlers in Broad Creek Hundred, in Sussex County, 
Delaware, is found the most remote of my children's Cope's ancestors which our 
reliable tradition reaches, and of him we know comparatively little.  He was either 
an emigrant from Scotland or the son of Scottish parents.  He settled first in 
Accomac or Henrico county, Virginia, and thence moved to Broad Creek Hundred.  
His name was Daniel Copes, and he was distinguished as "Daniel the Scot" or 
"Daniel the Covenantor."  Of his children our tradition only mentions his son 
Thomas.  He (Thomas) inherited from his father several large farms and led the life 
of a farmer.  He married a woman of great piety, learning, force and beauty of 
character, as is shown in the culture and character of her children, who were 
educated in chief part by her instruction, the schools of that place and period not 
furnishing adequate facilities.  Her christian name or her maiden family name I do 
not know.  The record I have only refers to her by her work.  She bore Thomas 
Copes four children who reached maturity -- one son and three daughters.  Of 
these the christian name of the son only is given.  The eldest two of the daughters 
married gentlemen of the name of Wingate, and soon after their marriage moved to 
Kentucky.  They took with them their youngest sister.  She married a Mr. Allen, 
near Lexington, Kentucky.  These three sisters largely inherited the gifts of their 
mother.  They were distinguished for their intelligence, piety and courage.  They 
reared families, and their children and later descendants exemplify and attest the 
worth of these three daughters of Thomas Copes.  His only son who survived 
childhood was named Joseph.  He was born in Broad Creek Hundred October 3, 
1765.  Until he reached his eighteenth year he was instructed by his parents -- 
mainly by his mother.  He attended the best of the institutions of learning existing in 
Delaware, and became proficient in all that was then taught i the highest schools in 
the Peninsula.  He early developed a strong and correct taste for reading.  After 
leaving school he traveled and sojourned for a time west of the Alleghanies.  He 
gathered industriously a well selected library.  He acquired reputation as a man of 
literary attainments, of learning and eloquence, both spoken and written eloquence.  
In 1790, his father died.  He (the father) had been an ardent patriot during the 
Revolution.  He had an ample estate and a spacious home, and had entertained 
many of the prominent leaders, civil and military, in the long struggle for 
independence.  His house had, therefore, been a high-school for his son and 
daughters, who were then at the most receptive age, and this early acquaintance 
with and converse even as auditors with the leading thinkers and actors of that 
memorable epoch left its stamp on all of Thomas Cope's children, and inspired 
them with generous ambition, a love of action and leadership and steadfast 
courage and will.

	In 1791, Joseph Copes married Jenny Wilkins White.  He purchased his 
sisters' interests in his father's lands.  His wife inherited land from her father.  He 
purchased also other lands.  He engaged in practical surveying.  He was agent for 
a number of parties who had moved to western states and who still owned lands in 
Sussex County.  The care of his own farms and mills, and his duties as surveyor 
and as agent for other land owners, together with a wide range of reading and the 
duties pertaining to a young family, engrossed much of his time for about fifteen 
years after his marriage, and gave him a wide and valuable experience as a man of 
affairs.  He, however, diligently improved the lessons first learned at his mother's 
knee and lived a growing christian life.  A year or two after his marriage he became 
an active member of the presbyterian church, and at the age of thirty he was 
elected and ordained a ruling elder in the Broad Creek church at Laurel.  Nine 
years afterwards he offered himself to Presbytery as a candidate for the Gospel 
ministry.  His theological course happily and successfully pursued under the 
direction of the Rev. James P. Wilson, D.D., then pastor of the united churches at 
Lewes, Cool Springs, and Indian River.  In 1807, Dr. Wilson was called to the First 
Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, and Mr. Copes become his successor in the 
pastorate of the Lewes, Cool Springs and Indian River Church.  Here he labored 
with great energy and success till his death.  He died April 6, 1822.  His praise was 
in all the churches, and he had a wide and good repute "with them that are 
without."  He was twice married.  He left ten children, four sons and five daughters 
were the children of his first wife, Jenny Wilkins White, and one daughter was the 
child of his second wife, Letty Waples, a daughter of Joseph Waples, of Indian 
River Hundred.  His oldest son, Isaac, entered the regular army very young as an 
ensign, and was in the 44th Infantry Regiment commanded by Samuel Boyer Davis 
at the defense of Lewes against the bombardment by the fleet of Commodore 
Beresford.  Serving afterwards on the Canada lines, he contracted a lung affection, 
which in a few years terminated his useful life.  The second son, Thomas, moved to 
Missouri, settled in St. Charles, then the capital of the State, engaged in trade, 
became wealthy, and was held in high esteem by all who knew him, as a man of 
enterprise, courage and public spirit.  He died at Madam Bell's, in Brazoria County, 
Texas, February 20, 1849.  He (Thomas) left four sons, two of whom I knew well; 
the other two I never saw.  The elder of those I knew, Cerri, died when about thirty 
years old, of consumption; the other, Henry, is still living in Texas.  Of the other two 
sons I have no knowledge.

	James Wilson Copes, the third son of Rev. Joseph Copes, was born on the 
5th November, 1809.  He studied medicine in the University of Maryland, at 
Baltimore, received his degree, migrated to Mississippi, and began the practice of 
medicine within the domain then recently acquired from the Choctaw Nation by the 
so-called "Treaty of the Dancing Rabbit Creek."  In 1834 and 1835 he did a large 
and lucrative practice in the Yazoo Valley.  When the struggle for independence 
began in Texas he joined the patriot army under General Houston, and received 
the appointment of surgeon, filling for a time the position of acting surgeon-general.

	Joseph Stemings Copes -- two years younger than James Wilson -- studied 
medicine at Jefferson College, Pennsylvania, and having taken his degree, 
accompanied his brother to Mississippi, and the two were associated in practice 
until the elder became a Texan.  Dr. Joseph S. Copes married Mrs. Mary Davis.  
To them were born two daughters, the older of whom, Elizabeth Halsey, married 
Mr. Jason Diball.  They are dead.  One daughter and two sons survive them.  The 
sons are married.  They reside in New Orleans.  Dr. Joseph S. Copes' other 
daughter, Asenith, married Harlow J. Phelps.  She is now a widow.  She lives in 
Kirkwood, Missouri.  She has several children, one grown son, a married daughter, 
and other younger children.

	One of the daughters of Rev. Joseph Copes, named Leah, married Dr. 
Barclay Townsend.  Their three children who reached maturity were daughters.  
Their oldest daughter, Catherine Elizabeth, married James Hall Bell.  Their second 
daughter, Jane Rebecca, married A.B. McGill, and their third daughter, Emily, 
married Andrew Baker.  With this family my children are well acquainted.  

	Miss Ann Copes, a sister of Dr. James Wilson Copes, married a man named 
Stuart.  She had two daughters -- one named Mary Emily Stuart, who lives in 
Brookhaven, Mississippi, and one named Sarah, who married Mr. Cooney.  Mr. 
and Mrs. Cooney are dead.  Five children survive them -- two sons and three 
daughters.  With two of the daughters my children are well acquainted.  

	The youngest sister of Dr. James Wilson Copes, named Hester, married 
Allen G. Alsworth.  They left a large family of children and grandchildren, some of 
whom my children have met.  Their oldest daughter married Rufus Waples, the 
eminent author of legal text-books.

	Mrs. James Cresswell, of Brookhaven, Mississippi, is a sister of Dr. Copes, is 
a widow, and is childless.  I have not met her.  Mrs. Mary Campbell, of New 
Orleans, was a sister of Dr. Copes.  She had children, one of whom, a son, I met in 
Austin, Texas.  I have no other acquaintance with any of her family.

	Soon after the marriage of their sister Lucinda, Madam Bell's sons returned 
to Kentucky and matriculated in Centre College, in September, 1839.  Dr. Copes 
opened a farm on Bell's Creek, in the southwest quarter of the Josiah H. Bell 
League, on which he resided with his family.  Madam Bell built a new dwelling 
house on the spot reserved for it in the original design of this Colonial homestead.  
This new house was in process of erection for a considerable time, as suitable 
material and skilled workmen were still scarce, and was not ready for occupancy 
until 1841.  Then the old house, of so many historic and precious memories, was 
torn to pieces and removed.

	On June 7, 1841, the youngest child, Amanda Jane, died.  

	In 1845, Dr. Copes removed to Houston, but he returned to Brazoria County 
in 1848 to go into the mercantile business at Columbia.  He then opened a new 
farm on the right bank of the Brazos, just below Columbia, on which he resided till 
his death, which occurred October 8, 1863.  On September 8, 1859, at Dr. Copes' 
residence on the Brazos, his daughter Mary was married to Andrew P. McCormick, 
the writer of this sketch.  On January 12, 1870, she died at our home in Brazoria.  
She left two sons and four daughters, all of whom remain unto this day (March 15, 
1897).  The sons and two of the daughters are married.  Another of the daughters 
is a widow, and the remaining one abides yet in her father's house.  In 1869, 
Elizabeth Lucinda Copes married Dr. Samuel McKinney, of Walker County, Texas.  
In a few years she became a widow the second time, after which she made her 
home with her children and other near kindred at and near Austin.  She died 
December 15, 1893.

	When Thaddeus Bell returned from Centre College in the fall of 1840, he 
then in his eighteenth year, took charge of his mother's farms and business, which 
he continued to manage till the distribution of the estate in 1848.  On August 3, 
1847, he married Elizabeth Hodge Cayce, a daughter of Major Thomas Dodson 
Cayce, of Brazoria County, Texas.  These, Thaddeus and Elizabeth, are the 
maternal grandparents of my younger children.  

	In August, 1843, my parents, with their children, visited Dr. Copes' family at 
his residence on Bell's Creek, on a certain Saturday just preceding the appointed 
day for preaching at the Presbyterian church in West Columbia, intending to remain 
and go with his family to church the next day.  Late in the night and early Sunday 
morning there was a heavy fall of rain, and Bell's Creek overflowed the bridge at 
Dr. Copes, but he and my father thought the Creek was fordable up at the "flats," 
where the public road from the Waverly place, on the Bernard, to Columbia crossed 
the Creek.  They were elders, and it was concluded to risk the weather and the 
creek, and preparations were about complete for the families to start.  Of course, 
there was some last thing to fix, which detained the ladies in their rooms.  The 
elders were on the front porch waiting for their wives, when a gentleman and three 
ladies rode up to the front gate.  Dr. Copes had never seen either of them, and my 
father did not recognize them.  Dr. Copes went out to the gate, and the strange 
introduced himself as Mr. Cayce and introduced the ladies as his daughters.  He 
said that they were on their way to church at West Columbia, had found the creek 
too deep to ford at the "flats" and had turned down the creek to find the bridge, 
having heard that there was a bridge at Dr. Copes'.  It was apparent that these 
three families were water-bound.  The invitation to alight and spend the day was 
promptly extended, and accepted.  Mr. Cayce was then forty-eight years of age.  
His stature was about, possibly more than, six feet.  He weighed two hundred 
pounds.  His flesh was well distributed.  His hair was abundant, beginning to gray at 
the temples, worn a little long, parted lightly on the left side and brushed back 
behind the ears.  His complexion was florid with health and open-air exercise.  His 
dress was appropriate to his age and condition.  He had held and exercised the 
rank of Major in the volunteer army and had a decided military bearing.  He could 
not help knowing that he was fine looking.  The knowledge did not annoy him.  He 
had then living four sons and four daughters.  His oldest son, Washington, was 
killed in San Antonio by the Comanche Indians in the early part of 1840.  Mr. Cayce 
had come to Texas as a colonist at an early day.  He had settled on the Colorado 
and established a public ferry across that stream near the head of Bay Prairie, by 
which both armies swept back and forth in the war for independence in 1836, and 
of necessity consumed all his substance that could be consumed, and that could 
not be saved in the "Runaway Scrape."  When General Filisola commenced his 
retreat, after the defeat and capture of Santa Anna and his forces at San Jacinto, it 
was his purpose to pass the Colorado at Cayce's Ferry, and with that view he 
moved his troops from Mrs. Powell's on Turkey Creek, where they had been 
concentrated from various points, to Spanish Camps, where he found that the 
stage of water in Peach Creek and the conditions of the roads through the belt of 
the coast crosstimbers bottom made it impracticable to reach the head of Bay 
Prairie with his trains, and he therefore turned up the Colorado and effected its 
passage with much difficulty at the Atasca Sito Crossing, which was nearly due 
west from the present town of Eagle Lake.  After the invasion and retreat of the 
Mexican army, Mr. Cayce found he had to make a new start, and he chose a less 
exposed situation on a ridge between Caney and Cedar Lake, near the coast, and 
about forty miles from Columbia.  On this newly chosen spot he opened a cotton 
plantation and established his family residence.  From this place the town of 
Matagorda was the most convenient shipping point, and Mr. Cayce and my father 
had rarely met since the exigencies that had brought them so much and so close 
together in 1836 had passed away.  My father had learned that Mr. Cayce had 
disposed of his plantation in Matagorda County and had acquired land on the 
Bernard immediately west of Columbia, into which neighborhood he expected to 
move his family, but had not learned before this day of his arrival in the 
neighborhood.

	His oldest daughter a widow, the mother of three children, but her 
experience as a wife and mother refined, matured and made more attractive the 
superior beauty of this handsome young woman.  I did not see her after that day.  
Very soon after that she married Mr. Benjamin Cage and removed with him to 
Western Texas, and our ways met no more.  She was tall and stately, but graceful, 
fair, animated, with features that did not provoke analysis.  The next in age was 
Eliza Jane, then in her sixteenth year.  She was not tall, but she was extremely fair, 
entirely at her ease, quiet and sweet as the breath of morning.  The other was 
Elizabeth Hodges (our mother), then in her fourteenth year, well grown, self-reliant, 
mature in thought beyond her years, but strictly holding the school-girl's place to 
her sisters' role of "young lady" daughter.  She was not blonde like her father and 
her two older sisters.  Her features were distinct, presenting classic lines.  her eyes, 
of light hazel hue, were full prominent and bright.  In person she was then, and ever 
after, slighter than her sisters.  She was a shade taller than her sister Jane, but not 
so tall as her oldest sister then was, or as a younger sister grew to be and is now.  
Her hair was black and very curly.  She wore it in curls about her neck more 
bewitchingly.  Major Cayce's younger daughter, Sophronia Russell, was then in her 
sixth year.  he had three grown sons who had gone out from the parental-roof tree.  
The oldest of these was named Shadrach.  He (Shadrach) afterwards had a 
plantation on old Caney, in Wharton County, about ten miles below the town of 
Wharton, where he kept open house to his throng of friends up to and all through 
the Civil War, and until the pinch of the Reconstruction destruction induced him to 
sell out and move to San Antonio.  He was of low stature, heavy built, muscular, 
round-shouldered, with one shoulder a little drooped.  He was dark complexioned, 
had a heavy suit of dark brown hair that covered densely all the scalp and strictly 
limited his forehead.  He had a twinkle of strong intelligence in his eyes; cheery but 
disciplined humor touched his lips; forced marked his jaw and chin.  He had his 
father's genius for dress; wherever and whenever seen he was costumed 
appropriately to the state and to his particular present role in the play.  He was the 
best of farmers, and a good financier, who always had time and means for doing 
constant hospitality without neglecting his business.  He made many friends, 
valued, enjoyed and firmly held them.  
	The next son, Henry Petty; was lieutenant-colonel of the regiment in which I 
served in the Confederate Army.  He was taller than Shadrach, but not so tall as 
their father.  His weight was justly proportioned to his height.  There was nothing 
noticeable distinctive about his person, gait or presence.  In physique he was 
strictly middling.  Even on dress parade there was no military mark on him except 
his uniform, and though that was made of the best Confederate gray, by a good 
tailor, with all the regulation trimmings, buttons, bars and stripes, he wore it as to 
make the dividing line between him and his men as subdued as was consistent 
with the spirit of the corps.  He had a strong hold on his men.  His words were few 
and quiet, but were heard and always heeded.  Before the war he had been a 
cotton planter and general trader, buying and selling lands and live stock, and 
buying, but not selling people (slaves).  At the beginning of the war he raised a 
company and joined Bates' regiment, assigned to picket duty on the coast of Texas 
and in Louisiana during the whole period of the war.  Like General Washington 
during the Revolutionary War, he did not forget Mount Vernon plantation, or turn his 
back on a good horse or a good piece of land offered on the market or at private 
sale at a bargain.  After the war he continued his farming and trading, and in 
addition thereto, or in aid thereof, got license to practice law.  One of his daughters 
married a lawyer, Mr. Claxton, and Cayce and Claxton ran their lawyer's mill and 
fee bills in Wharton County, where there then was "one white man and three 
niggers," or in that proportion, and the richest soil and pickings in the Senegambian 
sugar-bowl of Texas.  But the bite of reconstruction became too incisive, and 
Cayce and Claxton got themselves and their households out of the sulphurous 
plain, and sped to Gatesville, in Coryell County. 

	The next son, John Madison, I met frequently during the first year of my 
acquaintance with the Cayce family.  He then married and settled in a part of the 
state remote from ours, and I did not meet him again, or any of his family, until 
November, 1876, when I met him and one of his sons at a term of the District Court 
held in the town of Matagorda, then the county-seat of Matagorda County.  We 
were engaged adversely in a pending litigation over the distribution of the Hearst 
estate, I as counsel, and his children as parties claiming as heirs.  Thirty-two years 
had wrought less change in his personal appearance than in any other instance 
within my observation.  He was taller than his father by several inches.  In his 
youth, when I knew him, he was sound in mind and members and under the tongue 
of good repute.  In 1876, it was evident that he had continued to preserve and 
enjoy these priceless passports.  He was not an Apollo.  He had not a genius for 
posing.  His strong understanding took his own measure accurately, and guided his 
way calmly, contentedly and successfully on Life's stage out of the glare of the 
footlights.

	The youngest son, Augustus, was one day younger than I.  Mr. Cayce kept a 
saddle horse of good quality, training and condition, for each member of his family, 
the horses grading according to the condition of the rider.  His own horse and that 
of his "young lady" daughter (in his family there could be but one "young lady" 
daughter) were the best blooded high-steppers to be had in the market; the most 
sure-footed, easy going, gentle, good blooded roadster, was for his wife; while 
hardy, showy, capable, well-gaited ponies were for the younger children.  These 
pleasure horses were stabled and groomed like a racing stud.  Augustus was in the 
habit of passing in and out among them, inspecting the feed and other features of 
their keep.  One morning as he was passing through the stable while it was yet 
dark, without speaking a word of warning, he touched on of the horses on the crop; 
the horse let fly with both feet, as horses often do when hipped by another horse; 
the blow of both feet was planted full on the lad's abdomen.  The stroke was mortal.  
He lingered in intense agony a few days, and was relieved by death.  We had 
known each other a short time, but I felt like I had lost a twin brother.  We were the 
same size.  our head and foot measures were the same.  Only a few days before 
he got hurt, his father had got him a pair of fine dress boots such as young 
gentlemen then wore.  I think that Gus had not worn them, or had them on except 
to try the fit.  A few days after he was buried, his father brought this pair of boots to 
our house, and said, "Gus wanted Andrew to have them."  They were my first pair 
of such boots.

	My father's family and Mr. Cayce's were very intimate from the time of his 
settlement on the Bernard.  In December, 1845, his daughter Jane married 
Gustavus Adolphus Bertrand.  As already state, in August, 1847, his daughter, 
Elizabeth Hodges, married Thaddeus Constantine Bell.  On the 14th day of 
September, 1857, Mr. Cayce died.  In April 1858, the youngest daughter, 
Sophronia Russell, married Wyley Allen Parker.  Early in the morning on the first 
day of March, 1871, Mr. Cayce's grand-daughter, Lula Bell, married the writer of 
this sketch.  We, and a small company of our kindred stood by the bed of which her 
sick father lay, while the officiating clergyman in due form pronounced us husband 
and wife.  Our carriage stood at the door to take us to our home, two days journey 
away.  When the young wife had pressed her adieux on the lips of her father, family 
and collected kin, and I had handed her into the carriage, I quickly passed through 
the company and exchanged the parting hand clasp and fit words with each.  When 
I came to Grandma Cayce, she said, "Andrew, I once though you might become 
my son-in-law.  I will love you just as much as a grandson."

	Two letters which I insert in the Appendix show substantially all that I have 
been able to learn touching Major Cayce's ancestors and collateral kindred.


	Mr. Thaddeus Bell continued to devote himself to the business of a cotton 
planter until the close of the Civil War brought even to Texas (June 10, 1865) the 
actual emancipation of the slaves.  He voted against the ordinance of secession.  
He believed that it was impolitic to the degree of madness and unpatriotic in the 
highest degree.  He, however, submitted to the powers that be and rendered such 
service as was required of him by the Confederate and State authorities.  During 
the war, February 24, 1864, his wife, Elizabeth, died on their plantation in 
Matagorda County.  In 1867 he was appointed Superintendent of the Texas 
Penitentiary.  Thereupon he moved his family to Huntsville, in Walker County, 
Texas, where the institution then had its single location in the state.  On February 
24, 1868, he married Miss Cornelia McKinney, a daughter of Rev. Samuel 
McKinney.  On July 8, 1868, the twentieth anniversary of her birth, Amanda, his 
oldest child, married Joseph Bates, a son of General Joseph Bates of Brazoria 
County.

	In December, 1869, Col. Bell's term of office expire, and early in 1870 he 
moved his family to Harris County and settled on Buffalo Bayou, a few miles from 
the city of Houston.  Here, on March 1, 1871, his second daughter, Louisa (Lula) 
married the writer of this sketch.  At the time of this marriage Col. Bell was on his 
death bed.  He had been ill for several months with cancer of the kidney.  He died 
May 22, 1871.  Of his children, one daughter, born in 1860, survived her birth only 
a few weeks.  Four sons and three daughters survive.  They are now widely 
scattered.  Several years ago his widow married a man named Meade.  She now 
resides in Walker County, Texas.

	James Hall Bell returned from Centre College in 1842.  Soon after his return 
he went with the volunteers to expel from Texas the Mexican forces under General 
Adrian Woll, who had made sudden irruption on our western border, captured San 
Antonio and appeared to threaten a serious invasion of more settled portions of 
Texas.  He was member of Captain J. Shelby McNeel's company in the army which 
General Alexander Sommerville moved in the fall of that year to the Rio Grande 
River.  He obeyed lawful orders, returned with General Sommerville, and thus 
escaped the bitter experience of those who fought and feel or were captured at 
Mier.  Very soon after returning from this campaign he commenced the study of the 
law at the home and under the instruction of Mr. William H. Jack, the most eminent 
lawyer and eloquent orator then in Texas.  After the death of Mr. Jack, James Bell 
went to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and matriculated in the law department of 
Harvard University, where he remained until he received the graduate's degrees.  
He returned to Texas and was taken into partnership by Hon. Robert J. Towns, the 
surviving partner of Mr. Jack's law-firm.  In February, 1856 -- a few weeks after the 
completion of his thirty-first year -- James Hall Bell was elected to the office of 
Judge of the First Judicial District, which then include Fayette County and the three 
counties below it on the Colorado River, the County of Austin, which then 
embraced Wallet, and the two counties below it on the Brazos, and the county and 
city of Galveston.  In August, 1858, he was elected to the office of Associate 
Justice of the Texas Supreme court, which then was, as it now is, composed of one 
Chief Justice and two Associate Justices.  In 1859, he moved his family to the State 
Capital, where he established his permanent residence.  He strongly opposed 
secession.  When the Southern heart began to burst into flame, in November, 
1860, there was in Texas some division of sentiment on the subject of secession.  It 
was then claimed, and is still claimed that the great majority of the people of Texas 
favored the secession and confederate movement.  The State Supreme Court 
certainly stood two in favor to one opposed.  Many prominent citizens at Austin 
united in a call for a mass meeting, and invited the two Associate Justices of the 
Supreme Court to address the meeting in the hall of the House of Representatives.  
Both of the Justices accepted this invitation and delivered carefully prepared 
speeches in support of their respective opposite views.  Justice Bell concentrated 
all the force of his great learning, and all the fervency of his ardent mind in his effort 
in that high place to stay the tide of passion then setting in, and drawing in its wake, 
as he well saw, the flood of woe which followed fast.  In February, 1861, when the 
ordinance of secession was submitted to the vote of the people of Texas, the 
Supreme Court, which then held its sessions at Austin, Tyler and Galveston, was 
sitting at Galveston, and Justice Bell went to his native county and its county seat, 
Brazoria, where he had resided until his elevation to the bench, to cast his vote.  It 
had been predicted by those who had control in that county, that there would not be 
a single vote against secession cast in it.  The lawful and usual method of voting 
was by secret ballot.  For this election the ticket used in Brazoria County, by order 
of the governing caucus, was a piece of very highly colored stiff pasteboard, just 
large enough to contain on the face-side the printed words, "For Secession."  
Justice Bell went up to the polls to vote, and the presiding judge of the election, 
Hon. J.H.N________, handed out one of these pieces of pasteboard, about half the 
size of an ordinary pasteboard card way-station railroad ticket -- only full twice as 
thick and stiff, and impossible to fold without breaking, or to vote without the vote 
being open to the view of the officers and by-standers -- with the words printed on it 
"For Secession" covering almost its whole front surface.  Justice Bell was at the 
time an expert penman.  He raised his right knee, and steadied it against the edge 
of the table at which the election officer sat, placed the ticket on his knee, asked for 
a pen -- which was handed him -- with which he thoroughly blotted out the word 
"For" and, in script that was necessarily small but beautifully distinct, he wrote the 
word "Against" just over where the word "For" had appeared, and handed the ticket 
to the presiding judge, who had it duly deposited in the box, remarking at the same 
instant, "Judge Bell, I am very sorry to see you cast that vote, and you will regret it."  
This vote and the vote of his brother cast at the Columbia box the same day, were 
the only votes cast against secession in Brazoria County.  It is meet to say here 
that Judge J.H.N_______ manfully bore his part in the war that followed secession, 
and when the war was over he manfully accepted the construction which it 
impressed on the constitution of our government.  Justice Bell's quality as a public 
man is amply evidenced by the record he made for himself in the reports of the 
opinions of the high court of which in his thirty-third year he became a member by 
the independent vote of a majority of the people of the whole state.  I began the 
study of the law in his office, and, for several years next after entering his office, 
was a member of his household.  He let me into full partnership with himself in the 
practice of law a short time before his elevation to the bench and at a time when he 
was, without dispute, the leading lawyer in the First Judicial District of Texas.  He 
was to me then and always as an elder brother, yea, much more -- the friend that 
sticketh closer than a brother.  As a man in private life he excited the admiration 
and won the hearts of a great host, who became and remained his zealous 
personal friends.  At the time he cast his vote "against" secession, I thought, and I 
still think, that of all the men I had known or have known, James Hall Bell was the 
most gifted, the most accomplished and the most attractive.  In physique he was of 
medium size, close-knit, strong and active.  His complexion was a ruddy blonde.  
His eyes were blue, clear and piercing.  His hair was light auburn, very fine, much 
inclined to curl, and until he passed middle life the growth was thick.  He wore his 
hair put straight back from his forehead and long enough to reach the back of his 
neck.  His head and face strongly resembled Lord Byron's.  He died March 13, 
1892, at his home in Austin.  his six surviving children, all of whom were then 
married, had become parents, and were living in and near Austin, united with the 
wife of his youth in making all his bed in his sickness which was protracted and 
painful.  Upon his death his life companion, the mother of his children, gave up 
housekeeping and made her home in the circle of the families of their children, until 
her death, which occurred October 31, 1895.

	After Madam Bell made the final distribution of the Bell Estate in 1848, she 
gave up housekeeping for awhile, but in a few years she established herself in a 
quiet home at the foot of the "Island" between the prongs of the Bell's Creek, about 
one mile west from West Columbia.  She was happy and useful in her new home.  
A niece of hers who had grown up in her house as one of her own children lived 
with her the first few years in this new home, and then was established in a 
separate home only a few hundred yards away.  Her children, grandchildren, other 
kindred and many friends, were a never-failing source of congenial companionship.  
Her faithful servants, whom she had trained, took all the care of her household she 
could permit, and the tenderest care of her.  Her means were adequate to meet all 
of her wants and the charities she delight to dispense.  On May 17, 1856, just 
eighteen years from the death of her husband, she was thrown from her carriage 
and so seriously injured that she died on the 30th of that month.  Within my 
memory she had been ill.  She was in her fifty-seventh year, but her natural force 
was not abated.  Her work as a cultivated christian lady in the Wilderness, and her 
work as the mother and head of a family, was done, and had been well done, but 
still was still in the active vigor of middle life when she received her mortal injury.  
She had very blue eyes, a perfect blonde complexion, and rich auburn hair; was in 
stature (net) five feet and one inch, and weighed about one hundred and thirty 
pounds.  Her remains were deposited in the family lot in the Columbia Cemetery, in 
a place reserved for her between the grave of her husband and that of her mother.