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

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MY FATHER'S AND MOTHER'S LIFE IN TEXAS


	At the time of the introduction of the original three hundred families under 
Austin's first contract, property in slaves was recognized and regulated by the laws 
in force in Texas.  In the formation of the Mexican Republic, the province of 
Coahuila and the province of Texas were united to form one state, and empowered 
to organize a government and adopt a constitution.  The State was organized and 
the constitution adopted in 1825, but the constitution did not go into effect until 
1827.  It provided that from and after its promulgation in the capital in each district, 
no one should be born a slave in the State.  The State Congress, also, in 1827, 
passed decrees in reference to slaves then in the State.  In July, 1829, an 
expedition of four thousand men under General Barradas was sent out from 
Havana with a view to re-established the authority of Spain in the Republic of 
Mexico.  The expedition landed at Tampico, and produced such alarm in Mexico 
that the federal congress gave to President Guerrero unlimited powers.  He 
determined to send a secret agent to Boyer, President of Haiti, to obtain his aid in 
exciting the slaves of Cuba to revolt.  Preparatory to this step, and acting under the 
decree appointed him Dictator, Guerrero proceeded by a decree bearing date July 
29, 1829, to abolish slavery in the Mexican Republic.  The American colonists, 
however, still continued the practice of introducing their slaves under the 
appellation of servants.  Austin, fearful of the effects of the Decree of Abolition on 
his colony, applied to President Guerrero, who agreed to modify it in favor of the 
American colonists.  Guerrero's administration, however, was suddenly closed by 
his tragic death, and Bustamente, who thereupon became undisputed master of 
Mexico exhibited a narrow policy in regard to the Texas colonists.  On April 6, 1830, 
he issued a decree substantially forbidding people of the United States from settling 
as colonists in Texas, and suspending all colony contracts conflicting with this 
prohibition.  By the same decree the further introduction of slaves were forbidden.  
With a view to the enforcement of this policy, custom houses were established on 
the Texas coast at several points, one of which was Valasco, each in charge of a 
military officer in command of troops deemed adequate to support his authority.  
Colonel Dominic Ugartachea was stationed at Velasco, the port at the mouth of the 
Brazos.  In 1829, Mr. William Washington McKenzie visited his sister, Madam Bell, 
at her home near Columbia, where he spent several months, and became 
acquainted with the condition of Austin's colony, and the practical effect which the 
new laws in reference to slaves was having and likely to have on the prosperity of 
that settlement.  It has been mentioned in a former chapter that my father visited 
Texas in 1831 i response to an invitation from his Uncle David McCormick to come 
and live with him and be his adopted son.  After my father had renewed his 
acquaintance with his uncle and had become personally familiar with the features 
of the country and the relations of the settlers, he returned to Kentucky to make 
arrangements for his permanent removal.  The most important of these 
arrangements was to wed Mr. McKenzie's sister, Louisa.  My father had inherited 
from his father one negro slave, who was now a young man of good character and 
condition, as help to a farmer and to his family.  Notwithstanding Bustamente's 
decree and the stringent regulations to enforce it, negro slaves were from time to 
time being taken into Texas almost freely by land over the Louisiana border, and, 
under different devices by sea, from New Orleans to points on the Texas coast.  
Having but one slave, my father was disposed to art with him at his native home, 
rather than to take the trouble and the hazard of getting him through to Texas.  A 
neighboring planter, whom the slave knew and was willing should become his 
master, proposed to purchase at a price which my father was willing to accept.  My 
mother's brother was taken into consultation on the subject, and, amongst other 
things said: "Mac, you have never been used to being your own boy for every turn; 
be sure to take Sam with you, and do not fail to get him to your home in Texas."  
My parents were to go by water.  They took a steamboat at Smithland, at the mouth 
of the Cumberland River, which took them to New Orleans.  From that city they 
were to go by sail-vessel, on the Gulf, to Velasco.  Sam Accompanied them as far 
as New Orleans, but when they arrived at that city they learned that Colonel 
Ugartachea had been stimulated to such vigilance in enforcing Bustamente's edicts 
that captains of vessels sailing from New Orleans to Texas would not take negro 
servants on board.  There was no satisfactory or safe opportunity to send the slave 
to the point of destination on the Bernard.  Sam was therefore sent back to the 
Kentucky planter, and my parents became non-slaveholders.  

	Early in 1833, Mr. John Sweeney brought in over land from Tennessee a 
large gang of negroes, and began clearing off the forest and establishing a 
plantation on the Breen league, just back of the David McCormick league, and 
about three miles southwest from Uncle David's home on the Bernard.  It has 
already been mentioned that Uncle David received my parents as his own children; 
that he built for himself and them a better house than the one he had before 
occupied, and did everything a father could to make them comfortable and happy.  
When, however, they had tried it two years, they found, as all who try it will find, 
that no house is large enough for two families.  They were entitled to receive, and 
did receive, as their headright grant from the Government, a league and a labor of 
land -- the same amount of land that Uncle David had receive and then held.  He 
reluctantly consented to the suggested that "Louisa ought to have a home of her 
own," but he insisted that, even though "no house was large enough for two 
families," a league of land (4428 acres) was large enough, and asked them to say 
how much of his league, and what particular part of it, would meet their want for a 
home, and promised to make them a deed to such part as they should choose, and 
to help them build their hew home thereon.  They chose 500 acres in the southwest 
corner of the league adjoining Mr. Sweeney's plantation on the southwest, 
extending towards the river to within about a mile of Uncle David's house, so as to 
include a good building site and a lot of peach-brake land in the northeast corner of 
the 500-acre tract.  This point was out of the sweep of travel that thronged the 
public roads, which crossed the river and each other at the McCormick Ferry.  
During the year 1834, about 10 acres of the peach-brake was cleared for culture, 
and a small log cabin improvement was built to accommodate the young family.  

	My father, like Uncle David, hired white single-males, one or more, according 
to his need and to the supply -- to help him in the field-work; and, to help my mother 
with the children and the house-work, he hired a negro girl named Ardeny, who 
forty years afterwards, when she had become free, came to my house in Brazoria 
to see my mother, and to talk over the early times when they, as mistress and 
servant, were raising "mars' Andrew," and "to see Mars' Andrew's children."  During 
the winter of 1834-35, my father got out material for a log house similar to the one 
Uncle David built in 1833.  AT the close of the cultivating season in 1835, he began 
to erect this house, and, except as to chinking and pointing the cracks and building 
the chimney, had finished it, when he was stricken down with his first and most 
serious sickness.  He was attacked with congestive fever, and had a life and death 
speel, in which Life and Death wagged a grievous and uncertain battle for a period 
of eight to ten days.  He was attended by Dr. Anson Jones, then a prominent 
politician, and afterwards the last president of the Republic of Texas, but as 
learned, as skillful and as successful in the practice of medicine, as he was in the 
practice of statecraft.  In the fall of that year, when his health was fully restored and 
his little crop gathered and disposed of, he (Father) received from Mr. Sweeney a 
proposition to take charge of the force and field work on his plantation.  The terms 
offered were liberal.  The offer was made at a time when Mr. Sweeney and my 
father had met in the neighborhood, either at Mr. Sweeney's house or at some 
other place away from my father's home.  His answer then was "I must sleep on 
that, Mr. Sweeney, and consult Louisa."  He did not sleep on it; he did consult 
Louisa.  When, in the evening of that day, the children had gone to sleep and the 
young parents were seated by their own hearth in their little house -- he with his 
book, and she with her needle-work -- he closed his book and told her fully and 
fairly Mr. Sweeney's proposition.  His first words arrested her needle-work and 
riveted her attention.  When he had finished, and paused with a questioning look 
for her response, she said, "I knew before we were married that we were to live 
here in a new settlement, subject to many privations; I have never murmured or felt 
a shadow of regret; we have not endured more than I expected and contracted for, 
but I did not contract to be, or expect to be, an overseer's  wife."  She did not say 
she would not, but I suspect she looked it.  Her response thrilled hi with pride and 
joy.  He was as unfit to be, and as unwilling to be, an overseer as she was to be an 
overseer's wife, but under the circumstances it was right and kind to let her choose.  
Mr. Sweeney's proposition was declined with respectful thanks, and the transaction 
was the beginning and basis of a friendship between the men and their families that 
was beautiful and lasting.

	Mr. Sweeney and his family filled so large a space in the life of my parents in 
Texas, that more extended mention of them is meet.  In his youth he received the 
ordinary log-cabin school-house education, and was taught to work in wood and 
iron.  Early in life, in Middle Tennessee, he set up and carried on the business of 
blacksmith work and making and repairing road and farm wagons.  For a time he 
had but one man-slave, whom, after their immigration I knew in Texas as old Uncle 
Grovy.  This slave worked with his master in the shop in those early years.  Later, 
Mr. Sweeney enlarged his business, built and operated public grist-mills and 
cotton-gins, owning and running as many as five corn-grinding and cotton-ginning 
establishments in different localities at one time.  He bought seed cotton from small 
farmers in all the region around those gins.  He developed and displayed capacity 
to conduct large business ventures.  He grew wealthy.  He had a large family of 
children.  He informed himself of the situation in Texas -- whether by a personal 
visit of inspection I do not now remember, if I ever knew -- and in 1833, as already 
noticed, came in with a large gang of negroes and train of wagons and work 
animals.  He found in the second tier of leagues west of the Bernard land that his 
judgment approved.  It was embraced in grants already made to Polly and Chance, 
to Breen and to Keep, but he bought it of them and located his headright lands 
elsewhere.  His wife, the mother of his children, came with him.  They had seven 
sons and two daughters.  The youngest son, Franklin, was a few years my senior; 
the youngest daughter, Sarah, was about my age; the oldest son, William, was 
about the age of my father -- possibly a few years younger; the next oldest son, 
John, was born in March, 1816, being ten years younger than my father.  The 
oldest son had received a good academic, if not a college education.  At the time I 
recollect to have first seen him, William was married and had two children.  He was 
man strikingly like his father, of large size and fine presence, with easy manners, 
attractive to a young boy, and had more taste for town life, books and music than 
for farm work.  He played on the violin and flute and other like instruments, but 
rarely, when asked, and never for mixed company of guests or strangers -only in 
his own family and on his own inspiration.  He died when i was seven or eight years 
old.  Six or eight years after the death of the oldest son, Mr. Sweeney's fourth son, 
Lafayette, was killed the accidental discharge of his gun as he sat it down on 
returning from a hunt.  The oldest daughter, Miss Sophia, in 1838, married the Hon. 
Edward L. Holmes, then a member of the Texas congress.  This was the first 
wedding I remember to have attended.  My mother and my two sisters went some 
days in advance, that my mother might assist in directing and making the 
preparation for the great function.  My father and I went on the wedding-day.  All of 
our world had been invited and was there.  Adequate preparations had been made 
for feasting and dancing.  It was a matter of necessity, if not of choice, to "dance all 
night till broad daylight," for it was impracticable to travel the roads at night.  And 
who could provide beds for so great a company?  Mr. Holmes died within a few 
years and Mrs. Holmes returned to her father's house, remained a widow ten years 
or more, and then married Mr. John McGrew.  The youngest daughter died before 
reaching womanhood.  The five living sons were settled off successively on good 
plantations carved out of the large body of land their father had purchased; and 
with a good and growing force of slaves the brothers maintained an amiable rivalry 
with their father and each other in growing crops and in dispensing hospitality, in 
both of which the father was a model of the best type. He died in 1854, and Mrs. 
McGrew got the old home, after which her husband family resided there, and the 
six surviving children conducted their six adjoining plantations in the old affluent 
style, until "The Flood" came and broke up the old plantationship into total wreck.  
The land remained, and is still held and used by their descendants, or by some of 
them, but the fashion of the antediluvian world has passed away.  Of the six 
children who survived Mr. Sweeney, only the oldest son, John -- now just entering 
his eighty-second year -- remains.  He still resides with his family at the place first 
settled by Samuel Chance, the man who gave his name to the prairie, on which 
place Mr. Sweeney has lived for more than fifty years.  His farm embraces all the 
land that his plantation formerly covered.  he has it all worked as well as he can 
with "free niggers."  There is no perceptible change in the mansion house, nor in 
the hospitality dispensed there; that is much the same as ever.  I visited them in 
1894, and saw the same abundance of home comforts, and enjoyed the same 
hospitality as in the good old times, but all else bore little resemblance to what had 
once been the subject of praise to all who saw it.

	In 1835, there was living in our immediate neighborhood a family by the 
name of Lonis.  The oldest son in this family was named George Washington 
Lonis.  He was called always by his middle name.  In March, 1836, Washington 
Lonis volunteered at the same time that my father enlisted, and they both joined 
Captain William H. Patton's company.  In the battle at San Jacinto, Washington 
was shot down.  My father saw him fall.  George Wright, Claiborn Rector and 
James Hayr, members of the same company, were near by at the time, and these 
four, picking up a blanket from the abandoned baggage of the routed foe, went to 
get Washington and carry him to the rear.  He had fallen and was lying on his face, 
and had not recovered consciousness.  They spread the blanket by him and turned 
him over towards it.  AS they did this he came to himself and recognized them; his 
first words were: "Boys, I fired my gun thirteen times, and I saw twelve of the yellow 
bellies fall."  He was shot through the right lung -- straight through from front to 
back -- at every respiration the bloody breath escaped through the wound.  For 
many years after this I knew him well, and I have heard my father relate as I have 
here written, the fact and circumstances of Washington Lonis being shot through 
and through on the field of San Jacinto.  In the list of the wounded in that battle, 
now on file in the office of the Commissioner of Statistics and History at the State 
Capitol, the name Washington Lonis appears.  In the list of privates in Captain 
Patton's company, the name "G.W. Lewis" appears.  Following the foregoing 
record, John Henry Brown in his History of Texas names Washington Lewis in the 
list of severely wounded, and G.W. Lewis as a private in Captain Patton's 
company.  The name Washington L-o-n-i-s; or G.W. L-o-n-i-s, nowhere appears in 
either record.  It is a clear mistake -- not unusual, but none the less cruel.  Mr. Lonis 
married Margaret Cowan, moved to Western Texas, and reared a family of 
children.  I have never met any of them, and do not know that any of them are now 
living.  His brother James Lonis also married and has descendants and his sister 
Matilda, a very handsome, interesting young woman, married William J. Cannon, 
with whom she lived in Brazoria County many years till her death, an active, useful 
life, and left children, one, a son, bearing his father's full name, William J. Cannon, 
was a gallant soldier in the Confederate Army, and for the more than thirty years 
that have since passed he has led in his native county an active, useful life, 
enjoying the respect and esteem of all good men who know him.  The record at the 
Capitol should be corrected.

	During the first year of which I have any recollection, and for a number of 
years (I know not how many before that) Mr. Isaac T. Tinsley was one of our 
neighbors in the Chance's Prairie settlement.  He was a prominent actor in public 
affairs in 1835 and 1836.  He was a member of the Committee of Safety and 
Correspondence appointed by the convention that met in Columbia August 15, 
1835.  He was for that time and locality, quite a wealthy man.  He kept a family 
carriage, and a full supply of the best fresh flour, for his family use, and had  hot 
biscuit on his table always twice each day.  These were then and there badges of 
wealth.  He did not have a large force of slaves.  He was a good farmer, had good 
land and made large crops for the force he worked, but his farming was a side 
issue.  He had made much of his wealth in trade in Tennessee and Alabama.  In a 
few years, when interest-bearing Texas treasury-notes were circulating as money, 
but had greatly depreciated in value, Mr. Tinsley sold his farm in Chance's Prairie 
for a great price, payable in these notes.  He locked the notes up in his safety 
deposit vault and let them sleep there, drawing interest; from which sleep they 
awoke ten years later as good as gold, as large as life and twice as natural.  He 
opened a new farm on the Brazos, five or six miles above Columbia, on which he 
resided with his family.  This took them further from us, but the intimacy of our 
families continued and increased as the children in each increased in number and 
grew up toward maturity.  His oldest child, a son named Jack, was a few months 
younger than I.  We were always chums at school or away from school, until after 
Annexation, when his father sent him off to school at Poughkeepsie, New York.  He 
returned and was at home in March, 1850, when I returned home from school in 
Washington County, and was soon to start to Centre College in Kentucky.  We had 
seen very little of each other during the last four years, and soon after my arrival 
home he came to our house and paid me a visit of several days duration.  He 
wished me to go home with hi and continue our relation there, but I could not, and 
Jack had to go without me.  His road home passed through the town of Columbia, 
where he made a short stop, not exceeding a half an hour, to see his tailor, who he 
found with a fever on him.  The tailor's illness proved to be small-pox.  The tailor 
recovered, but from this exposure Jack, who had not been vaccinated, contracted 
the disease and died a few days after leaving our house.  One of Jack's brothers -- 
the oldest of those now living -- was named for my father, Joseph McCormick.  He 
now resides at his native home on the Brazos.  One of Mr. Tinsley's daughter, Miss 
Caledonia, married my friend, the late Hon. John T. Brady of Houston, Texas.

	From my early boy, Mr. George Armstrong lived at or near the confluence of 
the two Linnville bayous, a little way in the woods from the head of Chance's Prairie 
and about five miles from our dwelling.  For more than thirty years, from my earliest 
recollection, till his death, Mr. Armstrong was my father's friend, and my friend, 
often tried and always true.  He was a native of Tennessee and had inherited weak 
lungs, with a tendency, manifested in his youth, to pulmonary consumption.  This 
he escaped by moving to the softer climate of the Gulf Coast, and secured more 
than thirty years of active, useful, happy life.  He lived a bachelor for a number of 
years, until his health having become rugged in his mature manhood, he visited his 
native state and married.  The woman of his choice was a charming character, 
made to complement his and to complete and adorn his home.  He went to his 
reward more than twenty years ago, leaving two children, a son and daughter, who 
have followed him across the river, and now, of this ideal family, the childless 
widow alone is left.  

	A few miles above us, on the Bernard, was the residence of Colonel William 
G. Hill.  He had married the widow Phillips, who was the daughter of Thomas 
Westall, of the Gulf Prairie settlement.  She was a widow the second time when 
she married Colonel Hill, having been first the wife and widow of James Brown 
Austin, the brother of the impresario, but was still young and very attractive.  She 
had been educated in the best schools in "The States," was handsome and highly 
intellectual.  She received from her first husband a large estate.  Colonel Hill and 
his family lived sumptuously at their Bernard home, which was known everywhere 
by the name of "Waverly," which he had given it.  He loved company, and 
organized his home with the view of indulging his taste in that direction and so that 
he might entertain much company well and easily.  After he had been living at 
Waverly a number of years, he and his family were one day visitors at Madam 
Bell's, when she casually made allusion to some of the inconveniences of living on 
the public road.  "Think, Madam," he said, "what it must be at the end of the public 
road."  He left Waverly soon after this, and opened a new plantation and built him a 
home thereon, between East Columbia and Orazimbo on a tract of land most fertile 
and most secluded, but his new home soon became the end of road as public as 
that which had led to Waverly.  Mrs. hill's oldest brother, James Westall, a 
gentleman of finished education and culture, active and prudent in business -- 
probably the most promising man of his age then in Austin's colony -- fell a victim to 
the "Big Cholera" in 1833.  One of her sisters was the wife of Mr. John Greenville 
McNeel, who was a member of the Committee of Safety and Correspondence in 
1835, a member of the convention that framed our State Constitution in 1845, and 
a State Senator in the first legislature, the work of which was so fundamental and 
has proved so durable in the construction of our State polity.  

	Next neighbor to Mr. Thomas Westall, in the Gulf Prairie settlement, lived Mr. 
Munson, the father of the Honorable Colonel Mordello S. Munson, who having 
graduated, the honor-man in his class, at Transylvania University at Lexington, 
Kentucky, entered the legal profession at Brazoria, and in 1858 commenced his 
career as a public man by service as a member of the legislature, and during all the 
period of his vigorous manhood, has served his state in Civil and in military life, 
second only to General John A. Wharton in military achievement, and easily chief 
of all in civil leadership in that portion of the state.  

	The foregoing are a few of the more prominent of the neighbors in the midst 
of whom my father's lot fell in 1832, and to whom he became joined by such ties of 
amity that he was moved to say in his later years to one of his many friends -- the 
late Honorable Robert J. Calder -- "If I can endow my son with the friends I have 
secured, it will be to him a richer inheritance than any amount of pecuniary wealth I 
could leave him."

	Early in March, 1836, the government called for one-half of all the able-
bodied men west of the Trinity River to form an army to meet the invaders under 
Santa Anna.  My father and the other members of Captain William II. Patton's 
company volunteered at once.  The little field at the new little home had been well 
prepared and planted in cotton and corn, both of which were up to a good stand, 
and the corn had received one working.  Having carefully inspected his fences and 
righted them up and strengthened them where such precautions were needed, the 
volunteer set out with his comrades.  They crossed the Colorado River at Cayce's 
Ferry, and joined General Houston's column on its retreat from Gonzales to 
Burhams, where the patriot army arrived March 17, 1836, and was posted with the 
view to hold the Colorado if possible.  Squads of other volunteers poured in daily 
until they formed a force respectable for its numbers and the individual qualities of 
the men, full of raw enthusiasm and patriotic rage -- fighting men certainly, and 
each well trained to the use of arms, but utterly ignorant of the first principles of drill, 
the simplest evolutions of military force, or the primary meaning and vital essence 
of subordination.  At the first word or sign indicating that the patriot army would be 
ordered to fall back from the line of the Colorado, a shiver of disappointment and 
disgust convulsed all the ranks.  I have seen and heard my father try to express the 
sense of horror and shame which he experienced when saw the torch put to 
Dewee's fodder-stacks.  On the evening of March 26, the retreat began.  Then 
followed twenty-six evil days, full of toil and anxiety to the retreating army, but full 
also of that useful experience and discipline which won the crowning triumph.  April 
21, the day of battle came.  It was decisive.  My father passed through it unhurt.  
Volunteers from east of the Trinity began to arrive the day after the battle.  The 
orders of the captive Dictator were respected by General Filisola, and the Mexican 
forces not engaged and killed or captured at San Jacinto were concentrated and 
withdrawn from Texas, never to return except in small raiding parties that advanced 
only to San Antonio in 1842.  Captain Robert J. Calder carried to the refugee camp 
on Galveston Island the news of the victory, and the women and children, who had 
been removed to that point from their exposed homes in Brazoria and the adjoining 
counties, were brought back by the steamboat "Yellowstone" to East Columbia and 
others points on the lower Brazos.  My mother, my infant sister and I were with 
these refugees.  My father, on furlough, reached our home a few days before we 
did.  It had not been disturbed by the enemy.  During my father's absence, Mr. 
Sweeney had sent a squad of his slaves to our little place, and had the crops of 
corn and cotton properly worked.  On his arrival at home, my father started his 
plow, and thus, with happy content and joyous expectation, awaited the return of 
his family, who were in charge of Uncle David and Mr. Bell, and would be home 
soon.  When they did arrive my father was plowing in the field, laying by his corn 
crop.  The little field never yielded a more 

abundant crop than it did that year.  At the time required by his furlough, reported in 
person at Goliad, but being no longer needed he was then discharged. 

	It has been mentioned in a preceding chapter that Uncle David died May 30, 
1836.  Thereupon my parents moved back to his home and took charge of his 
estate, then become theirs by inheritance.  During the ensuing year, a gentleman 
from Alabama, named McDonald, came into our neighborhood and offered to buy 
with cash the 500-acre tract which my father had improved.  The offer was 
accepted and the money paid.  African slavery was now recognized, and 
established by law in Texas, and my father sent, my Mr. Bell, the money to the 
United States to buy two slaves, a young man and a young woman.  These arrived 
the last week in December, 1837.  In the bill of sale the man was described and his 
age stated to be twenty-one years, but the man said that he was twenty-four years 
of age.  His age was given as Sampson only, but he   said his full name was 
Sampson Brown.  The woman, who was younger, was named Mandy.  If she 
claimed a fuller name I do not now recall it.  Both the man and the woman were 
born and reared in Maryland.  Sampson had been taught in his boyhood, by a son 
of his master, to read and to write fluently and well.  He also knew well all of the 
elementary tables and rules of arithmetic.  He was an intelligent earnest Christian.  
He had felt, and he continued to feel in his soul the apostolic burden.  "Woe is unto 
me if I preach not the gospel."  He was preparing to take passage on the 
"underground railroad" out of Maryland to the Free States, or Canada, when his 
purpose was discovered and prevented by shipping him to New Orleans.  He was 
to us a faithful servant, honest, truthful, industrious and skillful. He was a pure 
negro, of full medium size, very strong, enjoyed perfect health, and was apparently 
in the prime of his manhood when my father died in January, 1865.  He had my 
father's promise that he should never be constrained to render involuntary service 
to any other master; of which promise my mother had full notice.  The promise went 
further, to the extent that Sampson should be permitted to retain the exclusive use 
of his cabin, should be clothed and fed and cared for as formerly, and enjoy all the 
freedom that the public patrol regulations would permit; all of which was promptly 
and cheerfully recognized as binding, and complied with by my mother.  On June 
19 of that year, the emancipation proclamation took effect in Texas.  Sampson was 
then only a little over fifty years of age.  He at once commenced a missionary 
circuit, preaching and teaching among the freed-men.  A few years later he had 
extended the field of his labors to Milam County, where he got into some jeopardy 
with the so-called Ku-Klux Klan.  He made his escape from this peril and came to 
my house for succor and security.  When the period of persecution had passed, he 
resumed his ministerial missionary labors.  When I last heard from him he was in 
Fort Bend County, Texas, hale in health, prospering in his work as a teacher and 
preacher, and enjoying the respect and esteem of the good men of that county.

	My father sold a large part of Uncle David's stock of cattle, mostly on a credit, 
to Hop Johnson, who then lived on Chance's Prairie, had a considerable farm and 
squad of slaves, and was much given to indulging a taste for fine horses and the 
hazards of the turf.  His principal jockey and general manager was Samuel Hinkle, 
an honest, worthy man, who was then, and ever after till his death, my father's 
friend.  Mr. Johnson's affairs began to gallop toward insolvency, and -- whether at 
his instance of with his knowledge I do not know, but in the nick of time -- Mr. 
Hinkle gave my father warning, and he got for the debt due him four slaves, which 
Mr. Hinkle brought to our house in January, 1838.  These were a woman named 
Rachel, about thirty years of age, and her two children -- a daughter named Mary, 
of seven years, and a son named Joe, a year or two younger than Mary; and a lad, 
no kin to the others, about twelve years of age, named George, who said his full 
name was George Davis.

	My father, who thought with Dr. Franklin that "He who by the plow would 
thrive, must either hold the plow, or drive," continued to hold the plow himself and 
to labor with his few slaves, still hiring white laborers to help in the press of the 
cultivating season and in gathering the crops.  The seasons were good, and crops 
of cotton averaging a bale of 500 pounds' weight to the acre, until 1842, when for 
the first time the cotton caterpillar attacked our crop.  We made only eleven bales 
that year.  The next year (1843) was equally disastrous to cotton.  The evils of a 
paper currency, then almost worthless, and the aftermath of the great panic in the 
United States, made "hard time" in Texas in 1842 and 1843.  Colonel Morgan L. 
Smith, late the colonel of the then noted New York Seventh Regiment, came to 
Columbia in 1838 and opened and conducted there a large mercantile business, 
chiefly selling family and plantation supplies, on annual account, and receiving 
cotton thereon at the end of each calendar year.  He extended his credits 
throughout all of the settlements west of the Trinity River.  He and my father were 
near the same age, were congenial, and soon became close friends.  In 1842, 
Colonel Smith's cotton receipts fell off fearfully, and he had to begin looking to other 
property of his customers for payment and security; to facilitate which he started 
the plantation near the town of Columbia, on which, after Annexation, he 
concentrated his attention, and, giving it the name "Waldeck" developed it into the 
best sugar estate that was in Texas during the slavery times.  In 1842, and until 
Annexation, he used it only as a self-sustaining recruiting camp to which he sent 
negroes and work-animals which he was forced to buy in making his collections.  In 
the spring of 1844 the heavy rains came early, and made and kept the ground too 
wet to plow until cotton fields became overgrown with a carpet of weeds a little 
higher than the young cotton-plant, making it difficult to work when the ground first 
got so it could be plowed, and threatening to soon make it impossible to save the 
cotton plants from the weeds.  While things were in this condition and my father, 
with me and the servants, was fighting the weeds like one killing snakes or fighting 
fire, Colonel Smith, on his way from Matagorda, stopped at our house for dinner.  
He had with him a young negro man named Jim, whom he had bought in 
Matagorda at forced sale, on a debt he held against the owner.  In slave-market 
phrase the negro was "very likely."  Colonel Smith took in the situation presented 
by our fight with the weeds, and offered to sell Jim to my father at a price he 
named, which was not large or above the slave's market value.  My father declined 
the offer, with thanks, saying he was not prepared to buy property; that he was 
doing his best to save his cotton crop to meet his merchandise account.  Colonel 
Smith said, "I will let you have the man at the price named, and charge it to the 
merchandise account; with his help you can save your cotton crop and meet your 
merchandise account."  This was as reasonable as kind, and the bargain was 
struck.  We worried the weeds under roughly as fast as we could; then gave the 
ground a good working, and soon got the cotton field in order and the plants 
growing nicely.  Just when we had effected this the Communion season in the 
Columbia Church occurred.  It was then the custom in that church to have at such 
seasons protracted morning and afternoon preaching services, beginning on Friday 
and continuing until the celebration of the Sacrament of the Supper at the close of 
the Sunday morning services.  My father, being an elder, went up with his family on 
Friday to stop at Madam Bell's near the church, during the continuation of the 
meeting.  Our servants were to come up Sunday morning.  A few minutes before 
the opening of the Sunday morning services Sampson arrived at the church with all 
of our servants except Jim.  Sampson, with an anxious look, sought to see my 
father, who was within, probably (I do not recollect certainly) in the Session room.  
Word was got to him, and when he came out Sampson said that just as they were 
leaving home that morning a man whom he named, and who claimed to be the true 
owner of Jim, came with two assistants and took Jim away.  Mr. Benton II McNeel, 
a younger brother of Captain J. Shelby McNeel, happened to be standing by, heard 
Sampson's story, and promptly saying, "I will attend to that matter," bade my father 
have no anxiety or trouble himself about it.  Mr. McNeel found in the gathering 
congregation two suitable assistants, set out at once, and in due time recovered 
possession of Jim.  The contest over the title to Jim, Colonel Smith said was his 
affair, and, therefore, by mutual consent, he took Jim and in exchange gave us a 
man named Prince Monroe.  A few weeks before my father's death, in a general 
talk over his affairs, among other things, he said to me in reference to Prince 
Monroe, "I have owned him for more than twenty years, the most of that time he 
has been the manager of my plantation and if he has ever deceived me or told me 
a falsehood, I did not detect it or suspect it."  In 1844, the cotton crop on the coast 
of Texas was good, and Annexation was assured by the election of Mr. Polk.  In 
1845, the cotton crop was fine, and Annexation was virtually accomplished.  In 
December of that year (1845) my father sold 1000 acres of his land, including his 
cultivated farm and his home, at a fine price -- a higher price than could be 
obtained now for the same land.  Ever after this sale his pecuniary circumstances 
were as independent and affluent as he desired.  He gradually increased his force 
of slaves, and opened a larger farm on the remaining portion of the D. McCormick 
league, putting to cultivation only the best land, which was a strip about one-quarter 
of a mile wide, extending two miles and a quarter along the river-front, giving a little 
more than 300 acres, which one line of fence one mile and a half in length would, 
with the river, entirely and securely enclose.  Adjacent to this he still owned two 
thousand acres of woodland and prairie pasture.  It was not a large plantation.  It 
was well located, well organized and fully equipped.  The dwelling house for master 
and laborers, with the gin and mill house, the cribs, stables and stockpens, were 
located immediately on the river bank and nearly midway of the strip of cultivated 
land.  Here a space unenclosed let into the river and ferry, stock and travel, and 
separated his cultivated lands into two fields, the most remote part of the larger 
field being a little more than a mile from the dwellings.  He kept on this farm a small 
herd of stock horses, out of which the better colts were readily sold, at two years 
old, for one hundred dollars each (American Gold); also a small herd of horned 
cattle to supply the family, master and servants with beef, milk and butter.  This 
herd was kept down to the limit of one hundred head by selling out of it milk-cows 
and work-oxen, as a surplus of cows or steers developed.  There was active local 
demand for these cattle at twenty-five dollars for a fresh cow -- that is, one with a 
calf under two months old; and at twenty-five dollars each for steers four years old 
and broke to work as oxen.  He had also a stock of hogs, which furnished annually 
fatted hogs for slaughter to supply the family with fresh pork, bacon and lard.  
Cotton, Indian corn, field peas, yam potatoes and turnips were the field crops.  The 
climate and soil were not favorable to the small grains -- wheat, oats, rye and 
barley.  When emancipation came, the company of slaves embraced 13 men, 11 
women and 14 children.  The only deaths that had occurred among the slaves were 
a child of Rachel's named Moses, who died at the age of six months, in 1844, and 
two of the children of Ann, the wife of Prince, one of whom died in 1858 at the age 
of ten months, and one in 1860 at the age of eight months.  The only slaves ever 
sold were Sam, as already stated -- because he could not be brought into Texas -- 
and Mandy, the woman bought with Sampson in 1837, who, for insubordination in 
1847 such as could not be forgiven, was sent to New Orleans and sold.  She was 
not otherwise punished.  During all the successive years until June 1, 1858, my 
father occasionally employed a white man to work with the slaves and direct their 
work.  This man was to do, and did do, regular field work every working-day to the 
full measure of a man's duty.  He lived in the manson house, ate with the owners 
and was treated with as respectful courtesy, and was required to observe the same 
decorum as with extended to or expected of any other guest.  The business of the 
plantation was fully discussed with him, and committed to him, except the enforcing 
of obedience from the slaves; that was always reserved to the master, and judged 
of and acted on by him alone.  No overseer's or slave-driver's whip was ever used 
on that place.  "The lash," as it is called, was never used during the last twenty 
years to get work done, but only to conserve the peace and secure decorous 
deportment.  I have often heard my father say that he had learned that the man 
who resorted to the lash to get slaves to work was not fit to own or control one.  He 
believed in work, and had full work done by every one under his control -- more 
work, and better work, than those could get who let the force of the lash take the 
place superior intelligence and moral power.  Prince was the general foreman.  Joe 
had better faculties as a boss, but was not so upright and truthful; he made a good 
lieutenant.  Sampson was the best axman, plowman and hoehand, and led in the 
one or the other of these lines in which he was at the given time most needed.  In 
the cultivating season he led the hoes; in breaking-up and planting he led the 
plows; in clearing land and getting out timber he led the chopping axes.  He was 
not called on to do any chores after the family got too large to supply it with corn-
meal made daily on a hand-mill.  Any of the children who went to the field to work 
could pick more cotton than he, and, therefore, he did not pick cotton at all for the 
last twenty years that he was in bondage.  He and  Rachel were married, but in that 
relation their tempers proved to be incompatible and my father permitted them to 
live apart.  He built a good house -- the best in the "quarters" -- for Sampson, in 
which he lived alone, Rachel, or her daughter Mary, being required to keep it and 
his wearing apparel in good order.  Mary was the best cotton picker.  She had 
intelligence and the bossing-faculty equal to her brother Joe, and was more 
trustworthy.  Whenever there was work for a "trash gang" -- that is, irregular lighter 
work for women and children -- Mary was the lieutenant commanding and leading 
it.  All the women were trained to cook and to wash and iron and to keep the house.  
Rachel was the queen-regnant in the kitchen, but Ann, Filda, Maria and Frances 
were first -class at all such work, and the others good second-class.  The plantation 
was a little world within itself; a little world, indeed, but to its owners it was a very 
ample and happy one.  

	The early and constant care of my parents for the first twenty years of their 
married life was to educate their children.  In the eastern and western states the 
custom long obtained to organize a district school and board the teacher around in 
the families of the patrons.  In Texas the grants of land were made in such large 
surveys, and the first settlements in Brazoria County were so sparse, that a school-
house could not be located in the country districts that would have living accessible 
to it sufficient children to maintain a school.  It was a necessity, therefore, that the 
school, as well as the teacher, should board around.  Mr. Thomas J. Pilgrim was 
the first and best teacher who conducted such a school in that county.  Before 
Columbia was founded, Mr. Josiah H. Bell built a school-house at a point about one 
mile west from where West Columbia now is, and Mr. Pilgrim taught the children of 
that neighborhood in that house.  The children from Gulf Prairie and other 
neighborhoods, coming in and boarding around, also attended there.  In due time, 
he passed on to Gulf Prairie and taught in that neighborhood, Mr. Bell's children 
and others from his neighborhood, going to Gulf Prairie, boarded around and 
attended the school.  After a few years, Mr. Pilgrim gave up teaching for a time, and 
was engaged in merchandising in Columbia.  During this time another teacher, less 
distinguished than Mr. Pilgrim (a Mr. Noonan) taught for a while the Bell's 
neighborhood school, which was then moved to Columbia.  There was never a 
school established near enough to my father's home for me to live at home and 
attend the school.  When I was in fifth year I was put to board at Mr. Bell's, whose 
house was the same as home to me, and sent to Mr. Noonan's school at Columbia.  
In the then due and customary course this school was closed, after keeping open a 
few months, and Mr. Noonan opened in a school-house on Squire Mims' 
plantations, twelve miles below us on the same side of the Bernard.  I never had 
seen Squire Mims or any member of his family, but they were good people, and 
thither I was sent to board and pursue my studies under Mr. Noonan.  Two of Mr. 
Sweeney's sons, Jordan and Sam, eight and ten years older than I, whom I had 
known always, also went to Squire Mims to board, and doubly endeared 
themselves to my parents by the brotherly kindness and protection which they 
extended me at that time.  The school next opened at Mr. Sweeney's plantation, 
where I was again very much at home in feeling -- and was nearer home in 
distance -- than at any school I ever attended.  The school soon closed here, and I 
do not know whether it resumed at another point.  I did not attend it further.

	Mr. Pilgrim having closed his mercantile pursuit and married, concluded to 
go west to Gonzales and open there a permanent school.  He was to start out in 
the spring as soon as the grass was good, for he could carry a considerable 
wagon-train to be drawn by ox-teams.  Gonzales is one hundred and sixty miles 
distant from my childhood home, and then was on the border of the savage Indian 
country.  I was entering my eighth year.  Mr. Pilgrim was the best teacher in Texas, 
and one of the best men.  He was willing to take me to board in his own family.  His 
wife was new to the country and a stranger to us all.  They had not been married a 
year.  It was arranged that I should go.  My mother wept sore at the thought of 
parting with her son, but promptly made ample provision of such things as it was 
her office to supply him.  On the appointed day, about the first of May, he was 
ready, and joined the caravan at Columbia.  Mr. and Mrs. Pilgrim were to travel in a 
buggy.  I rode a pony, and there were four large wagons, each drawn by four yokes 
of oxen, driven by a teamster, furnished with a saddle-horse to be ridden or led at 
the tail of the wagon, as occasion required or permitted.  The animals subsisted by 
grazing, and our daily stages were short -- a little more or a little less than twenty 
miles a day, as opportunity for getting water determined.  The teamsters always ate 
in camp and slept at night in or near their wagons.  When our stop was near the 
residence of a family, Mr. and Mrs. Pilgrim and I ate and slept in the house.  We 
passed the Colorado River at Columbus, and had some difficulty and delay in 
getting the wagons over.  The calculation had been to reach Gonzales by Saturday 
night of the week in which we crossed that river, but it was after dark on Saturday 
night when the teams got to McClure's, on Peach Creek, nine miles from Gonzales.  
Mr. and Mrs. Pilgrim had driven ahead reached the house an hour or two earlier.  
The dwelling was several hundred yards from the point where the road crossed the 
Creek, and the teams drove on to that point to camp convenient to water.  I 
stopped at the house.  When I got to the door, I saw in the room three Indian 
warriors -- the first I had ever seen -- squat near the chair on which Mr. Pilgrim sat.  
The Indians on the Coast between the Trinity and Colorado rivers had been driven 
off or killed before I was born, but they had been cannibals, or were reported to 
have been, and stories of Indian atrocities filled my mind, and the unexpected, 
sudden first-sight of live Indian men in their savage attire, produced a state of panic 
in me which it taxed Mr. Pilgrim's ability to overcome.  When I did succeed in 
mustering courage to enter the room, I remained ill-at-ease until the savages left 
and until sleep restored tone to my nerves.  Mr. Pilgrim was a puritan of the 
straightest sect.  His shibboleth was, "My house shall serve the Lord."  We 
therefore remained at Mr. McClure's house and the wagons at the Creek, until 
Monday morning.  Mr. McClure had a son a few years older than I, who had seen 
and enjoyed my panic Saturday night.  He was a veteran Indian-fighter, almost 
equal to Captain Matthew Caldwell's son, of whom the tradition ran, that, being with 
his father and the minute-men in a fight with Indians when the boy was only nine 
years old, he used his rifle with as much coolness and skill, and sheltered himself 
with as much care, as the oldest Indian-fighters; and when a minute-man near him, 
less discreet, stepped out into the open to get a shot but received a ball that struck 
him to the ground, the boy cursed him and said with a bitter sneer,  "I would not let 
the thieves see me fall."  Some time after breakfast Sunday morning, the McClure 
boy and I started down to the creek to see the teamsters.  The road was narrow 
and meandering, with trees overhanging it, and underbrush and briers higher than 
a man's head growing close up to the wagon-tracks.  When about half way from the 
house to the creek, as we turned a point on one side of the road we came in sight 
of a single Indian warrior meeting us, in all his holiday-best of paint, beads, feathers 
and bow and arrows.  He was one of the three who had seen me the night before.  
As soon as he saw that I saw him, he "treed" -- that is, jumped through the 
underbrush and covered his person by the body of the nearest tree.  Young 
McClure also "treed," and the two played on my inexperience painfully.

	Monday we got to Gonzales.  Mr. Pilgrim had bought a house there, near the 
home of Col. Eli Mitchell.  We went to this neighbor's house to stay until Mr. 
Pilgrim's furnishings could be taken from the wagons and his house made ready for 
habitation.  This Col. Eli Mitchell was the brother of Col. Asa Mitchell, who, ten or 
more years after this time, as the chairman of a vigilance committee, caused to be 
hung and otherwise scourged out of San Antonio the gang who had sought to 
make that town a den of thieves.   In honor of these two brothers, Mitchell County, 
in Texas, was named.  After Mr. Pilgrim commenced living in his own house, but 
before he received any other pupils or was ready to open his school, Mrs. Pilgrim 
was taken sick, and I went back to Mrs. Mitchell's to stay until Mrs. Pilgrim 
recovered.  While I was at Col. Mitchell's home the Comanche Indians made the 
boldest raid that ever startled Western Texas.  They passed down from their 
villages on the upper Colorado in great force, marching like an army, on a line only 
a few miles east of Gonzales, straight forward to the Coast, killing men and 
capturing women and children, plundered and then burnt the town of Linnville, and 
swept back again to Plumb Creek before the minute-men could get together in 
sufficient force to give them battle.  Mrs. Pilgrim did not recover, and Mr. Pilgrim 
was so broke up by her loss, and the country so disturbed by alarms of Indians on 
the warpath, that he concluded to defer for a time the opening of the school.  He, 
however, adhered to his purpose to settle permanently in Gonzales, and I studied 
on alone under his instruction, waiting for the first safe opportunity to get me back 
to my father's house.  The opportunity came soon after the Comanche raid.  Mr. 
Charles D. Sayre, a man prominent from the earliest times, a member of the 
Committee of Safety and Correspondence in 1835, who then owned, and with his 
family resided on, the plantation now known by the name of "Willow Glen," just 
above Columbia, on the opposite bank of the Brazos River from that town, had a 
milling business of some kind near Gonzales.  In the last days of August he was 
returning from a visit of inspection of that property to his residence in Brazoria 
County, and it was arranged that I should return with him.  He was traveling on 
horseback, with his camping outfit, gun, and himself, on one large fine horse.  I, 
with my pack, was mounted on a good pony.  The weather was warm, but 
otherwise good; the mosquitoes troublesome at night to person sleeping without a 
net, but we had one; and in day-time, during certain hours, and in certain localities, 
the horse-flies were unbearable.  To avoid the flies and the heat, we rode into the 
night teach night until I became too sleepy to keep my horse safely, when we would 
camp near the edge of a prairie, or in some mott of timber in a prairie, or in open 
post oak woods, where we could stake our horses to graze.  We carried water for 
ourselves in bottle-gourds and watered the horses well at the last watering place 
we passed each day.  We got along nicely until we got east of the Colorado.  We 
left the Colorado timber at Alley's, where Alleyton is now.  Our trace led across the 
large prairie extending from that point to the thin skirt of timber on the upper San 
Bernard.  I do not now remember or know the distance, but it is a long ride.  We left 
Alley's a little after sun-down.  Mr. Sayre wanted to reach the Bernard before 
camping.  He was doubtful about my being able to keep awake so long, but I 
thought I could, and earnest good faith promised to do it.  Our hoses traveled well, 
and by our united efforts I was kept awake until we had gotten more than half way 
across the prairie.  We rode in Indian-file, close order, Mr. Sayre ahead.  While I 
was awake and my pony was not fagged, I kept well up, but when the pony got leg-
weary, and his ride dull -- almost dead, with sleep -- the "rear file" would not close 
up.  Mr. Sayre tried putting me in front, but the pony would not keep the path, and 
the rider could not keep himself -- or be kept -- sufficiently awake to use the bridle.  
He tried dismounting and leading both of the horses himself, and have the boy walk 
ahead and see if that would not dispel his drowsiness; but it did not, and to persist 
in it would have been as useless as inhuman.  It was yet five or six miles to the 
Bernard.  We had to camp.  When I waked the next morning I was alone with the 
baggage.  At first, I did not see Mr. Sayre or the horses, but presently caught the 
sight of them some distance from the camp.  The horses had been staked, as best 
Mr. Sayre could in that situation, as near our pallet as was safe for us, and their 
nipping and chomping the grass could be distinctly heard.  They were hungry, and 
grazed pretty steadily and within hearing until morning, and Mr. Sayre did not 
suspect that they were loose until the day dawned and he saw they were further 
away than he had placed them.  He walked out to where they were and picked up 
the rope his own horse was dragging, quietly did it up into a coil, held this coil in 
one hand, and leading that horse approached the other, picked up his rope, and 
was beginning to do it up in the same way, when the pony startled, broke quickly 
away and jerked the rope hotly through Mr. Sayre's hand, blistering its palm and 
fingers badly.  The horse ran only a few lengths of the rope and stopped.  Mr. 
Sayre followed him up, got on the rope again and picked it up, but as he did so the 
horse again broke away.  This was done, or attempted, several times, until the 
loose horses got so "skittish" that he would not let Mr. Sayre get near enough on 
foot to pick up the rope  Mr. Sayre then, still leading his own horse, returned to 
camp to look after me, get breakfast and get his saddle.  The loose horses followed 
at a distance, but kept his distance.  When we had eaten, Mr. Sayre saddled his 
horses, and mounting him endeavored to get nearer the other horse, on horseback.  
He had not the art and skill of the Mexican ranchero, or of the later American cow-
boy, to throw the lasso, or run up on the loose animal at full speed, pick up the 
drag, and whiff it around the horn of his saddle, even if the pony were not -- and he 
probably was -- a quicker, fleeter quarter nag than the heavier roadster.  He 
pursued the quiet, persistent process on horseback that he had done on foot, with 
like tantalizing experience and want of success, until the loose horses got tired of it, 
as Mr. Sayre knew he would; but instead of giving up as was expected, he broke 
into a sustained lope on our back track, showing that he had made up his mind to 
part company and return to Gonzales.  There was then no reasonable hope of 
capturing him short of Alley's to go to which place and return would consume the 
day even if it succeeded in regaining possession of the fugitive.  It was not safe, 
and would be cruel, to leave so young a boy so long alone in the desert.  Mr. Sayre 
therefore returned to where I was, put all the baggage on his horse, and we 
proceeded on foot, leading the pack-horse towards the Bernard.  When we got to 
the timber, Mr. Sayre was in a state of high fever, and had to lie down in the shade 
until the fever left him, or cooled, which it did late in that day.  We then resumed our 
tramp down the road on the west side of the river, to meet our good Samaritan, 
whom we knew was at the home of Major Andrew Northington, who lived at some 
distance below, on or near the river.  We trudged on from point to point across the 
bends of the stream, until Mr. Sayre began to be much disappointed that the lights 
from the cottage did not come into view as we turned the points; and at last when 
he could walk no further, we again camped and both slept.  Knowing we must be 
near Major Northington's, but not knowing how near, Mr. Sayre rose early in the 
morning, and we started on again. In a few minutes, as soon as we had fully turned 
the point of timber in which we had, we came in sight of Major Northington's house 
not a mile ahead.  We got to the dwelling-house just as the family were sitting down 
to breakfast, hardly sun-up.  We had seen no person since leaving Alley's, the 
evening of the second day before.   

	Mr. Northington was a man of parts, of enterprise and note.  His first wife had 
been Miss Zillah Stevenson, a first cousin of my mother, but she had died before 
he left Kentucky, and he had been long married to a second wife, by whom he had 
a daughter, who had, on January 17, 1839, married my mother's brother, Mr. 
James Lincoln McKenzie.  She was then living in Colorado County, Texas with her 
husband and their first child.  She is now living in Wharton County (carved out of 
Colorado and Matagorda counties), surrounded by her numerous children and her 
much more numerous grandchildren.  She is rich in worldly gear, but richer far in 
the affectionate esteem of all her neighbors and of her host of friends.  Major 
Northington was the son of parents of some wealth, who had given him a good 
early education and a fair estate.  His experience had been varied and its lesson 
well treasured.  I knew him well then, as a small boy knows a man of affairs in 
middle-life, and I knew him much more thoroughly after I became a man.  He kept 
open house, as many did in that early time in Texas.  He had a genius for 
anecdote, humor and wit.  He was wonderfully well-read for one who had lived so 
long on the frontier.  He was personally well acquainted, with all the men of note in 
Texas, and with many throughout the southwestern part of the United States and 
Mexico.  He had a fine voice, a quick, warm, poetic, painter's imagination, and was 
a brilliant talker.  Our story and our haggard look inspired him.  The tide of his talk 
rose and flowered in like a river -- a genuine flow of soul.  I have remembered much 
of it through all the intervening fifty-five years, especially his account of his first 
meeting with Henry S. Foote and Mimncan Hunt, who were then so widely known 
and continued to grow famous.  The distinguished historian, governor, and United 
States senator, and the accomplished diplomat and minister, had traveled from 
Columbia to and through the Major's neighborhood in a buggy drawn by a single 
horse.  On their first day's travel of forty miles or more, they had to cross, not far 
from the Major's house, a creek with a deep channel, usually and then with very 
little water in it, but with bluff clay banks, up which the road ran through a narrow 
cut on a steep grade.  There had been a heavy shower on this part of the road, 
extending along it for several miles, in the afternoon of that day.  The shower had 
passed ahead of the travelers, but it had made that part of the road wet and heavy, 
and especially so in the cut up which they had to go from the bed of the creek.  
Their horses was a good one, but the road and the load was too much for him in 
this cut; when he was about half way up, and in the narrowest, deepest, ugliest part 
of the cut, he stopped, overtaxed.  Before the thought or the resolution had come to 
the city gentlement to alight in the mud, lift the mud-coated wheels out of their ruts 
and let the horse take the buggy, empty, up the cut to the top of the grade, the 
Major, with a team, came on behind them.  They obstructed the road so that he 
could not pass, and he had to give them his special attention.  The picture that he 
drew of the road, the mud-coated wheels, the humped, strained position of the 
noble, overburdened horse the carpet knights perched, helpless, on the buggy 
seat, and the torrent of badinage with which he drenched them as he insisted on 
their getting out and letting him, one man, and the brave horse put the buggy on 
level land, where these fine fellows, out of their element, might re-enter and 
proceed.  I have seen Forrest, Edwin Booth, Barrett, Jefferson, Mansfield, Sir 
Henry Irving, and other actors of high note, but none of them impressed me in their 
delineation as Major Andrew Northington did at that breakfast table in August, 
1840.  The boy was enthused, and the middle-aged man of affairs felt that twinges 
from his fatigue, worry and fever were soothed, if not suppressed.  While we were 
enjoying the breakfast and "mine host," Mr. Sayre's horse was fed and groomed 
and a good horse got ready for me.  We made a long ride that day, and near the 
going down of the sun we got to Columbia.  There we were in sight of Madam Bell's 
house, less than a mile distant, by a plain good road, with which I was familiar, 
leadin goff to our right.  Mr. Sayre's home was straight ahead about three miles 
distant.  He had fully executed his trust.  We exchanged adieus and parted -- he 
going to his home, I turning off to my aunt's.  The sun wad down, but it was not yet 
dark when I got to her house.  The distance was six miles, by a narrow road 
through a dense forest, to my father's house, but I was all anxiety to go on and my 
aunt consenting, had Dennis, a young negro man, called; ordered jim to bring Pet, 
my uncle's swift sure-footed pacing mule for me to ride the rest of the way, and that 
he go with me riding my jaded horse.  Her two sons, Thaddeus and James, ten and 
eight years my senior, were at college in Kentucky when I went to Gonzales, and I 
supposed they were there still.  I did not see either of them, and no mention was 
made of them at my aunt's or by the negro on our way.  My return was the 
engrossing theme of thought and speech.  We came to the Bernard River at a point 
immediately opposite to, and not more than four hundred feet from the veranda, on 
which my father and his family were enjoying the summer evening's open air.  I got 
the man to hail for the boat, but his voice showed some excitement, and being 
recognized, he was called by name and asked if there was anything the matter at 
home.  Then he had to, or did, give the situation away, saying, "No sir; I jist come to 
see Massar Andrew home."  I saw a young man skip down the bank, enter the light 
row-boat and dart across the river.  It was Thaddeus Bell.  My 

mother and father came over in the larger boat.  What immediately followed needs 
no descriptive words.  

	At breakfast next morning, I observed that my father "said grace."  In their 
infancy, my parents had received christian baptism as that sacrament is 
administered by the presbyterian clergy on the personal profession of faith by one 
or both of the child's parents, but, as was noticed the first chapter, the mother-
church of the presbyterian communion in America, and the churches composed of 
Scotch-Irish constituents, guarded closely access to the communion-table, and 
administered the sacrament of the Supper only to those who, having competent 
knowledge, fully approved the doctrine and discipline of the church and were able 
to state the grounds of their approbation.  My mother became a communicant 
before her marriage, but my father did not receive this full fellowship.

	By the first Colonial contracts with the Empresario, grants of lands were 
authorized to be made only to good catholics.  The church was a part of the state, 
and public worship and religious observances were conducted, if at all, by or under 
the direction of priests of the Holy Roman Church.  After the declaration of Texan 
Independence and the establishment of the new government, the clergy of 
protestant denominations commenced their labors in the Republic.  The methodist 
and presbyterians largely occupied, and nearly equally divided, the field in that 
section where our lot was cast, though there were a few baptists "elect and 
precious."  In 1838, Rev. William Y. Allen, a presbyterian minister, was residing in 
Houston and extended his labors over all that part of the coast-country.  Rev. Hugh 
Wilson, then universally called "Father Wilson" by church members was in 
Washington County, and Rev. J.P. Blair, a trusty Indian-fighter in the late raid -- 
who, as he drew a bead on their bodies invoked the mercy of God on their souls -- 
was at  Victoria.  In 1840, the distinguished evangelist and revivalist of the 
Southwest, Rev. Daniel Baker, visited Brazoria County and held many meetings, 
charming the most godless by his magic eloquence in the pulpit and the gracious 
words of his brilliant social converse.  The leading lawyers and politicians were 
impressed by him the youth enthused.  His first stop in Brazoria County was at the 
county-seat during a term of the Superior Court.  He got his bed and board in 
Charlie Leonard's tavern.  There was but one tavern in town, and judge, jurors, 
lawyers, parties and witnesses, met at one common table, and at night slept in one 
large, common room and in one small adjacent room separated from the other by 
only a single board partition -- a few on beds, but most on pallets laid on the floor.  
The clergyman and the judge were given the best beds in the little room; the other 
beds were yielded with courteous respect to the elder of the other lodgers.  One of 
the lodgers was the distinguished "Three-Legged Willie" who could not walk without 
the wooden leg which he strapped to the disabled one.  He was then in his mature 
prime, greatly admired and loved.  He was somewhat given to conviviality, and was 
wont to relieve his labors in the temple of justice by refreshments at the shrine of 
Bacchus.  During that term of court it had been his habit to stump his way, last of 
all, to his bed near the door in the little room, unbuckle his timber as he called it, 
place it handy by jim, take not a very long, but a very loud, nap; wake, put on his 
timber, and get a drink of water.  The night that Dr. Baker lodged there, "the boys" 
had conspired to play a practical joke on lawyer Willie by removing his wooden leg 
while he slept.  According to his custom, he woke very dry, assumed a sitting 
posture on his pallet, felt for the needed help, and of course failed to find it.  
Thinking someone had thoughtlessly moved it, he inquired if any one had.  
Receiving no response but the heavy respiration of some in the other room, he 
saw, but did not enjoy, the joke, and invoked maledictions in a strain that taxed the 
English tongue, sustained until it exhausted the speaker, who dropping back into a 
recumbent position, exclaimed in the accents of prayer, "The Lord have mercy on 
my soul."  "Amen," said Dr. Baker, in the voice of Pitt whose tones in the utterance 
of the single word "Sugar" on a memorable occasion was resistless.  The Doctor's 
large "Amen" was a full sermon, the force of which was widely and long felt in that 
part of Texas.  Thrown in close company with another distinguished man, who 
unconsciously garnished and tarnished all his talk with profane expletives, by which 
he meant no more than some preachers do by their prayers, Dr. Baker in a proper 
manner remonstrated more than once, but the habit seemed to be inveterate, and 
use of a compound expletive of his own -- "Pot-hooks and hangers."  He was an 
actor and an artists as well as an orator and great preacher of righteousness, and 
he travestied his companion's profanity with such grace that his role escaped the 
other's observation for a time, but with a growing force that soon made itself felt, 
and pricked the statesman's temper into the expression, "Dr. Baker, what in the 
devil do you mean by the constant reiteration of your phrase "Pot-hooks and 
hangers?"  "Only to emphasize and ornament my speech by expletives, no more 
meaningless and far more innocent, than yours."

	On June 13, 1840, Mr. Allen organized a presbyterian church at Columbia.  
My father then united with that church. Dr. James Wilson Copes was elected and 
ordained ruling elder and installed the first elder in that organization.  I was then in 
Gonzales.  In November, 1841, a meeting of the congregation was held to elect an 
additional elder.  I was present at that meeting, and remember distinctly the 
impression the proceedings made on me.  When the meeting was organized, and 
the moderator having stated its object called for nominations, the elder, Dr. Copes, 
arose, and standing erect with his arms folded across his breast, said: "Mr. 
Chairman, I nominate Mr. Joseph Manson McCormick for election to the office of 
ruling elder."  No other nomination was made; the election was unanimous.  In due 
time he was ordained and installed.  In 1845, Dr. Copes, the senior elder, removed 
his residence to Houston, taking his letter from the Columbia church, and my father 
thus became its senior elder, in which capacity he acted until his death.  He 
frequently represented the Columbia church in Presbytery and Synod, and went 
once as a delegate from his presbytery to the General Assembly.  He held morning 
and evening prayers regularly in his family.  He was a sturdy puritan of the best 
type, with nothing fanatical or repulsive in his puritanism.  Prayer with him was 
worship.

	In 1841, Mrs. Milburn, who owned and resided on the plantation on the east 
bank of the Brazos, just opposite Columbia, employed a son of Dr. Daniel Baker to 
teach a school at her house.  She was then a widow the second time, and had six 
children, the oldest nearly grown and the youngest quite small, but all were pupils 
in the school.  She was a daughter of Brit Bailey, from whom Bailey's Prairie got its 
name.  He had been a frontiersman all of his life, and a law unto himself.  He had 
grown rich, and had several very handsome daughters.  His resolution and his 
eccentricities were the theme of much of the current talk in my boyhood years.  
Awake or asleep, he never suffered himself to get beyond arm's-length from his 
rifle.  It was his clinching argument in any issue that arose between him and 
anyone.  He provided in his will that when he died his body should be dressed in 
his hunter's suit, armed cap-a-pie with powder-horn, bullet-pouch, hack knife, 
tomahawk and rifle, and interred standing erect.  His will in this was obeyed.  Mrs. 
Milburn consented to take me to board in her family and attend school.  I went there 
and remained as long as Dr. Baker taught.

	In 1842, Rev. John McCollough, then pastor of the Columbia church, opened 
a school in Columbia, now begging to be called West Columbia.  His church had 
purchased and was using for public worship one of the Capitol buildings -- the one 
in which the House of Representatives had held its sessions when Columbia was 
the seat of government.  In that house, Mr. McCollough's school was taught, and a 
school, under different teachers, was maintained there, with short intermissions, 
until the summer of 1845.  To this school, in the spring of 1842, my parents sent 
their three children.  Only three children, one son and two daughters were born to 
them.  At this time I was nine, and my youngest sister four years of age.  We 
boarded at our aunt's, Mrs. Bell, and saw our parents either at our boarding home 
or at their house once a week.  In the fall of this year my youngest sister died.  In 
1845 the school was moved to East Columbia, and my sister and I boarded there 
the day that Annexation was completed, February 16, 1846.  I remember having 
assisted in the evening of that day to illuminate the little town.  

	After this school closed, in the summer of 1846, I did not again attend school 
in Brazoria County.  In the fall of that year I was sent to Washington County to a 
school conducted by Rev. Lindsay P. Rucher and Mr. John Sayles (the 
distinguished law write, General John Sayles, recently deceased, late of Abilene, 
Texas).  The distance from my father's house was over one hundred miles.  I was 
given a good saddle mule, one wallet with my books and clothes in it, and another 
with enough lunch for the noon meals for three days, and started.  Mr. Perry 
Alsberry, who was starting to the army to serve as interpreter, went in company 
with me as far as Cat Springs, in Austin County.  The second night, we put up  at 
the hotel in the town of San Felipe, which was the first, and I believe the only, time I 
ever saw that capital town.  It had long since ceased to be the capital of Austin's 
Colony; it soon after my visit ceased to be the capital of Austin County.  I remained 
at Mr. Rucher's school until the close of the year 1847, going home, however, for 
the long vacations.  In 1848, I received -- at home -- private instruction in Latin and 
Greek languages from Rev. Mr. Hunter, then pastor of the Columbia church.  My 
sister during these years, from the summer of 1846 to the summer of 1849, 
received instruction in private schools in the families of more wealthy parents who 
were able to secure good private teachers for their daughters, and were willing to 
take my sister as a board and contributing pupil.  In the early part of 1849, a Mr. 
Alexander was teaching school in Washington County, in the neighborhood that is 
now called Gay Hill.  Rev. Hugh Wilson (Father Wilson, a son of Rev. Lewis 
Feuilleteau Wilson, see page 18, supra) lived in that neighborhood, and 
recommended the teacher.  I was put to school there the first of April, boarding in 
Mr. Wilson's family.  By this time my parents had set up their carriage, and they 
took me in it to Mr. Wilson's house.  At this school I began to study.  Mr. Alexander 
had the gift of teaching -- that is, for having pupils study and learn.   His instruction 
was like the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven; it was not with observation, it was 
within the pupil.

	For several years, efforts had been making to run light-draft steamboats from 
Belasco to Washington, on the Brazos, and in the fall of 1849, the steamers 
"Washington", "Brazos" and "Elite" were making successful and reasonably regular 
trips between these points.  The town of Washington revived rapidly, and a good 
female school was established there, of which Mrs. Limber was the principal 
teacher.  In September Major Cayce came in his family carriage, bringing his 
daughter, Miss Sophronia, and my sister to Mrs. Limber's school.  At the Christmas 
holidays my parents visited their son at Mr. Wilson's, and, taking him and one of 
Mr. Wilson's daughters with them, went to Washington to visit their daughter.  She 
was boarding in the family of Major Cartmel, who was a gentleman of dignified and 
courteous manners.  I was then a wellgrown lad just entering my eighteenth year, 
and Major Cartmel, who had not met either my father or me before this, addressed 
each of us as "Mr. McCormick."  In the dining-room we were seated side by side at 
the table.  Mr. Cartmel did the honors at one end of the table, with my father 
immediately on the Major's left, and I next to my father.  In offering to help each the 
host would ask if "Mr. McCormick" would be helped to this or that.  After my father 
had responded several times, when the inquiry was addressed tome, that annoying 
mistake occurred again and he explained with animated emphasis, "I answer to the 
name of Mr. McCormick," adding as he turned the thumb of his left hand towards 
me, "We call this boy Andrew."

	In the following spring, Mr. Alexander, having prepared himself by private 
study for entering the legal profession, quit teaching school, as Mr. Sayles had 
done three years earlier, and became a practicing lawyer.  Early in March my sister 
and I took passage on the steamboat "Brazos" at the town of Washington, and 
were carried to Columbia, which was the first steamboat travel we had enjoyed 
since our "Runaway Scrape" voyage to and from Galveston on the "Yellowstone" in 
1836, of which neither of us retained any recollection.  The day after we got home, I 
observed my father was engaged in making a new handle for a hoe, out of suitable 
seasoned timber which he kept always on hand, and that when he had completed it 
he adjusted and securely fastened it in a new one of the old-fashioned weeding 
hoes made with a heavy eye to receive the handle, like a pick, and with a blade that 
measured twelve inches on the edge.  It was in the press of cotton-scraping 
season.  The men, except Sampson, were all engaged giving the corn a close, 
deep ploughing.  Sampson was leading his hoe gang to quick music, scraping 
cotton.  My suspicions were aroused, but I said nothing.  After evening family 
worship, as the family were taking leave of each other to retire, my father said, 
"Andrew, you have not done any field-work for a year past; you are going away to 
college in a couple of months, and may not be at home again until you are over 
twenty-one years old.  Today I have fixed a good new hoe which I want you to take 
in the morning and go with Sampson's squad and do a man's work scraping 
cotton."  There was a pause, but no reply was in order except the cheerful assent.  
In the morning I went and did "a man's work" during all of the forenoon.  At the 
noon recess, which at dinner, I was attacked with a speel of bleeding at the nose, 
which was with much difficulty arrested.  I returned to my hoe work, which was kept 
well up the rest of the day, although interrupted with a return of the bleeding at the 
nose.  The next day the work continued, and the hemorrhages became more 
frequent and severe.  On the morning of the third day, when I had come in from my 
work to the house to breakfast (for we went out at dawn), and, having finished that 
meal within the regulation twenty minutes, rose from the table to return to my place 
in the field, my father said, "My son, I think you had best not work any more to-day."  
Before noon my whole body was blooming with red measles.  On the steamboat I 
had occupied a berth just above a young man in the fever-stage with measles.  I 
was confined to my room only a few days, but after a speel of that kind, should a 
spring shower of rain catch me in the field, it might produce a state like that of the 
man who had recovered from being possessed of any evil spirit, whose misconduct 
invited a troop of evil spirits, with the well known fearful result.  I did not scrape 
cotton after that or do other field work before starting for college.  I was to go in 
June.  All the needed preparations were made and the day of my departure was at 
hand.  The steamboat "Ogden," Captain Webb master, was making weekly trips 
betweens Galveston and Columbia, sometimes going further up the river.  The boat 
was to leave Columbia at 6 A.M. the day I was to go.  We lived seven miles away 
and must make an early start to get to the boat by that hour.  The weather was fine 
and we slept with open doors.  The moon had gone down, day dawn had not yet 
come, when my father brought a lighted candle to my room, waked me and said:  
"It is time to get up."  I arose and dressed quickly.  The only door to my room 
opened on a narrow porch, on which the front door to our sitting-room (we had no 
parlor) also opened.  When I stepped our of my room, my father was sitting on the 
narrow porch, between the door of the sitting-room and the door of my room.  I 
drew a chair out of my room and seated myself near him.  We were both a little 
solemn and were silent for some minutes.  My father spoke first, and his words 
were:  "My son, you are going to state that has been long settled, where you will be 
thrown with many young men who have been reared and enjoyed the best social 
advantages in communities that have been long settled, and they will be apt to twit 
you on your looks, but don't you mind it."  No advice he ever gave me was more 
timely or bore good fruit more abundantly.

	That year, Rev. John McCollough, aided by his sisters -- veteran teachers of 
eminence, trained by active serve in Philadelphia -- established a high-grade 
female school in Galveston, to which my sister went in the fall.  We returned home 
to spend our summer vacations in 1851 and 1852, and during July and August of 
each of those years we had full holiday at our father's house.  In 1853, my parents, 
with their only daughter, visited Kentucky, as mentioned in a preceding chapter.  
The daughter entered the senior class in Dr. Stuart's school in Shelbyville.  We 
graduated in June, 1854, and coming home together were welcomed there the 
12th day of July.  Our parent's work in giving their children a school education was 
finished.  Within two months the son received the portion of goods coming to him, 
and went to the county seat town to enter the office of James H. Bell and prepare 
for practicing the legal profession.  Within two years the daughter married Abner S. 
Lathrop, Esqr., a lawyer, who was a member of the Brazoria bar, and she came to 
that town to be one of the heads of her own family and preside in her own home.  
Her only brother boarded with her; and the children as guests at their childhood 
home, and the parents as guests at their daughter's house, brought the family more 
together than it had been for fifteen years.  On San Jacinto day in 1859 my sister 
died.  A month later, her only child died, and I was left the sole surviving 
descendant of our parents.  In the fall of that year, this sole surviving child married.  
The grandchildren came on apace.  The firstborn, a son, was given his grandfather 
McCormick's full name.  The lawyer was now in full practice, and besides his 
ordinary work as an attorney and counsellor at law, was sole executor of Charles 
Keller Reese's estate, testamentary guardian of his seven full-orphaned children, 
and, as such, the legal owner in trust, and charged with the management of an 
active plantation.  His parents were more frequently the guests.  Every alternate 
Saturday, the carriage came with "Grandpa" and "Grandma" and always loaded 
with commissary stores the product of the farm.  No such butter, poultry, or fresh 
products of the garden (according to the season) ever came to that lawyer's home 
then or since from any other source.  The namesake grandson, as soon as he 
could walk, went with them on every alternate visit to revive in their home the 
memories of their early married life, and to recall to their recollection the image of 
his father at his age.  

	Five generations in the direct line of my father's blood had been born in the 
South, and still lived or slept on or in her soil.  His ancestors of European birth had 
resisted Philip in the Low Countries, Charles and James in Scotland and Ireland, 
and George the Third in North Carolina.  He had been in Texas in time to see and 
feel the first impulse of the tide of resistance to Mexico, at Velasco, in 1832.  He 
had helped to form the topmost crest of that flood of resistance in the campaign of 
1836.  He was in the charge on San Jacinto's field.  The Southern heart had now 
been fully fired.  A nation had been born in a day.  Her flag was the emblem of 
supreme authority throughout a large and fruitful land in which his lot was cast -- 
the land of his love, his native land.  Her armies were much in evidence of her 
power and their prowess from Bull Run to Bowling Green.  Those who had been his 
fellow-citizens, but who in fact were not then his countrymen, now pressed his 
country sore.  His heart went out in Lee's classic words, "We must keep these 
people back."  Fort Donaldson, Shiloh Island Number 10, the passage of the forts 
on the lower River, and the consequent occupation of New Orleans, were not 
encouraging.  But the bulletins from Richmond and the Army of Virginia more than 
balanced the account, until the day at Gettysburg, coincident with the fall of 
Vicksburg, crushed all hope of full success.  Even then, honor was not lost -- was 
never lost -- and the wage for honorable terms went stoutly on.  The earth was 
never more fruitful than in Texas in 1863.  The channel of export and import traffic 
through Brownsville, on the lower Rio Grande, was closed that winter, but that 
through Eagle Pass and the upper ports was kept secure, and cotton went out, and 
supplies of goods and specie flowed in abundantly.  Immense areas in North Texas 
had been converted into wheat fields, yielding from twenty-five to forty bushels to 
the acre.  Many flouring mills, and a few cotton mills and woolen mills, were in 
active operation, diversifying industry.  In the lower Brazos and Colorado country, 
gold and silver were coming back into circulation, cotton was beginning to bring a 
higher price in specie than it had touched before the war.  Large numbers of 
experienced and enterprising men with much substance pressed by the stress in 
other states, had come, and were continuing to come, into Texas, opening new 
farms and organizing new industries.  The war had not hurt Texas.  The would-be 
invaders had been repulsed by Dick Dowling's guns at Sabine Pass; they had been 
met beyond the border and hurled back at Mansfield.  General Grant, taking all 
summer to fight it out on his line, was no nearer Richmond at the close of 1864 
than McClellan had been three years earlier.  The true condition of the Confederate 
Camp was a Cabinet secret.  The heroic chief maintained his attitude of resolute 
insistence that his nation's being must be acknowledged.  The great lieutenant 
acted his part to the admiration of the world and of all coming ages.

	On the McCormick plantation the crops of 1864 had been fully harvested, the 
surplus sold, and the needed supply garnered by the first of December.  
Preparation of the land for receiving the seed to be planted in the coming season 
began at once, and was well forwarded by the 20th day of January, 1865 -- 
noticeably in advance, as was and had long been customary on that plantation, of 
the like preparation on other fields in that neighborhood of pushing planters.  On 
January 21, about 9 A.M., I was on horseback in the fields of the Reese plantation, 
twenty miles from my father's, directing the work, when I observed the colored man, 
Joe -- Prince's assistant on the McCormick place -- mounted on my father's fine 
stallion, Saladin, riding towards me.  He bore a note from Rev. W.C. Sommerville, 
pastor of the Columbia church, saying that my father was seriously ill; that the 
writer of the note and the family physician were with him, and the doctor thought his 
symptoms were not necessarily fatal and there was ground to hope they might be 
speedily relieved, but suggested that it was best that I should be advised of the 
situation.  I went at once, arriving at the bedside by noon.  When he told that I was 
there, my father roused, opened his eyes, recognized me, said, "I am very sick," 
closed his eyes and never spoke again.  With the fading light of that day he passed 
away.  His body been growing feebler for several years.  He had duly considered 
his latter end and was not taken by surprise, but his indomitable mind and spirit had 
so animated his failing flesh that only he was aware of the nearness of the end.  
Happy in the instant of his death.  He had known that the war was near its close; 
that the cup of blood had been drained -- but he had no foretaste of its bitter dregs.

	In 1846, a young gentleman who had recently married a handsome young 
woman raised on the Bernard, near by father's house, had acquired possession of, 
and was residing on, the Milburn place -- just across the Brazos River from 
Columbia.  He was fond of sport and quite convivial in his taste.  There was at that 
time no place in Columbia where drinks were decocted and sold, and this 
gentleman for his own refreshment, and to help him entertain his companions, 
imported a saloon artist and a stock of suitable goods, and had opened the lacking 
resort.  One day in the spring, he, with the assistance of three or four others, all 
mounted, brought in from the Bernard a bunch of cattle, the property of his wife, 
and attempted to have them swim across the Brazos to his home.  The cattle were 
unwilling to take the river, ginned around at the top of the shute leading down the 
bank, and first one and then another would break from the herd and have to be 
rounded to and brought back by the mounted men.  Soon a few passers on the 
street, and the nearer of the merchants with their clerks, gathered to aid, on foot, 
the holding and urging forward of the now excited herd.  Gradually all the men of 
the little village gathered to help the work and enjoy the fun.  The small boy was 
there -- and I with him.  While this play held the boards my father rode up from his 
farm, hitched his horse in front of the store where he chiefly traded, looked in, and 
finding no one there, turned to the group not far away, and joined it.  I soon saw 
him and got by his side.  In a little while after this the leaders of the herd gave up 
and took the river; the others followed; men in row-boats guided their course 
through the stream to the prepared landing on the other side.  The mounted men, 
and most of the volunteers, watched the movement until the last one of the cattle 
was safely landed on the firm bank, and then the owner of the herd and of the only 
saloon in town said, "Gentlemen, I thank you; come all, and drink with me."  All 
started that way, for their places of business were in the same direction.  My father 
and I lingered a little in the rear, which the gentleman observed, and riding back 
said, "Mr. McCormick, I believe you do not drink?"  "No, sir; that is, not very often."  
"Won't you join us now?"  "If you will excuse me, I would prefer not to drink this 
evening."  The gentleman, with a pleasant smile, word and wave of the hand, 
parted with us and led his guests to the saloon.  I had never seen my father take 
strong drink, nor taste wine except from the sacramental cup as the Holy 
Communion was being administered, and I said, "Why, Pa, you answer Mr. 
W_____ as though you did sometimes drink."  He replied, "The invitation was 
extended as a courtesy and in a courteous manner; and though Mr. W_______ 
doubtless thought, as his words implied, that I would decline it, I was as much 
bound to answer him courteously as I was to decline drinking with him."

	In 1849 a company left Columbia to go overland to California, and one of the 
company was a mechanic who had recently done a considerable job of work on my 
father's house.  The mechanic was in a debt a small amount to Mr. Edward H. Hall, 
and had broke frequent promises to pay, and left without paying, doubtless needing 
what money he had for the outfit and expenses of his trip, and expected to gather 
up gold in California and send back to satisfy his importunate creditor.  He had 
made a parting plea and promise of this kind, but Mr. Hall was not satisfied, and on 
one occasion in a public place denounced his departed debtor in such unmeasured 
terms that Mr. Ammon Underwood, then and long after until his death one of the 
leading merchants and citizens in that part of Texas, remonstrated with Mr. Hall 
and said, "There must be some good in the man, for I have heard Mr. McCormick 
speak well of him."  "Of whom did you ever hear Mr. McCormick speak ill?"  was 
the sharp retort.  A few years later, Mr. Hall died at my father's house, and on the 
evening of the 21st day of January, 1865, Mr. Ammon Underwood stood by me at 
the bedside and saw my father breathe his last.

	In 1864 there was a vacancy in a county office to be filled by election; only 
two candidates were contesting for it, and in the success of one of them I felt a 
deep interest, on account of my relations to the office and this candidates's known 
superior skill in doing the work incumbent on the officer, and not on account of any 
tie of personal friendship.  As the law then was, electors could vote in any precinct 
in the county for county officers, and I was so much enlisted for the more 
competent candidate that I went to Columbia to represent him at the polls.  When 
the voting had progressed a few hours, and the electors were gathered in groups 
about the judges who were receiving the ballots, my father arrived.  I had not 
ventured to do more with him than let him know my choice.  I handed him a ticket 
with both names on it, and a pencil to strike the one he did not support, and was 
much surprised to see -- what, evidently, he wished all present who desired, to see 
-- that he struck off the name of the man of my choice.  Then I plucked up boldness 
to rehearse the merits of my favorite.  He heard me through, and then pointed to 
the name he had left on the paper ballot, said, "I do not know that this is not an 
honest man."  This same year, 1864, he was in Houston, when it was whispered on 
the streets that certain persons, soldiers who had been captured on Red River and 
brought to Houston, were being inhumanly neglected.  He expressed himself to 
warmly, and was making such open, pointed and persistent inquiries about it, that 
Rev. Dr. H_____, who lived in Houston and who had known my father many years, 
hearing his remarks and inquiries cautioned him that the times were feverish, that 
every one was watched and his words taken hold of, and the most prudent men 
were silent.  Then my father flamed up, went direct to the local powers, demanded, 
and obtained, leave to see the destitute, and ministered to their needs.

	Six or eight years after my father's death, I was appointed judge of the State 
courts to be held in the district which included Brazoria County.  On the first day of 
each term of the District Court -- the court of highest original jurisdiction in the State 
-- grand and petit juries were to be organized and charged, the State docket set, 
and the civil docket sounded for orders of course, and setting of litigated cases.  
The lawyers and yeomen were always present in great force on that day, and 
thronged the court room, which was a large one, and the area in front of the 
entrances to the building.  On one such occasion I had empaneled and charged the 
grand jury, organized two petit juries, set the criminal docket, sounded the civil 
docket, and announced a recess of the court; the throng remained standing, stirring 
about exchanging salutations, counsel or gossip.  I left the judge's stand, became a 
part of the crowd, and was moving towards the exit, saluting right and left, when I 
met Mr. John Sweeney.  He had not seen me since my promotion until that day.  
He greeted me warmly; was glad to see me, was gratified at my having been 
appointed, approved of my manner of executing the office, and expressed all of this 
so fully and audibly that, bearing my blushing honors, I was endeavoring to pass 
on, which he observed, and said more audibly, "Andrew, you are a clever fellow, 
but you will never make as good a man as your father."

	"Mark the perfect man, and behold the upright, for the end of that man is 
peace."