Celia Hayes – The Accidental Texan

A stern and unvarnished accounting of the bare facts of the encounter known as the Battle of Gonzales, or the “Come and Take it Fight” would make the proceedings rather more resemble a movie farce than a battle. But almost at once, that encounter on the banks of the Guadalupe River was acknowledged by those involved and historians ever since, as the Lexington moment in the Texas War for Independence.  In brief – late in the fall of 1835, a party of about a hundred Mexican soldiers from the military presidio in San Antonio de Bexar attempted to repossess one small 6-pound iron (or possibly bronze) cannon from the civil authorities in Gonzales. It was the second request; the original one had been backed by only five soldiers and a corporal. The cannon was old, had been spiked and was generally useless for making anything other than a loud noise. It had been issued to Green DeWitt’s colonists out of the military arsenal some five years previously, when the American settlers on Green DeWitt’s impresario grant feared Indian raiders, and the Mexican authorities did not have such a high degree of apprehension over what those obstreperous Americans were getting up to.

The Anglo-Texian residents of Gonzales first stalled the request for the cannon’s return, suspecting that the true motive behind the request was an attempt to disarm, or at least intimidate them. They appealed to higher authorities on both sides, asked for an explanation, finally refused to turn it over, and sent to the other Anglo settlements in Texas for aid in making their refusal stick. They hid all the boats on the river on their side, baffling the Mexican commander, one Lt. Francisco de Castaneda – for the Guadalupe was swift and deep at that point. He struck north along the riverbank, looking for a shallower place where he and his force could cross – but in the meantime, companies of volunteers from other Anglo-Texian settlements had been pouring into Gonzales – from Mina (now Bastrop) from Beeson’s Crossing, from La Grange, Lavaca and elsewhere. There were well over a hundred and fifty, all of whom had dropped whatever they were doing, as farmers, stockmen, merchants and craftsmen – and hurried to the westernmost of the Anglo settlements.

That they arrived so speedily and with such resolve was of significant note, although their eventual encounter with Castaneda’s soldiers was somewhat anticlimactic. The two forces more or less blundered into each other in morning fog, in a watermelon field. One of the Texian’s horses panicked and threw it’s rider when the soldiers fired a volley in their general direction. The rider suffered a bloody nose – this was the only Texian casualty of the day. A parley was called for, held between Castaneda and the Texian leader, John Moore, of present-day La Grange (who had been elected by the men of his force, as was the custom – a custom which remained in effect in local militia units all the way up to the Civil War). The lieutenant explained that he was a Federalista, actually in sympathy with the Texians – to which John Moore responded that he ought to surrender immediately and come over to the side which was valiantly fighting against a dictatorial Centralist government. The Lieutenant replied that he was a soldier and must follow orders to retrieve the cannon. Whereupon John Moore waved his hand towards the little cannon, which had been repaired and mounted on a makeshift carriage. There was also a brave home-made banner flying in the morning breeze, a banner made from the skirt of a silk dress. John Moore’s words echoed those on the banner, “There it is on the field,” he said, “Then come and take it.” At his word, the scratch artillery crew, which included blacksmith Almaron Dickenson (who within six months would be the commander of artillery in the doomed Alamo garrison), fired a mixed load of scrap iron in the general direction of Castaneda’s troops. Honor being satisfied, Lt. Castenada retired, all the way back to San Antonio, doubtless already writing up his official report.

No, they won’t give the damned thing back, they’ve fixed it, and they’re bloody pissed off and demonstrated that with vigor. I have the honor to be yr devoted servant, Lt. F. Castaneda, and no, don’t even think of sending me out to truck with these bloody Americans again – they are really pissed off, they have guns and there are more of them than us!

So, yes – pretty much an anticlimax. The Texians had nerved themselves up for a bloody fight, and in six months they would get it. But why the “Come and Take It Fight” got to have the considerable press that it has in the history books – the history books in Texas, anyway – it’s a bit more complicated than the bald narrative of a couple of days in the fall of 1835 on the banks of the lower Guadalupe River might indicate.

 

Strange but true – General Lopez de Santa Anna’s invasion of Texas in 1836 was not to be the last time that a Mexican Army crossed the border into Texas in full battle array – artillery, infantry, military band and all. Santa Anna may have been defeated at San Jacinto – but for the Napoleon of the west, that was only a temporary setback. In March of 1842 a brief raid by General Rafael Vasquez and some 400 soldiers made a lightening-fast dash over the Rio Grande, while another 150 soldiers struck at Goliad and Refugio. They met little resistance – and departed at speed before Texan forces could assemble and retaliate. All seemed to have quieted down by late summer, though: Texas had ratified a treaty with England, and the United States requesting that Texas suspend all hostilities with Mexico.

It seemed a good time to get on with urgent civic business, such as the meeting of the District Court in San Antonio. There had not been the opportunity to try civil cases for many years; the town was full of visitors who had come for the court session: officials, lawyers and litigants. Court opened on September 5th – but within days rumors were flying of another Mexican incursion. Such rumors were cheerfully dismissed – not soldiers, just bandits and marauders. Just in case, though, local surveyor John Coffee Hays – who already had a peerless reputation as a ranger and Indian fighter – was sent out to scout with five of his men. They saw nothing, having stayed on the established roads; unknown to them, one of Santa Anna’s favorite generals, a French soldier of fortune named Adrian Woll was approaching through the deserted country to the west of San Antonio, with a column of more than 1,500 soldiers – as well as a considerable assortment of cannon.

Under cover of a dense fog bank on the morning of September 11th, Woll’s army marched into San Antonio, with banners flying and a band playing. Having blocked off all escape routes, the General had a cannon fired to announce his presence. There was some sharp, but futile resistance, before surrender was negotiated. General Woll announced that he would have to take all Anglo-Texian men in San Antonio as prisoners of war; this included the judge, district attorney, assistant district attorney, court clerk, court interpreter, every member of the San Antonio Bar save one, and a handful of litigants and residents, to a total of fifty-five. They were kept prisoner – after five days they were told they must walk all the way to the Rio Grande, but they would then be released. Sometime during this period, the then-Mayor of San Antonio, John William Smith, managed to escape and send word of what had happened to the nearest town, Gonzales.

John Coffee Hays and his scouts had also managed to elude capture upon their return to town. The word went out across Texas for volunteers to assemble; two hundred came quickly from Gonzales and Seguin, led by Mathew “Old Paint” Caldwell, and fought a sharp skirmish on Salado Creek. A company of 53 volunteers recruited by Nicolas Mosby Dawson in LaGrange or along the road to join Caldwell’s volunteers along the Salado Creek north of San Antonio, ran into the rear-guard of Woll’s army, a large contingent of cavalry and a single cannon as they were withdrawing to San Antonio. Dawson’s company was surrounded; in the confusion of surrendering, firing broke out again. Only fifteen of Dawson’s company survived, to join with the San Antonio prisoners on their long walk towards the Rio Grande.

Once there the prisoners were informed that they would be taken into Mexico. Some were paroled and permitted to leave as a personal favor to the US Consul in Mexico City. Others escaped, but most of the San Antonio prisoners were kept for two years at hard labor in Perote Prison, in the state of Vera Cruz, until an armistice was signed between Mexico and Texas in March of 1844.

The site of the Dawson Massacre is marked by a granite monument, where the present-day Austin Highway crosses Salado Creek. The first case to be heard at that momentous court session was never settled; Dr. Shields Booker brought suit against the former mayor of San Antonio, Juan Seguin, for a payment of a 50-peso fee. Dr. Booker died in Perote Prison. The lawyer representing him, Samuel Maverick, was paroled after six months in Perote, and returned to Texas.

(This incident will feature in the book currently being written – as the man who will become my heroine’s second husband is one of those taken prisoner to Mexico. “Daughter of Texas”, the story of her first marriage and her various experiences during the Texas War for Independence will be released April 21, 2011 – although I am taking advance orders here, for delivery the week before.)

 

The Adelsverein Trilogy Walking Tour of Fredericksburg

It has been suggested by readers and fans, that I ought to outline some kind of walking tour of Fredericksburg, Texas – the location where much of the Adelsverein Trilogy took place. Because the story encompassed those founding and early days of Fredericksburg, the lives of real people, and because I had done so much research and because it is really quite a small place, and even smaller during those early years and I have a bug about visualizing places and rooms as they exist even if only in my imagination   . . .  I took some care in incorporating the fictional homes of the Steinmetz and Richter places into the existing fabric of Fredericksburg, and working out where they would have been, what streets they were on, where they were in relation to other landmarks, which direction the windows would have looked out to – and what my characters might have seen, looking out. Readers have asked me where exactly are these places are today, in relationship to Main Street and other easily identifiable landmarks. A few exist still, but not many in the same form as they did in the 1840s – and of them, which did I use to build my mental image of Fredericksburg? Herewith – some answers, all of them within a few blocks of Main Street – which would have been called San Saba Street, or Hauptstrasse in the early days.

Fredericksburg was laid out on a stretch of slightly higher land between two creeks: Baron’s Creek and Town Creek, a narrow town of three or four long streets roughly parallel to the creeks, and a number of cross streets. The center of town is still called the Marketplatz, or Market Square. The center of Market Square, which remained open for several decades, was dominated by the Vereinskirche, or Society Church.

The original Vereinskirche was slap in the middle of Main Street then – the present building is a reconstruction, and moved into it’s present location in the center of that half of Market Square to the north-east of Main Street. Other civic buildings – county courthouse, library, police department take up the half of the old Market Square to the south-west, between Adams and Crockett Streets.

There is an excellent and very detailed map available through the Fredericksburg Visitor Center, or at many local merchants on Main Street, or you might call up a map through electronic means: in any case, the tour begins at the corner of Main (290) and Washington (87). Very likely you would have come in to Fredericksburg on either of those routes.

#1 – The Nimitz Hotel is the most prominent landmark at that intersection: it began very humbly in the 1850s: an adobe house of four rooms, which an enterprising young clerk bought and made into a hotel. It was the center of social life all throughout the rest of the century.

“Where were you dreaming of building your hotel?” Magda asked.

“Main Street, of course; this is the place I was thinking of, on the corner. I look at it every day from the front of the commissary.”

They had nearly reached the Verein compound, where Magazine Street intersected with Main, and the town-lots had been distributed to the first settlers.

“I’d buy this one first with the house on it, and the one next to it when I could afford it,” Charley looked thoughtful. Magda said, “It looks rather small, for a hotel.”

“Four rooms. I’d build on, of course. It’ll be a lot of work.”

(From Book One – The Gathering)

#2 – Catty-cornered from the Nimitz Hotel is a Subway Sandwich shop – the site of the original blockhouse, constructed by the surveyor’s party who first came to Fredericksburg at the direction of John Meusebach to plot out the streets. They cached some necessary tools nearby, burying them in the ground. The current owners of the land have found some traces of at least one pit and hope to have a proper archeological dig The first  settlers to arrive in Fredericksburg camped at the blockhouse, upon their arrival from New Braunfels in 1846.

The sun had begun to sink low in the afternoon sky, that time where everything was touched with gold, when they forded a small creek and came at last into a vast grove of great oak trees. Bars of sunlight slid between the branches overhead, gilding the edges of the new green leaves, and scattering spots of themselves like golden coins in the leaf-mast at their feet in those places were there was not a thick undergrowth of brush. Huge tangles of wild grapevines festooned the lower branches, already hung with dusty green bunches of grapes.

In the very middle of this forest Mr. Bene and his advance party had made a place where those bushes had been cleared away. A half-built log blockhouse stood in a little space of trampled mud and wood-chips. Mr. Bene’s troopers were dismounting, the teams from the first wagons already unhitched

“We’re here!” Friedrich exclaimed, “Oh, Vati, it’s beautiful!”

“It’s a wilderness,” said Liesel bleakly, while Hansi looked first delighted and then puzzled, as he lifted her down from the cart. Vati beamed in frank delight.

“It is like the Black Forest! Such trees, my dears! Of such beams were the roofs of the cathedrals built … and does it not seem very like a cathedral? So hushed and dim! ”

(From Book One – The Gathering)

#3 – About half a block down Washington Street, where it runs along the outbuildings of the Nimitz Museum, there is a gate in a tall wall, which leads into what was once a stable-yard, and the bath house for hotel gusts. A huge oak tree stands by that gate. The outlaw J.P. Waldrip was shot and fell dead under this tree in 1867. The identity of his assailant is still a mystery – and perhaps there was good reason for that, as well as an unspoken agreement among the good citizens of Fredericksburg.

Charley’s hotel and outbuildings lined one entire block, between Main and Austin Streets, facing a row of small homes and shops opposite. She held Lottie’s hand tightly, all thought of a leisurely stroll down Main Street forgotten with this news. She urgently wanted to speak to Charley, to Mr. Vining, to her son, to the Sheriff – anyone! J.P. Waldrip must not be allowed to escape.  As she swept past the oak tree, her skirts rustling like a storm in a bed of reeds, she heard someone scream, and the dark figure of a man ran out of the stable-yard.

It was Charley’s daughter Bertha who screamed and screamed again as the man ran towards Magda and Lottie, “It’s him!”

Magda stood rooted to the spot; fear, shock and anger warring within her breast. Yes, her mind told her with chill precision; that was J.P. Waldrip, stumbling as his eyes darted here and there, like a trapped animal seeking escape, a fox hearing the hounds baying all around . . .

(From Book Three: The Harvesting)

#4 – The end of the block, where Washington intersects with Austin Street – presently the back end of the Japanese Peace Garden on the grounds of the Nimitz Museum –  was in the 19th Century,  the site of the stage stop. This was very conveniently located for travelers going west by stage, and wished to avail themselves of clean sheets, hot baths and good food – the best that would be available for at least a thousand miles.

Magda now sat with Anna beside her, Lottie on her lap on a bench at the back of the Nimitz Hotel, waiting for the mid-week stage to San Antonio, while Hannah played hop-scotch with herself on set of squares scratched in the dirt nearby. There were a handful of men also waiting the stage, but they respectfully tipped their hats to the women and stood a little apart. Magda did not know any of them – Americans, she supposed, as they spoke to one another in English. She cringed inwardly at the extravagant cost of such a journey, first to San Antonio, and thence to Victoria and Indianola, but Hansi had insisted that it was actually a sensible economy.

(From Book Three: The Harvesting)

#5 – If you turn to the right, and follow Austin Street, a narrow bridge covers what remains of Town Creek. After two blocks, Austin Street makes a dog-leg turn to the left, and another block brings you to the old City Cemetery, established in 1846. “Vati” Steinmetz, Rosalie and Robert Hunter, little Christian Richter, and all the others – – many of the main characters in the Trilogy would have been buried there – that is, if they were real people

She and Lottie picked armfuls of sweet wildflowers from the fields beyond Town Creek, and from the banks of the creek, to add to the little handful of new-blossoming daffodils from their own garden. They walked among the stones and monuments – so many of them there were now, so many friends! Dear Mrs. Helene, Pastor Altmueller’s wife, Liesel and Hansi’s son Christian, dead in the diphtheria epidemic in the last year of the war, and now Vati, dearest of all . . .

(From Book Three – The Harvesting)

#6 – If you turn left and walk along Austin Street, or walk back from the City Cemetery, you will pass the entrance to the public parking, and the Fredericksburg Visitor’s Center. Many of the original settlers houses along Austin Street backed on Town Creek: Pastor Altmueller’s place was one that I visualized as being among them. This house on the far side of the entrance to the public parking lot is fachwork, and not a two-pen dog-trot cabin that I described – but it is about in the right place, with a garden in front and a creek in back.

Herr Pastor Altmueller and his wife, dear Mrs. Helene had drawn a town lot on Austin Street on the bank of Town Creek, a steep-banked rivulet which set the northern border of town. With the help of his friends and parishioners, he had built a sturdy, two-room cabin with an open breezeway between.  Mrs. Helene had begun a flower garden, planting many flowering shrubs and trees around it, beds of bulbs which still came up every year and sturdy perennial herbs.  Mrs. Helene, with her refined tastes would have seen to a bigger and more comfortable house, but she had died quite suddenly in a cholera epidemic which had swept through town fifteen years before and left her husband to settle into simple bachelor ease in his two simple rooms and porch. ‘The smaller it is, the less there is to clean’ he was often fond of pointing out to Vati.

(From Book 2: The Sowing)

#7 – Walk back up Lincoln Street, past the Museum of the Pacific War, and turn to the right when you reach Main Street. Practically nothing on Main Street dates from before the Civil War – but this would have been the heart of town. Mr. Kiehne the blacksmith had his smithy established under a huge oak tree on Main Street, Mr. Muller the druggist and postmaster would have had his establishment here, the Ransleben’s general store, and Mr. Specht, who opened one of the first stores and traded freely with the Indians for meat, honey and pecans, in the very earliest days. John Hunter, the young American who came to town and married a German girl, Sophie Ahrens – his store was also there, at the corner of Main and Adams – which in the early days was called Market Street.

“They’ve burnt my store,” John Hunter said as he nudged his horse forwards. Standing still by the overlooking window, Magda gasped: John Hunter’s store was on the corner of Main and Market Street, a short way from her father’s house and workshop in Friedrichsburg. Before her marriage, she walked past it often; a long log house with many additions at the back, for John Hunter did much business with friendly Indians, and the soldiers at the fort, as well as the German settlers in the district.

(From Book Two: The Sowing)

#8 – Walking a north on Adams, and past the Beckendorf Gallery, you will come to a long, narrow building, which housed the Arlhelger’s workshop. The Arlhelger family arrived with the first wagon-train; William Arhelger took up the trade of carpentry, furniture-building – and when it was required, coffin-building.  Magda comes here, during the diphtheria epidemic in the last year of the Civil War, to ask him to build a coffin for Liesel and Hansi Richter’s young son.

He greeted Magda cheerily enough, but his face fell into unaccustomedly solemn lines when she told him of Liesel’s need.

“Sorry to hear that, Mrs. Magda, so sorry indeed! No, put away that gold piece. No need for that among old friends. Just tell Hansi to bring me some nice bits of brass and that for fittings or something, the next time he comes this way. Better yet, tell him to call on me so I can tell him the kind of thing to keep his eye open for.”

(From Book Two: The Sowing)

 

#9 – Turn around and walk south, back towards Main Street, and continue another block, past the Gillespie County Courthouse, until you reach the intersection of Adams and San Antonio Street: there is a church parish hall and a small parking lot on that corner – but this is where I sited Vati Steinmetz’s house; the fachwork house with a shop premise and a garden in back.

The house that his guide pointed out was indeed half-built: a skeleton of square beams, braces and window frames delineating where the future walls would be. It sat close to the street, like some of the houses in the older Mexican parts of Bexar. The far half was finished, the space between beams filled in and plastered over. Shutters covered the window openings, and a drift of smoke rose lazily from a chimney; it looked as though they had finished half of it far enough to move in. Carl walked towards the unfinished corner, drawn by the sound of happy voices, children laughing, and a chorus of men’s voices, raised in song. He could walk through the framework of beams, towards the yard in back of the house, where two huge post-oaks shaded what might be a pleasant and sheltered garden someday.

(From Book One: The Gathering)

#10 – Continue walking along Adams, past the Peach Tree Gallery and Tea Room, to Creek Street: Creek Street was called so, because many of the half-acre town-lots first surveyed and allotted to settlers backed on Baron’s Creek, which marked the boundary of town. Those lots were particularly prized for the rich soil and easy access to water. Hansi Richter drew a town-lot there, and built a tiny cottage, a Sunday House for his family to stay in, when they visited town. Carl and Magda spent their wedding night in this Sunday House, Anna and Marie Richter took the infant Grete and Lottie there, to prevent them being exposed, during the diphtheria epidemic. And the young bachelors; Peter Vining, Dolph Becker, Fredi Steinmetz, George and Jacob Richter all lived there, when Hansi was expanding his freighting interests after the Civil War. Turn right on Creek Street, and walk approximately a block and a half, to 201 West Creek: this is a tiny historic house, plaster over stone, with a metal roof. It was built fairly early on, for Pastor Dangers, who served for decades as the Lutheran minister. I described Hansi’s Sunday House as being built of sawn lumber, but in appearance and location, Pastor Danger’s house is a close fit.

There were lights behind the curtains of Hansi’s Sunday house, a tiny one-room cottage on the front of his town-lot. The hut where he and Liesel had first lived served as a stable now. Three horses moved restlessly in the corral next to it, and the light farm wagon which Carl had driven from his place was parked close by.  All of the things that had been thought appropriate for a new wife to take to her husband’s roof were packed in it. In the morning, they would hitch up the team and go home, over the hills to that place which she had never seen and begin that new part of her life, joined to his life. But between now and then was tonight.

(From Book One: The Gathering)

#11 – Continue walking on Creek Street, until you come to the intersection of Creek and South Orange. Turn right and walk back towards Main Street: at the corner of San Antonio Street and South Orange will be two church buildings, side by side. The older and plainer of the two is Old St. Mary’s or the Marienkirche, which was finished during the Civil War. It’s a kind of generic Gothic style church, spare and plain – no one knows who the architect who actually designed it was. It may be that the stone-masons just set to work, as a kind of committee. When Magda spent the summer of 1860 in Fredericksburg, suffering through a difficult pregnancy, she could hear them building the Marienkirche from Vati’s house.

She lay in bed and watched through the windows, at wagons full of stone passing by, to where the Catholic congregation was building a fine stone sanctuary with a tall tower in the next block, on San Antonio Street. In the mornings, she could hear the workmen calling to each other, and the ringing sound of hammers on stone. She thought that Vati might be able to see the steeple from his bedroom window – oh, dear, how that would annoy him! He still insisted that he was a freethinker, although he had always attended services with them, and the children.

(From Book Two: The Sowing)

Continue walking towards Main Street; upon reaching it, turn left: The Pioneer Museum is in the next block. Many of the objects on display there gave me an excellent idea of what the various possessions of the early settlers looked like, and what they would have had in their kitchens and parlors.

(Other key locations will be added to this article, as I work out exactly where they were, as well as significant locations not within an easy walk. Enjoy!)

A lady of certain years by the time she became moderately famous, Angelina Belle Peyton was born in the last years of the 18th century in Sumner County, Tennessee. For a decade or so Tennessee would be the far western frontier, but by the time she was twenty and newly married to her first cousin, John Peyton, the frontier had moved west. Texas beckoned like a siren – and eventually, the Peytons settled in San Felipe-on-the-Brazos, the de facto capitol of the American settlements in Texas. They would open an inn, and raise three children, before John died in 1834. She would continue running the inn in San Felipe on her own for another two years, until history intervened.

By 1835, times were changing for the Anglo-American settlers in Texas, who began to refer to themselves as Texians. Having been invited specifically to come and settle in the most distant and dangerous of Mexican territories, the authorities were at first generous and tolerant. Newly freed from the rule of Spain, Mexico had organized into a federation of states, and adopted a Constitution patterned after the U.S. Constitution. Liberal and forward-thinking Mexicans, as well as the Texian settlers confidently expected that Mexico would eventually become a nation very much resembling the United States. Unfortunately, Mexico became torn between two factions – the Centralists, top-down authoritarians, strictly conservative in the old European sense who believed in a strong central authority, ruling from Mexico City – and the Federalists, who were more classically liberal in the early 19th century sense, democratically inclined and backing a Mexico as a loose federation of states. In the mid 1830’s Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, a leading Federalist hero, suddenly reversed course upon becoming president, essentially declaring himself dictator, and voided the Constitution. Rebellion against a suddenly-Centralist authority flared up across Mexico’s northern states and territories.

The Texian settlers, who had been accustomed to minding their own affairs, also went up in flames – overnight, and as it turned out, literally. Lopez de Santa Anna, at the head of a large and professionally officered army, methodically crushed those rebels within other Mexican states and turned his attention towards Texas in the spring of 1836. After the siege and fall of certain strong-points held by Texians and eager volunteers from the United States, Sam Houston, the one man who kept his head while all around him were becoming progressively more unglued, ordered that all the Anglo-Texian settlements be abandoned. All structures should be burnt and supplies that could not be carried along be destroyed, in order to deny them to Santa Anna’s advancing army. Houston commanded a relatively tiny force; for him, safety lay in movement rather than forting up, and in luring Santa Anna’s companies farther and farther into East Texas. This was done, with savage efficiency: as Houston gathered more volunteers to his armies, families evacuated their hard-won homes. Those established towns which were the heart of Anglo Texas were burned. For a little more than a month, the civilian refugees straggled east, towards the border with the United States, and some illusory safety. It was a miserable, rainy spring. San Felipe burned, either at Houston’s order, or by pursuing Mexicans; Angelina Peyton was now a homeless widow, trudging east with her family. Just when everything turned dark and hopeless, when it seemed sure that Sam Houston would never turn and fight, that the Lone Star had gone out for good; a miracle happened. Sam Houston’s ragged, ill-trained army did turn won a smashing victory – and better yet, they captured Lopez de Santa Anna. In return for his parole, he ceded Texas to the rebels. (Lopez de Santa Anna went back on that promise, but that’s another story.)

In the aftermath of the war, Angelina Peyton took her family to Columbia on the Brazos, which would for a time be the capitol of Texas. Late in 1836, she married again, to a widower named Jacob Eberly. Within three years, she and Jacob had moved to what was supposed to be the grand new capitol of Texas – Austin, on the banks of the Colorado River, on the western edge of the line of Anglo-Texas settlement, but square in the middle of the territory claimed by the new Republic of Texas. The place had been chosen by the new President of the Republic, Mirabeau Lamar. It was a beautiful, beautiful place, set on wooded hills above the river. Angelina and Jacob opened a boarding house – the Eberly House, catering to members of the new Legislature, and to those officers of Lamar’s administration. Everyone agreed that Austin had a fine and prosperous future: within the first year of being laid out, the population had gone from a handful of families to nearly 1,000. And the Eberly House was considered very fine: even Sam Houston, upon being elected President after Lamar, preferred living there, rather than the drafty and hastily-constructed presidential mansion. Angelina, now in her early forties, seemed tireless in her devotion to her business – and her community.

But still, disaster waited around every corner over the next years: Jacob died in 1841. In the following year, war with Mexico threatened again, and Sam Houston decreed that the legislature should meet  . . . in Washington-on-the-Brazos. Not in Austin. It was too dangerous, and Houston had never been as enthusiastic about Austin as Lamar had been. Panic emptied Austin, as the population fell to around 200 souls. Government and private buildings stood empty, with leaves blowing in through empty rooms. A handful of die-hard residents carried on, hoping that when things calmed down, the Legislature would return, and meet there again. After all – the archives of the State of Texas were stored there, safely tucked up in the General Land Office Building. A committee of vigilance formed, to ensure that the records remained, after President Houston politely requested their removal to safety  . . .  in East Texas.

In the dead of night on December 29th, 1842, a party of men acting under Houston’s direction arrived, with orders to remove the archives – in secret and without shedding any blood. Unfortunately, they were rather noisy about loading the wagons. Angelina Eberly woke, looked out of a window and immediately realized what was going on. She ran outside, and fired off the six-pound cannon that the residents kept loaded with grapeshot in case of an Indian attack. The shot alerted the vigilance committee – and supposedly punched a hole in the side of the General Land Office Building. The men fled with three wagons full of documents, pursued within hours by the volunteers of the vigilance committee, who caught up with them the next day. The archives were returned – Sam Houston had specified no bloodshed; the following year, he was admonished by the Legislature for trying to relocate the capitol.

The Legislature would return to Austin in 1845 and after annexation by the United States, the state capitol would remain there. Angelina Eberly – who had fired the shot that ensured it would do so – moved her hotel business to the coast; to Indianola, the Queen City of the Gulf. She did not marry again, and ran a profitable and well-frequented hotel, until her death in 1860.

 

The Pig War was not actually an honest-to-pete real shooting war. But it did involve a pair of international powers; the Republic of Texas, and the constitutional monarchy of France. And thereby hangs the story of a neighborhood squabble between a frontier innkeeper and a gentleman-dandy named Jean Pierre Isidore Dubois de Saligny who called himself the Comte de Saligny. He was the charge d’affaires, the representative of France to the Republic of Texas, arriving from a previous assignment the French Legation in Washington D.C. He had been instrumental in recommending that France extend diplomatic recognition to the Republic of Texas, but one might be forgiven for thinking that some kind of 19th Century Peter Principle was at play  . . .  for Dubois turned out to be terribly undiplomatic.

Perhaps it was just the shock of arriving in the new capitol city of Austin, a ramble of hastily built frame shacks and log cabins scattered along a series of muddy streets along the scenic and wooded shores of the upper Colorado River; a city planned with great hopes and nothing but insane optimism to base them on. Dubois arrived with two French servants, including a chef, a very fine collection of wines, elegant furniture and household goods. Here was a man of culture and refinement, perhaps acclimated to America, but ill-unprepared for the raw crudities of the Texas frontier.

Initially, Dubois took rooms at the only hotel in town, a crude inn of roughly-finished logs owned by Richard Bullock, located at the present intersection of 6th and Capitol. In the days before cattle was king, pork was much more favored; Richard Bullock kept a herd of pigs – pigs which were allowed to roam freely, and eat what they could scavenge, along the muddy streets and in back of the frame buildings and log cabins set up to do the business of the Republic. Undaunted, Dubois, rented a small building nearby to use as an office and residence while a fine new legation was being built. He entertained in fine style – was most especially plagued by Bullock’s pigs, which constantly broke through the fence around his garden, and helped themselves to the corn intended for his horses. The pigs even broke into the house, and consumed a quantity of bedclothes and papers.

That was the last straw: Dubois instructed one of his servants to kill any pigs found on the property that he had rented, which was done. Richard Bullock, outraged, demanded payment for his loss, which was indignantly refused on the grounds of diplomatic immunity. The matter escalated when Bullock encountered Dubois’ swine-killing servant one day in the street and thrashed him. An official protest was filed, and a hearing ordered by the Texas Secretary of State – but citing international law, Dubois refused to attend or allow his servant to testify. Richard Bullock was freed on bail – and when Dubois complained bitterly to Republic authorities he was told that he could collect his passport and depart at any time.

He left in a huff, and stayed away for a year – never having had the chance to actually live in the elegant residence which he had commissioned to become the official legation; a white frame house on a hill which is presently the only remaining structure from those early days. Richard Bullock became the toast of the town, and his pigs were celebrities, for of course the story got around. The fracas also put an end to a generous loan from France, and plans to bring 8,000 French settlers to settle on Texas lands – as well as a military alliance that would allow stationing of French garrisons in Texas to protect them.

What would Texas have been like, one wonders – if Richard Bullock hadn’t let his pigs roam and the French Legate had thought to hire someone to build a better fence?