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GENEALOGICAL NOTES AND ANECDOTES

   

FROM TENNESSEE TO TEXAS:

THE DIARY OF SARAH REBECCA LUCAS MCCLELLAN

AND

THE LETTER OF WILLIAM WILSON SLOAN:

ILLUSTRATIONS BY SETH EASTMAN

   
   

In 1851, from shortly before the middle of March until 19 March, the families of Martin W. SLOAN and Samuel A. MCCLELLAN journeyed by river from Nashville, Tennessee to New Orleans, Louisiana on the steamboat Iroquois. (The family legend which says that they traveled overland from Nashville to board a vessel at Memphis is incorrect.) From New Orleans, on 5 April, the families SLOAN and MCCLELLAN took the Louisiana, a vessel powered by both steam and sail, to Galveston, Texas on a journey that lasted two days and two nights. On 8 April, from Galveston, the families SLOAN and MCCLELLAN resumed their voyage on the Louisiana which, on 9 April, passed over the sand bars at Matagorda Bay and landed at Indianola, Texas. On 13 April, they subsequently boarded a steamboat, the William Penn, at Indianola, and continued up the Guadalupe River to Victoria. After reaching Victoria and after a number of "vexatious" delays, the families SLOAN and MCCLELLAN journeyed by stagecoach up the Guadalupe Valley to Seguín, with a stop at Cuero. From Seguín, the family MCCLELLAN took a stagecoach toward LaGrange, Texas. Although Martin W. SLOAN, by the middle of 1851, had settled his family in Seguín, Guadalupe County, Texas, Eliza Webb LUCAS, his wife, expressed such dissatisfaction with Seguín that, by 1852, the family had returned to Indianola.

Of this journey, Sarah Rebecca MCCLELLAN (née LUCAS), the wife of Samuel MCCLELLAN (née LUCAS) and the sister of Eliza Webb LUCAS, kept a diary of which a fragment survives. A transcription of this fragment, with commentary, may be seen at From Tennessee to Texas: The Diary of Sarah Rebecca McClellan Lucas and The Letter of William Wilson Sloan: Texts.

About Sarah Rebecca LUCAS, see G0493A: George Augustine LUCAS, Lieutenant, Child 2: Sarah Rebecca LUCAS, in Descendants of Peter Lucas (ABT 1729 - 16 November 1781). About her journey, see From Tennessee to Texas: The Diary of Sarah Rebecca Lucas McClellan and the Letter of William Wilson Sloan: Texts.

The route taken by the families SLOAN and MCCLELLAN, at least from Cairo, Illinois to Seguín, Texas, had been taken in 1848 by Capt. Seth Eastman (24 January 1808, Brunswick, Maine - 31 August 1875, Washington, D. C.). Eastman, a career officer in the United States Army, graduated from West Point in 1829. In 1848, he was assigned to undertake a survey of Texas. Departing his post at Ft. Snelling, Minnesota, Eastman steamed down the Mississippi River to New Orleans and, from there, he voyaged to Indianola, Texas. From Indianola, he went to Seguín and thence into the heart of Texas. His sketches of what he saw are highly abstract and, as abstractions, capture the essence of his landscapes.

Please click on the images to see enlargements.

  These sketches by Seth Eastman are taken from A Seth Eastman Sketchbook: 1848 - 1849 (University of Texas Press, Austin, Texas: 1961). Copyright in these images is retained by the Marion Koogler McNay Art Institute, San Antonio, Texas.  


Vicksburg, Mississippi

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Sugar Plantation, Louisiana

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New Orleans, Louisiana

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Matagorda Bay, Texas

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Decros Point, Texas

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Indian Point (Indianola), Texas

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Seguín, Texas

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About 1830, while stationed at Ft. Snelling, Seth Eastman was married to Wakaninajinwin (Stands-Like-A-Spirit), the daughter of Chief Cloudman, of the Mdewankton Sioux, and Canpadutawin (Red-Cherry-Woman). On 9 June 1835, Eastman was married to Mary Henderson (1818, Warrenton, Virginia - 24 February 1887, Washington, D. C.), in Warrenton, Virginia.

About Seth Eastman, the following is recorded in Appleton's Cyclopaedia of American Biography:

  EASTMAN, Seth, soldier, born in Brunswick, Maine, 24 January 1808; died in Washington, D. C., 31 August 1875. He was graduated at the U. S. military academy in 1829 and assigned to the infantry. After frontier and topographical duty he was assistant teacher of drawing at West Point from 1833 to 1840, served in the Florida war in 1840-41 and afterward on the western frontier. From 1850 to 1855 he was employed in the bureau of the commissioner of Indian affairs to illustrate the national work on the History, Condition, and Future Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States (Washington, 1850-57). He then returned to the frontier. He was retired with the rank of lieutenant colonel on 3 December 1863, on account of disability from exposure in the line of duty, and on 9 August 1866, was brevetted brigadier general. General Eastman was elected a member of the National academy of design in 1838. He was the author of a Treatise on Topographical Drawing (1837).

His wife, Mary Henderson Eastman, author, born in Warrenton, Fauquier County, Virginia, in 1818, married Captain Eastman in 1835, and resided with him for many years at Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and at other frontier stations. Her portrayal of Indian life is the fruit of long observation and familiarity with the Indian character. She has published Dacotah, or Life and Legends of the Sioux (New York, 1849); Romance of Indian Life (Philadelphia, 1852); Aunt Phillis's Cabin, A Reply to Mrs. Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852);1 American Aboriginal Portfolio, illustrated by her husband (1853); Chicora and other Regions of the Conquerors and the Conquered (1854); Tales of Fashionable Life (1856); and numerous stories and sketches in magazines.

  Editorial Note:
   
  1. Aunt Phillis's Cabin was the major rebuttal, in proslavery fiction, against Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Exactly how Mrs. Eastman, who was a bona fide F. F. V. (First Family of Virginia), may have felt about her husband's position (undoubtedly pro causa honoris), during the War Between the States, as brevet brigadier-general in the Union Army is not known.

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RETURN: Descendants of Robert Allen (ABT 1674 - ABT 1775)

RETURN: Descendants of Archibald Sloan (BEF 1697 - BEF March 1764)

RETURN: Antecedents and Descendants of Robert Kelton, Sr. (ABT 1724 - AFT 1791)

RETURN: Descendants of Peter Lucas (ABT 1729 - 16 November 1781)

RETURN: From Tennessee to Texas: The Diary of Sarah Rebecca Lucas McClellan and the Letter of William Wilson Sloan: Texts

RETURN: Firemen's Cemetery (Cypress Grove), Metairie, Louisiana

GENEALOGICAL NOTES AND ANECDOTES: TABLE OF CONTENTS

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This Web site was created 11 November 1998.