"Last Sunday week, when almost 120 miles below Memphis, near the Old Town Landing, or Horse-Shoe Cut Off, in Arkansas, and between the hours of 2 and 3 o'clock, P.M., the captain was lying on his berth asleep, when he was awakened by Robt. Walker, the second clerk, who informed him that the barber had killed the barkeeper.  The captain got up and went to the social hall. Near the door of the hall he saw Zinzc, lying dead on his back, with his bosom covered with blood.  The barber was standing to the left of the door, looking at the body of the deceased.  The captain pointed to the body and said to Blackenhorn, 'My God! What does this mean!'  The other answered, 'It is done, and I can't help it!'  The captain asked him what he had done it with. Blackenhorn said, 'I did it with a small knife, made by my brother (or brother-in-law) in Germany.'  The captain asked him for the knife.  He said he had thrown it overboard.  The captain examined the body.  It was stabbed in the left side between the nipple and breast-bone.  He said to the accused, 'You must have stabbed him with a dirk.' 'No sir,' said Blackenhorn, 'it was a spring-knife that was sharp part of the way up on both sides.'    

"The captain asked the accused how the quarrel arose between him and the deceased.  Blackenhorn answered that Zinc had been angry with him for four or five days, and at one time had struck him in his own shop.  He, Blackenhorn, then left his shop to avoid difficulty.  Afterwards whenever Zinc met him he shook his fist at him, Blackenhorn.  On various occasions Zinc had offered him $10 if he would fight with him.  On one occasion, B. was sitting in his barber's chair, and Zinc sent a black boy to throw a glass of water in his face.  The black boy was under the control of the deceased.  The captain himself knew that the water was thrown in the accused's face.  The accused threatened to kick the boy, but the barkeeper interfered and said he should not do it.  The accused said that on the day that the barkeeper was killed, he had been badly abused by the deceased, who cursed him as a coward, &c., offered him $10, and dared him out on the boiler deck to fight.  The accused answered that he did not wish to get into a difficulty, as the captain might put them ashore.    

"Deceased again dared him out on the boiler deck, cursing him, as before, for a d___d coward, and using other insulting epithets.  On this the deceased went out, followed by the accused, on the boiler deck.  Deceased opened the door to go out; the door came to.  The accused took hold of the knob of the door to step out; and when in the door, in the act of going out, the barkeeper took hold of him by the collar.  The accused thereupon drew his knife and cut him.  He did not intend to kill him, but wished to cut him loose from him.  He did not know where he cut the deceased.  The latter had on taking hold of him, struck him twice.    

"The captain then examined the accused's face, and saw on it marks of violence or blows.  The captain's examination of the manner in which the body lay and fell corroborated the accused's statement of the affair.  The deceased must have had hold of the accused in such a way to force the latter to defend himself as he did.  The captain stopped during the day at several places, to have an inquest held and the body interred, but could find no officer to attend to it.  The next day the body was buried at Lake Port Bend, in Arkansas, at the plantation of Gen. Stoalfolk.  The captain thought the deceased weighed about twenty or thirty pounds more than the accused, who weighed about one hundred and thirty pounds.  Both were favorites with the captain.    

"The Recorder sent the accused before the First District Court." [Source: Personal correspondence with Mr. Jacques David Bagur]

"By modern standards, the general conditions of life in the immediate past were wretched, and steamboats were no exception. The modern traveler, if he could go back in time, would be shocked by the dirt, danger, and disease; extremes of heat and cold; insects; the stench of fellow passengers and cargo; primitive-to-nonexistent sanitary facilities; clutter; indifference to life; widespread heavy drinking; lack of running water; the poor quality of the food; the conditions of work; inefficiencies in operation; and the tedium of the voyage.

"Accommodations, such as they were, were designed for cabin passengers. Deck passengers, who constituted the bulk of the traveling public, slept amidst the cargo and were given nothing to eat. Deck crews had no place to sleep, were on call twenty-four hours, were driven by curses and blows of the mate, and ate the table scraps. Wharves were uncommon. Freight and passengers were loaded and offloaded by planks placed between the boat and dirt landings that turned to muck with rain and that were constantly stirred by the movement of wagons on shore.

"The image of the floating palace also obscures the fact steamboats were not pleasure craft but rather commercial freight and passenger carriers. As such, they were workboats operated as businesses. They should be generally thought of as independent small businesses operating in a highly competitive environment, largely unregulated, unable to control freight rates, opportunistic, unscheduled, eclectic in the type of freight carried, constantly on the move, unable to expand, constrained by the seasonal conditions of navigation, and subject to the dangers imposed by high-pressure engines and external hazards."

Glacial Deposits - Glaciers are large and small ice masses that are found at high latitudes on Earth.Mountains located at all latitudes have small glaciers. During the Pleistocene, 10,000 years ago, glaciers extended into much lower latitudes and elevations than are currently located. As the climate changed and weather got warmer, glaciers began to melt and abrade bedrock lying below the glaciers. Varying rates of ice melt caused eroded sediment to "drop out" of retreating, melting glaciers. This "glacial till" formed deposits called moraines and drumlins. Glacial till consists of unstratified (unlayered) and unsorted glacial deposits, some the size of huge boulders.

Meltwaters flowing upon, under, within or at the margin of glaciers accumulate deposits known as outwash plains and kettles (depressions), kames (small, mound shaped accumulations of sand or gravel), and eskers (narrow, sinuous ridges of sediment).Where glaciers extend beyond the mouths of river valleys and enter the sea, their glaciomarine sediment load is dumped into the ocean.

As climates warm glaciers melt and retreat. Glaciofluvial (glacier stream water) sediment is transported downstream by way of glacial meltwater and is deposited in braided streams. Glaciolacustrine (glacier lake water) sediment is deposited in glacial lakes when damming of ice or moraines occurs, and fluctuations of meltwater flow create distinctive varve deposits. Fine glacial debris consisting of silt and clay becomes airborne where vegetation is not present to hold this sediment down, and often traveling hundreds of kilometers before landing and forming loess deposits. The Muir Glacier and Margerie Glacier in Glacier Bay, Alaska are actively retreating glaciers.

Loess Deposits - Loess is comprised primarily of silt grains, with less significant anounts of clay and sand. The mineral quartz is most dominant in loess with feldspars, carbonates, and clay minerals present in smaller amounts. For instance, in arid regions loess contains larger amounts of calcium carbonate; whereas, in humid regions clay minerals in loess are more prevalent. Desert regions of the world may be thought of as prime locations for loess deposition because of the availability of loose sediment, sparse vegetal cover, and moderate to strong winds. However, loess deposits are more commonly located in or near glacial regions.

Glacial outwash debris containing sand, silt, and clay is transported to floodplains by rivers that drained glacial meltwater. The glacial debris, primarily the silt and clay, becomes airborne via strong winds as vegetation is not present to hold sediment down. Loess can sometimes become suspended several kilometers high and hundreds of kilometers in distance, with tens to hundreds of tons of sediment being transported in a single "dust storm", as was the case in the 1935 dust storm over the midwest United States. Near Wichita, Kansas a dust storm had suspended about five million tons of sediment over a 78 square kilometer area and around 300 tons per square kilometer of dust was deposited from the same storm near Lincoln, Nebraska.

[Vol. 5]: 597.  IROQUOIS, steamboat, of Columbus, Kentucky.  Built at New Albany, Indiana, 1847.  485 35/95 tons; 230 ft. (length) X 30 ft. (width) X 7 ft. 9 in. (draft).  One deck, no masts, cabin on deck.    
Enrolled, No. 68, May 6, 1851.  Owner: Burns M. Walker, Columbus, Kentucky.  Master: James Lee.    
Enrolled, port of New Orleans, no. 119, October 17, 1851.  Owner: Robinson Yeatman, John Yeatman, partners, trading under the firm of R. Yeatman & Co., New Orleans.  Master: same.  Enrollment secured by John F. Wilson, New Orleans, agent for the owner.    
Enrolled, No. 121, October 20, 1851.  Owner: John F. Wilson, New Orleans.  Master: same.    
Enrolled, No. 117, June 9, 1852.  Owner: O. M. Blackman, Clarksville, Tenn.  Master: Charles P. Peterson.    
Enrolled, No. 232, December 18, 1852.  Owner: James H. Wingfield, New Orleans.  Master: same.    
Enrolled, No. 8, August 2, 1853, at Nashville, Tenn.    
Enrolled, No. 79, April 20, 1854.  Owner: same.  Master: same.

[Source: Personal correspondence with Mr. Jacques David Bagur]

Died:

On Saturday, the 29th instant, Mr. WM. K. WILSON, aged 27 years, late of Murfreesboro', Tenn.
His friends are requested to attend his funeral, This Morning, at 9 o'clock, from Mrs. Carney's boarding-house, No. 74 Magazine street.
^{Nashville and Murfreesboro' papers will please copy.}

In 1889 President Grover Cleveland appointed him to a board of engineers to recommend a western Gulf port for the government to develop to handle tonnage that was increasing each year. Robert selected Galveston as the only site that could meet the conditions to become a major Gulf port. Congress approved his proposal and appropriated the funds. After the Galveston hurricane of 1900^qv Robert served as consulting chairman of the board of engineers to design means of protection against future tidal waves. The recommendations of this board resulted in a seawall that successfully saved the city of Galveston on two subsequent occasions, 1909 and 1915. After each tidal wave Robert was called back to report on seawall damage and to make further recommendations. He was also asked to help design a highway and railroad bridge between Galveston and the mainland. Just before he reached retirement age he was promoted to brigadier general, chief of engineers, United States Army, on April 30, 1901.

Robert also became this country's leading parliamentarian. Robert's Rules of Order, first published in February 1876, remained in print in the 1990s as an authoritative reference work on parliamentary procedure. Robert married Helen Thresher on December 21, 1860, and they had four children. Six years after she died, he married Isabel Livingston Hoagland, on May 8, 1901. Robert died on May 11, 1923, in Hornell, New York.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: George W. Cullum, Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, 3d ed., 1891. E. J. Mehren, "Henry Martyn Robert: Soldier, Parliamentarian, Author and Engineer," Engineering News-Record 84 (April 22, 1920). Thais M. Plaisted, "General Henry M. Robert, Parliamentarian," Social Studies 48 (May 1957).

Charles R. Kline

born Sept. 21, 1756 , Ayr, Ayrshire, Scotland
died Nov. 26, 1836 , Moffat, Dumfriesshire, Scotland

Scottish inventor of the macadam surface.

In 1770 John Loudon McAdam went to New York City, entering the countinghouse of a merchant uncle; he returned to Scotland with a considerable fortune in 1783. There he purchased an estate at Sauhrie, Ayrshire. McAdam, who had become a road trustee in his district, noted that the local highways were in poor condition. At his own expense he undertook a series of experiments in road making.

In 1798 he moved to Falmouth, Cornwall, where he continued his experiments under a government appointment. He recommended that roads should be raised above the adjacent ground for good drainage and covered, first with large rocks, and then with smaller stones, the whole mass to be bound with fine gravel or slag. In 1815, having been appointed surveyor general of the Bristol roads, he put his theories into practice. To document his work, McAdam wrote Remarks on the Present System of Road-Making (1816) and Practical Essay on the Scientific Repair and Preservation of Roads (1819).

As the result of a parliamentary inquiry in 1823 into the whole question of road making, his views were adopted by the public authorities, and in 1827 he was appointed Surveyor General of Metropolitan Roads in Great Britain. Macadamization of roads did much to facilitate travel and communication. The process was quickly adopted in other countries, notably the United States.

"The elephant was exhibited in New York at the corner of Beaver Street and Broadway on April 23, 1796. [New York Argus, April 23, 1796] At that exhibition, a Welshman named Owen offered to buy it for $10,000. From there, it seems the elephant went on tour constantly for many years.

"It is advertised in the Aurora [Philadelphia] of August 12, 1796 as being on the way to Charleston and Baltimore. [Also see the Philadelphia Aurora of 26 July 1796.] It could be seen on High Street for fifty cents. On November 7, 1796 we now find the elephant on exhibit in Philadelphia on Market Street 'from eight in the morning until sundown,' but this time only 25 cents admission. The pachyderm stayed on exhibition in Philadelphia throughout the winter. An article in the Boston Gazette of April 25, 1797 states that 'he has grown considerably since her arrival' last year. The Columbian Centinel of Boston announced in its July 26, 1797 edition that 'The elephant is just arrived in town and may be seen at Mr. Valentine's, Market Square . . . . The greatest natural curiosity ever presented to the public. He so far surpassed all description that has ever been given him that we shall not attempt it here. Admittance half a dollar.'

"By reading an article in the same paper a few days later, it is apparent that not many people were willing to pay fifty cents to see the elephant. The article states 'By the desire of the proprietor in Philadelphia, the elephant is now to be seen for a quarter of a dollar.' Lowering the price must have worked, as the pachyderm stayed there on exhibition for almost a full month.

"From there, through newspaper accounts and advertisements, we can learn that the elephant for the next dozen years was almost constantly on tour throughout New England, Pennsylvania and the Carolinas. The last recorded exhibition of the elephant is an account of its exhibition in York, Pennsylvania on July 25 and 25, 1818."

"In 1849 the seaport was renamed Indianola by Mrs. (Mary) John Henry Brown, combining the word "Indian" with ola, the Spanish word for wave. Not everyone was pleased with the change.^a The German immigrants continued to call it Karlshaven (Carl's Harbor) in honor of Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels who had brought them to Texas.

"When Charles Morgan built a wharf two miles closer to Powderhorn Lake to take advantage of deeper water there, other businesses (and residents) followed him. At first the newer settlement was referred to as Powderhorn or as Brown's Addition because it was so heavily promoted by John Henry Brown, the editor of the Indianola Bulletin. But when Brown was lured to Galveston, the Powderhorn area began to use the name of Indianola, leaving the original town site the name of 'Old Town.'

"And so it was that the name of Indianola was used when the settlement of Powderhorn was incorporated on Feb. 7, 1853."

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Jessie Beryl Boozer, The History of Indianola, Texas (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1942). George H. French, comp., Indianola Scrap Book (Victoria: Victoria Advocate, 1936; rpt., Austin: San Felipe, 1974). Brownson Malsch, Indianola-The Mother of Western Texas (Austin: Shoal Creek, 1977).

[p. 29] June 25, 1851 — Summer storms inflict wind and water damage to every building at Saluria. Every wharf at Lavaca (now Port Lavaca) is destroyed. The William Penn is torn from her mooring at Old Town at Indian Point, driven toward shore and sunk in five feet of water.

"Mottes are found almost exclusively in the eastern half of the country, and there are an estimated 340 of them throughout the country with 275 being located in Leinster."

A Streetside Growth of Spanish Dagger

Spanish Dagger in Bloom

"Most mustangs are of the light horse or warmblood type. Horses of draft conformation are kept on separate ranges. The coat color is the full range of colors found in horses. While the Spanish blood has been diluted, many of the horses still exhibit Spanish characteristics. There has been a firmly held belief for several decades that there were no pure Spanish-type horse remaining on the ranges of the wild horse. But in recent years a few small herds have been found in very isolated areas which have been found through blood testing to be strongly decended from Spanish breeding. Among these are the Kiger and Cerat mustangs."

2. gather: recte gathers.

3. as: Mrs. Woolford omitted this conjunctive adverb.

4. the the: In the manuscript, an instance of dittography.

5. who boarded _^^{at the same house} with us in N. O.: That is, at the house of Mrs. Ann Carney, 74 Magazine St., New Orleans, Louisiana.

6. on the day of our departure: Saturday, 5 April 1851.

7. at V.: That is, at Victoria, Texas.

8. by the name of ___________: The name, in the manuscript, is left blank.

9. a wanderer from another || sphere: "Sphere" is written outside the margin. The diarist's feelings of estrangement are such that she seems to herself as having arrived from another world or, more romantically and ¾¾ as it were ¾¾ more to the point, from a higher plane of reality. Victoria is not home.

10. Shady Vale! Dear quiet Shady Vale!: Although the diarist was born in Tennessee, she regards her true home as Shady Vale, her father's plantation not far from New Orleans where, until her father's death, she enjoyed ¾¾ as she remembers or wishes to remember ¾¾ an idyllic childhood. Her longing for Shady Vale anticipates the thought which Margaret Mitchell, in Gone With the Wind, would attribute to the woefully besieged Scarlett O'Hara:

Shady Vale, for the diarist, is Paradise Lost.

The diarist's father was Lt. George Augustine LUCAS about whom see G0493A: George Augustine LUCAS, Lieutenant, in Descendants of Peter Lucas (ABT 1729 - 16 November 1781).

11. its peaceful solitude: Similarly, Scarlett O'Hara was "desperate to get home to the quiet of Tara." [Gone With the Wind, Part 2, Chapter 19] Margaret Mitchell's principal theme, in Gone With the Wind, is Scarlett's struggle to defend the permanency of Tara. About Tara, see The Oaks: The Home of Whitmill Phillips Allen (6 November 1811 - January 1868). Mitchell's theme, as the diarist shows, is historically well founded.

12. but it is said to be sickly: Mrs. Woolford omitted this phrase.

13. flowers born "to blush unseen": This is from Thomas Gray (1716 – 1771), Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard:

14. Mr. S. is serious and melancholy: "Mr. S." was Martin W. SLOAN.

15. one who had lost a treasure: "Henry," "who had lost a treasure," was Henry Mason MANEY.

16. I cannot "be comforted because he is not.": This, as it seems, was a saying of the nineteenth century. The sense of it can be gathered from the letter of condolence that Maj. William A. Taylor, 24th Texas Regiment, Granbury's Brigade, Army of Tennessee (CSA) wrote to Dr. R. M. Young of Spartanburg, South Carolina:

"In 1834 they left their three oldest daughters with their uncle Alexander, borrowed eight of his slaves and moved to Bolivar, Mississippi where they planted cotton and speculated in real estate. Their ninth child Michael Henry Erskine was born there.

"In 1839 they moved to Kitchen's Ranch (J. Evetts Haley in the Cattle Drive book says Kitchens Ranch was in Huntsville but the obituary of Alex. Madison Erskine puts it on the Arinosa west of Texana, Texas) on the Arinosa River near Port Lavaca, Texas where they were attacked by Commanche indians in the raid that saw Linville burned. Their tenth and last child, Agnes Ann Erskine was born there. In 1840 they moved inland and settled on the Guadelupe River in what was then Gonzales County. Son William died by accidental gunshot in 1841. They acquired the El Capote Ranch from the heirs of Jose de la Baum in 1844, though some contention continued over this land for several years.

"In the spring of 1843 they sent three more of their children (Alexander, Malinda and Michael Henry) back to live and gain some education with his eldest brother Henry in Lewisburg. The older boys, John and Andrew worked on the farm and did a number of tours with the Texas Rangers under Jack Hayes. The ranch produced cotton, corn, pecans and cattle as well as the produce that sustained the family.

"In 1846, Agnes D. Erskine died.

"From 1846 to 1848 he served as the first County Judge of the newly formed Guadelupe County with its seat in Seguín.

"In 1848 Michael left the ranch in the hands of John and traveled back to North Carolina to visit his oldest daughter Catherine Erhinghaus and to Virginia where he learned of his brother Henry's death in Mexico. He brought Michael and Malinda with him on his return to Capote in 1849. (Alexander stayed on in Lewisburg and eventually attended the University of Virginia.)

"Raising cattle was difficult in southwest Texas but getting them to market in the days prior to the railroad was considerably more difficult. After gold was discovered in California in 1849, Texas ranchers launched a number of cattle drives across the desert to California in hopes of finding a market in that rapidly growing territory. In the spring of 1854, Michael mortgaged the ranch in borrowing $18,000 from his nephews, A. T. Caperton and Oliver Beirne back in Monroe Co., Virginia. He collected over 1000 head of cattle and with the help of his sons, John and Michael Henry and his son in law Henry Maney, drove them to southern California by fall. The drive was protected from indians along the way by Capt. James Callahan (a noted Texas Ranger and survivor of the massacre at Goliad in 1836). The herd was wintered at Warner's Ranch east of Los Angeles, then driven to rented pasture land near Stockton and San Francisco. During that winter Michael went on to the San Francisco area leaving the herd with his sons. He made some money speculating in potatoes but in the spring of 1855 when the cattle came up from Warner's Ranch they had considerable difficulty in selling them. What money they did bring in, Michael invested in gold mining. He borrowed more money to get the mine working but despite significant production of gold, was unable to keep up with the exorbitant interest on his loans. Meanwhile back in Texas, his son Andrew was trying to manage the ranch and fend off creditors including the heirs of his uncle, Dr. Alexander Erskine (who died in 1857), who were demanding the return of his slaves or cash payment for them.

"In 1859, Michael left the mining operations in the hands of his sons John P. and Michael Henry and returned to Capote to try to salvage his affairs. The Civil War broke out and his two remaining sons Andrew and Alexander left for Virginia with Hood's Brigade. Michael continued in the cattle business but in the summer of 1862 he was returning from selling a herd in New Orleans and died suddenly in New Iberia, Louisiana. He died at age 68, heavily in debt. His son John P. Erskine was able to buy a good part of the Capote Ranch at auction and continue the cattle business until his untimely death in 1872."

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Michael Erskine Papers, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin. J. Evetts Haley, The Diary of Michael Erskine (Midland, Texas: Nita Stewart Haley Memorial Library, 1979).

L. J. FitzSimon

The Maneys were among Hertford's most prominent people during the first fifty years of the Republic. James Maney, the first, a French Huguenot, when he first came to America, early in the 18th century, settled on Long Island. Afterwards he moved to Virginia, and thence to North Carolina, and located on the Chowan River in Hertford County, near the present Maney's Ferry. He soon became the owner of a large body of land bounded by Chowan River, Buckhorn Swamp, and reaching up as high as Como, taking in the land of the late Abram Riddick, Capt. J. H. Picot, Capt. Samuel Moore, and the lands in the Bartonville, section. He established Maney's Ferry, which is mentioned in Colonial Records as one of the King's places for landing his [p. 110] army stores. Prior to the formation of Hertford County these lands were in Northampton. He was Major in His Majesty's militia in Northampton County, and also a justice of the peace as far back as 1744, and died in the year 1754. William Short was made major to succeed him. Col. Rec., vol. 5, p. 163. He left a son, James, who married Miss Susanna Ballard. James Maney, the second, was a vestryman in Northwest Parish in Northampton County in 1758, and one of Hertford's representatives in the General Assembly in 1778. He left only one son, James III., who married Elizabeth Baker, the daughter of Gen. Lawrence Baker. They left four children—James, Henry, Susanna, and Priscilla. Susanna married Gen. Thomas Wynns. Henry died while young.

Priscilla married a Mr. Burgess, and James married Miss Mary Roberts, of Murfreesboro. James alone left children. Mrs. Mary Maney, the wife of James, the fourth, died February 13, 1815, aged 46 years and 26 days, and Mrs. Susanna Wynns, wife of General Wynns, died January 5, 1822, aged 56 years and 5 months. Both are buried with their husbands on the Abram Riddick farm, which was the old Maney homestead.

James IV. left six children — James, Elizabeth Meredith, Thomas, Mary, Henry, and William. James Maney, the fifth, was a distinguished doctor in Murfreesboro. He married Miss Sallie H. Murfree, and William married Miss Martha Murfree, daughters of Col. Hardy Murfree, of Murfreesboro, N. C., in this county. Elizabeth M. married Hon. Wm. H. Murfree. Henry married Miss Mary Brown, of Murfreesboro, N. C., daughter of Samuel Brown. Thomas, who was a prominent and leading lawyer in Hertford County and Eastern North Carolina, lived in Murfreesboro, and married Miss Annie R. Southall of that town, sister of the late John W. Southall.

In 1790, as appears from the U. S. Census, James Maney and Mrs. Peggy Maney resided in Hertford. Thomas Maney [p. 111] represented Hertford County in the General Assembly in 1817. The name is spelt in the State histories "Manney." But on investigation of the old records of Northampton and the old Colonial Records of the State, I found that the oldest as well as the younger members, spelt the name Maney, which is correct. I foolishly spelt it Manney in the history of "The Winborne Family" for the first time in all my professional life. I fell in the error by seeing it spelt in the old histories of the State, Manney.

The four Maney brothers — James, Henry, Thomas, and William — emigrated from Hertford County, N. C., to Tennessee about the year 1825. Dr. James and Henry Maney settled near Murfreesboro, Tenn., and Thomas and William at Franklin in that State.

Henry Maney and family left Tennessee early in the fifties and moved to Texas, where his children now reside.

None of these brothers were in public life except Thomas Maney, who was elected Circuit Court Judge about 1839 or 1840, and was re-elected for some sixteen or eighteen years, and before his last term expired he resigned and enjoyed private life until his death, April 10, 1864. After his election to the judgeship he moved from Franklin to Nashville, so as to be in the center of his circuit, which was composed of Williamson, Davidson, and Sumner counties.

Judge Thomas Maney

None of the Maneys entered political life in Tennessee except David Maney, son of Dr. James Maney, who represented his county in the legislature some few years before his death, some five or six years since. Henry Maney, the third living son of Judge Thomas Maney, was in early manhood editor of the Nashville Gazette, and was also elected to the legislature, as floater, of his flotorial district, and who died soon after in 1859. Gen. George Maney, the oldest living son of Judge Maney, was a lieutenant in the First Tennessee Regiment in the Mexican War, and entered political life soon after the close of that war and was elected to the legislature. When our Civil War commenced, he was [p. 112] made Colonel of the First Tennessee Regiment, C. S. A., and was soon made Brigadier-General, and so served throughout the war, but during the latter part was incapacitated for much active service on account of wounds.

Returning home after the war, he was made president of the Tennessee and Pacific Railroad, and became a Republican in politics, and was elected to the Senate in the Tennessee legislature. He had unlimited influence over Governor Senter during the carpet-bag period, and it was greatly to that influence that the government was restored to the Confederates, and the Negro and carpet-bag regime was overthrown, and the State was then governed by the Confederate Democrats. He represented the United States as minister to Columbia for four years and afterwards as minister to Uraguay and Paraguay for four more.

General Maney died in Washington City on February 9, 1901. James D. Maney, second living son of Thomas Maney, was living in Petersburg, Va., at the beginning of our war, and was captain of a Virginia company; was later promoted to major and transferred to the Army of Tennessee. After the war he returned to Nashville and entered the railroad business and was for many years comptroller of the N. C. and St. Louis Railroad. His health giving away he resigned and is now living a very private life.

Frank Maney, the youngest son of Judge Maney, was at West Point Military Academy when the Italian revolution, under Garibaldi, commenced. He left West Point and joined the revolutionists, serving on the staff of General Avenzaza. At the close of the Italian revolution he returned to the United States and entered the Confederate Army as captain of a battery of artillery, and was captured when Fort Donelson fell. On his way to prison he escaped in Ohio, and made his way through Maryland to Richmond, then back to the Army of Tennessee, when he was made major of a battalion of sharp-shooters. He was killed soon after the war, in New Orleans.

[p. 113] Thomas Maney had two daughters. The oldest, Bettie Maney, married John Kimbery, Professor of Chemistry in the University of North Carolina, and after the Civil War was a resident of Asheville, N. C. They both have been dead many years, and most of their children are residents of Asheville.

The youngest, Annie, married Major John L. Sehon, a prominent young lawyer of Nashville, just at the beginning of the Civil War. On the retreat of our army she accompanied her husband South, and died in Augusta, Ga., in 1864. Major Sehon died a few years after the close of the war.

Dr. James Maney, the oldest of the four brothers, had four children, three sons and one daughter, all of whom are now dead. Henry Maney, who moved to Texas in the fifties, had two sons and three daughters; the eldest son, Henry Maney, became a judge of one of the courts of Western Texas. William Maney raised a large family of five sons and seven daughters, all of whom made good and substantial citizens, but none entered public life. Maney's Ferry, and that beautiful section of the county, "Maney's Neck," took its name from this family, though it is often spelled "Manney's Neck."

In an effort to stimulate commerce for Victoria, Wheeler purchased the steamboat William Penn at Cincinnati, Ohio, commanded the vessel up the Guadalupe River to Victoria in 1850, and sold it to a newly formed joint stock company made up entirely of local residents. After disposing of the steamboat, he turned to railroad speculation and invested in the Indianola and Victoria Plank and Turnpike Road Company and the Powderhorn, Victoria and Gonzales Railroad Company. When these railroads failed, Wheeler associated himself with the San Antonio and Mexican Gulf Railroad and was instrumental in the completion of the line to Victoria by 1861. The Confederate army destroyed the railroad in December 1862 to keep it out of the hands of Union raiders on the Gulf Coast. By 1860 profits from his business activities had made Wheeler part of an elite financial group. He had not only become the wealthiest man in Victoria County, but he was also one of the 263 Texans on the 1860 census who owned total property of $100,000 or more. Even after suffering financial losses as a result of the Civil War, Wheeler had an estate valued at over $76,000 at the time of his death. A longtime asthma sufferer, Wheeler traveled to the Riviera in 1866 to restore his health. After he arrived in France his health became worse, and on February 14, 1867, while visiting Nice, he died. His body was returned to Victoria labeled as a marble block to circumvent the superstitions of the sailors. It lay in state for six months at his Italian villa-style house before he was buried in Memorial Square; his remains were reinterred in Evergreen Cemetery.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Roy Grimes, ed., 300 Years in Victoria County (Victoria, Texas: Victoria Advocate, 1968; rpt., Austin: Nortex, 1985). Victor Marion Rose, History of Victoria (Laredo, 1883; rpt., Victoria, Texas: Book Mart, 1961). Victoria Advocate, 88th Anniversary Number, September 28, 1934. Theora H. Whitaker, comp., Victoria (Victoria, Texas: Victoria Advocate, 1941).

Charles D. Spurlin

BIBLIOGRAPHY: W. O. Dietrich, The Blazing Story of Washington County (Brenham, Texas: Banner Press, 1950; rev. ed., Wichita Falls: Nortex, 1973). Betty Cantrell Plummer, Historic Homes of Washington County (San Marcos, Texas: Rio Fresco, 1971). Charles F. Schmidt, History of Washington County (San Antonio: Naylor, 1949).

Carole E. Christian

By 1854 the peninsula had two of the county's six school districts. From 1848 to the Civil War Pass Cavallo saw its heaviest ship traffic, and in his autobiographical A Texas Cow Boy (first published 1885), peninsula-born Charles A. Siringo writes of the early 1860s landing at "Deckrows Point" of "about five thousand Yankees" headed for the Confederate camp at the mouth of Caney Creek. When the hurricane of 1875, which also wiped out the nearby "German settlement," uprooted Thomas DeCrow's special storm-resistant house, thereby dooming some twenty-two people, it may well have ended the settlement, as no other information on it is available. In 1990 the site retained the name Decros Point.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Rena Maverick Green, ed., Samuel Maverick, Texan (San Antonio, 1952). Rena Maverick Green, ed., Memoirs of Mary A. Maverick (San Antonio: Alamo Printing, 1921; rpt., Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989). Matagorda County Historical Commission, Historic Matagorda County (3 vols., Houston: Armstrong, 1986). Charles A. Siringo, Texas Cowboy, or Fifteen Years on the Hurricane Deck of a Spanish Pony (Chicago: Umbdenstock, 1885; rpt., Alexandria, Virginia: Time-Life, 1980).

Rachel Jenkins

Maverick arrived in Texas eager to start building his own land empire, but the Texas Revolution was rapidly developing. He reached San Antonio shortly before the siege of Bexar began and was soon put under house arrest with John W. Smith and A. C. Holmes on the orders of Mexican general Martín Perfecto de Cos. Forbidden to leave the city, Maverick kept a diary that provides a vivid record of the siege. He and Smith were released on December 1 and quickly made their way to the besiegers' camp, where they urged an immediate attack. When an attack was finally made on December 5, Maverick guided Benjamin R. Milam's division. He remained in San Antonio after the siege and in February was elected one of two delegates from the Alamo garrison to the independence convention scheduled for March 1, 1836, at Washington-on-the-Brazos. He left the embattled garrison on March 2 and arrived at the convention on March 5. While serving there, Maverick contracted a severe attack of chills and fever. After the delegates dispersed, he made his way to Nacogdoches; then, ill and aware that he was needed on family business, he departed for Alabama about the time of Sam Houston's victory at San Jacinto.

In Alabama, Maverick met Mary Ann Adams and married her on August 4, 1836, at her widowed mother's plantation near Tuscaloosa. The couple divided their time between Alabama and Pendleton until late 1837, when with their first-born, Samuel Maverick, Jr., and a small retinue of slaves, they started for Texas. In June 1838 they established a home in San Antonio. Maverick obtained his Texas law license, engaged in West Texas land speculation, and served as the city's mayor in 1839. He followed his term as mayor with a term as treasurer and continued to serve on the city council until the Mavericks joined the "Runaway of '42," a move based on rumors of pending Mexican invasion of San Antonio. They settled temporarily near Gonzales, but Maverick returned to San Antonio for the fall term of district court and was one of the prisoners taken by Mexican general Adrián Woll. He was released from Perote Prison in April 1843 through the intervention of United States minister to Mexico Waddy Thompson. Upon his return, Maverick, who had been elected to the Seventh Congress of the Republic of Texas,^qv served in the Eighth Congress and was a strong advocate of annexation to the United States. In late 1844 he moved his growing family to Decrows (Decros) Point on Matagorda Bay, where they lived until October 1847.

When he returned permanently to San Antonio with his family, Maverick left a small herd of cattle originally purchased in 1847 on Matagorda Peninsula with slave caretakers. It was this herd that was allowed to wander and gave rise to the term maverick, which denotes an unbranded calf. In 1854 Maverick and his two eldest sons rounded up the cattle and drove them to their Conquista Ranch near the site of present Floresville before selling them in 1856. During the years between Maverick's return to San Antonio and his death, he expanded his West Texas landholdings, which in 1851 totaled almost 140,000 acres. By 1864 they had burgeoned to more than 278,000 acres, and at his death they topped 300,000 acres. Maverick gained land primarily by buying such land certificates as headright certificates and bounty and donation certificates. In the 1850s and 1860s he was one of the two biggest investors in West Texas acreage, and Maverick County was named in his honor.

He served as a Democrat in the Fourth through Ninth state legislatures (1851-63). There he worked to ensure equal opportunity for his Mexican and German constituents, to foster fair and liberal laws for land acquisition and ownership, to develop transportation and other internal state improvements, to provide protection for the frontier, and to ensure a fair and efficient judicial system. He also worked until the outbreak of the Civil War to stem the tide of secessionism, but, seeing that a conflict was inevitable, threw his support to the Confederacy. He was one of three secession commissioners appointed by the Texas Secession Convention, and the three successfully effected the removal of federal troops and the transfer of federal stores in Texas to the state government. During the war he was elected chief justice of Bexar County and served a second term as San Antonio mayor. After the war he received a presidential pardon and was active in attempts to combat the radical Republican regime in Reconstruction Texas. He died on September 2, 1870, after a brief illness. Surviving him were his wife and five of his ten children. Maverick, an Episcopalian, was buried in San Antonio's City Cemetery Number 1.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Rena Maverick Green, ed., Samuel Maverick, Texan (San Antonio, 1952). Paula Mitchell Marks, Turn Your Eyes toward Texas: Pioneers Sam and Mary Maverick (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1989). Maverick Family Papers, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin.

Paula Mitchell Marks