Texas History #5 James and Malissa



The first three flags flew over Texas 300 years before this story takes place.

     A bit of background about my great-great-grandfather, James McLaughlin, is in order.  I plan to do a few posts on him and his family, mostly based upon my research. I also used some family lore, passed down by my Aunt Edith, a crude lady with a heart of gold and a disturbing nasal twang.  According to Aunt Edith, James and Malissa, our great-great grandparents, had a one day courtship during the "Runaway Scrape." Dates, names and places are factual, but most day to day details come from my imagination. Amounts and location of land and other properties are taken from Washington County records and an inventory done at James’ death, in 1848.  

     James McLaughlin had outlived two wives by 1836.  His first wife died of pneumonia back in Nashville.  He brought his only child, a daughter, to Texas in 1828 and they settled in Stephen F. Austin’s second colony, near present-day Wharton.  Four years later, James’s daughter married and moved away, and James married a widow who lived nearby.

     In addition to his brother, James’ older sister, Elizabeth, lived in Texas with her husband, Marmaduke Sandifer.  They lived in comfort on a Spanish Land Grant near present-day Halletsville, and traveled extensively.

     Marmaduke Sandifer, James’ brother-in-law, was instrumental in luring James to Texas.  Sandifer owned several Spanish Land Grants in the area of present-day Lavaca County, and shortly before the war had been granted an additional league of land by the Mexican Government.  With the Mexican Revolution, all the rules changed, but Marmaduke was still an influential landowner and became a mentor to James.

     By the time his second wife died in 1835, James had assembled more than 10,000 acres, mostly in Washington and Lavaca Counties, and was trying a radical new concept in Texas at that time.   He was working his land with hired help, not slaves.  A friend in Tennessee had been successful with hired hands and tenant farmers, and James was determined to make that system work in Texas.  He was opposed to slavery on moral grounds.

     After the Battle of San Jacinto, James McLaughlin and his brother, William Henry, helped the Texian Army celebrate the victory, and then “mustered out.”  Mustering out consisted of gaining permission from their commanding officer, Captain Joseph B. Chance, signing a paper, and riding away, leaving army life behind.

     At the time, James was thirty-six and Henry was forty-two.  Both were men of means—they didn’t need to stay in the army to eat as so many of their comrades did.  They had joined Houston's army barely two weeks before to help with the fight.  Fighting had more appeal than other options—hiding in the woods or running away to Louisiana.  As soon as the war was over, James wanted to get back to his farm at Burton, in present-day Washington County, west of Brenham.

     A few miles outside Harrisburg, James and Henry came upon a stranded young woman. She was trying to untangle the rigging from a dead ox attached to her wagon. They learned that she and her mother had escaped Victoria in panic, just hours ahead of General Urrea’s forces.  Her fiancé had died a month earlier, at Goliad, and her step father was captured and killed in Victoria. 

       Malissa, an attractive nineteen year-old, was now alone. Her mother died several days before, as they waited in line for the ferry to take them across the Brazos River.  Malissa borrowed a shovel, dug a grave, and buried her mother among the bluebonnets on a little rise about a mile west of the river. After crossing, she made barely twenty miles before the ox died.

     James and Henry used both their horses and much of the afternoon to drag the ox away from the road.  Vultures were already circling and would make short work of the carcass.  James realized that the buzzards were the only creatures actually profiting from the so-called “Runaway Scrape.”

     Malissa killed a rabbit with her slingshot, built a fire, gathered some wild onions, and fixed stew as the men worked.  During the course of the afternoon, James realized that this comely young lady was uneducated, but intelligent and capable.  James and Henry prepared to leave.

     “What are you going to do, Malissa?” James asked.  “No sense in trying to go on with that wagon.  I don’t see anything in it worth fretting over.” 

     “Mama and me was trying to get over to Louisiana.  She has a brother over there, somewhere up close to the Arkansas territory.  I guess I’ll go on that way—ain’t got no more family in these parts.”

     James looked intently at the spunky, independent little woman.  “If you want to go with me, I’ll take care of you.”

     Malissa stared back at James.  She wanted to be sure she understood his offer.  Finally, she turned, took a small sack from beneath the wagon seat, and reached for his hand.  He swung her up behind him. 

     She couldn’t weigh a hundred pounds, he thought.

     “I know a Baptist circuit-rider back in Burton.” James said, "If that's all right with you." 

      Malissa sighed with relief, put her arms around his waist, leaned against his broad back, and quietly began to cry.  
      James and Malissa had three children before James' untimley death.  Their oldest boy, James Thaddeus, fought in the Civil War.  His oldest boy, Thaddeus James, was my grandfather.
       

Art Guitars help keep the Austin Airport weird.  Austin has evolved from Stone Age Comanche to this in 180 short years.