Issue 5 Volume 2 May 2016

Photo of the Month

Remains of old school house in Singleton

Located behind the Community Center on Highway 90

Grimes County Historical Commission

Grimes County Historical Commission

Executive Board Chairman Russell Cushman Vice Chairman Joe King Fultz Secretary Vanessa Burzynski Treasurer Joe King Fultz

COMMITTEES Historical Markers Denise Upchurch Heritage Preservation Sarah Nash Newsletter & Publicity Vanessa Burzynski

Meetings of the Grimes County Historical Commission are held on the Second Monday of the Month at 7:00 pm in the Courthouse Annex in Anderson, Texas

Contact Information: Russell Cushman 403 Holland Navasota, TX 77868 (936) 825 8223 rcush403@aol.com

PAGE 2 GRIMES COUNTY HISTORICAL COMMISSION NEWSLETTER MAY 2016

An estimated 30,000 children were homeless in New York City in the 1850s. The children ranged in age from about six to 18 and shared a common grim existence. Homeless or neglected, they lived in New York City's streets and slums with little or no hope of a successful future. Their numbers were large - an estimated 30,000 children were homeless in New York City in the 1850s.

Charles Loring Brace, the founder of The Children's Aid Society, believed that there was a way to change the futures of these children. By removing youngsters from the poverty and debauchery of the city streets and placing them in morally upright farm families, he thought they would have a chance of escaping a lifetime of suffering.

He proposed that these children be sent by train to live and work on farms out west. They would be placed in homes for free but they would serve as an extra pair of hands to help with chores around the farm. They wouldn't be indentured. In fact, older children placed by The Children's Aid Society were to be paid for their labors.

The Orphan Train Movement lasted from 1853 to the early 1900s and more than 120,000 children were placed. This ambitious, unusual and controversial social experiment is now recognized as the beginning of the foster care concept in the United States.

Orphan Trains stopped at more than 45 states across the country as well as Canada and Mexico. During the early years, Indiana received the largest number of children. There were numerous agencies nationwide that placed children on trains to go to foster homes. In New York, besides Children's Aid, other agencies that placed children included Children's Village (then known as the New York Juvenile Asylum), what is now New York Foundling Hospital, and the former Orphan Asylum Society of the City of New York, which is now the Graham-Windham Home for Children.

Some of the children struggled in their newfound surroundings, while many others went on to lead simple, very normal lives, raising their families and working towards the American dream. Although records weren't always well kept, some of the children placed in the West went on to great successes. There were two governors, one congressman, one sheriff, two district attorneys, three county commissioners as well as numerous bankers, lawyers, physicians, journalists, ministers, teachers and businessmen.

The Orphan Train Movement and the success of other Children's Aid initiatives led to a host of child welfare reforms, including child labor laws, adoption and the establishment of foster care services, public education, the provision of health care and nutrition and vocational training.

The last generation of Orphan Train riders is still living in towns across the United States. They keep in touch with each other through the National Orphan Train Complex and through Children's Aid. Based in Concordia, Kansas, the Orphan Train Heritage Society of America helps members establish and maintain family contacts, retrace their roots and preserve the history of the Orphan Train Movement.

PAGE 3 GRIMES COUNTY HISTORICAL COMMISSION NEWSLETTER MAY 2016

The train out of New York City full of nuns and children pulled up to the Osage, Missouri station in 1901. Three year old Irma Craig had her name, birth date, and name of who was to receive her sewn on the inside of her jacket and a large number 32 sewn on the outside. As the train came to a stop little Irma could see a lady holding a large card with 32 written on it. Irma exclaimed, “That’s my new Momma,” and was soon rushing to meet Mrs. Katherine Boehm. Irma’s long journey began when her birth mother, Lyda, left Irma at the New York Foundling Hospital when she was only a few months old. The Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul had raised her for three years. The Sisters sorted out and matched each child on this train to new homes before they boarded the train. But for many of the other 200,000 orphan train riders from 1853 to 1930 the experience included being selected (or not) during a review done by total strangers on a string of several railroad station platforms. Social policy of the time said orphans or neglected children were better off doing chores on a pioneer’s farm than they would be on the streets of crowded slums. For most the new life worked out well, but for others it was a bad experience. Less than one in ten riders was returned. Whether a foundling or a teenager separated from a neglectful alcoholic single-parent, each orphan train rider’s fate was strongly influenced by what happened in a few moments on a far away railroad platform. About one in twenty-five Americans has an orphan train rider connection. Two organizations were responsible for more than half the orphan trains: the Children’s Aid Society, and the New York Foundling Hospital. However, dozens of organizations mostly in New York City, but also a few in Boston, Chicago, or Minnesota contributed children to the orphan train movement which “placed out” children in 48 states. Sometimes these sending institutions have records which show the names of the birth parents.

PAGE 4 GRIMES COUNTY HISTORICAL COMMISSION NEWSLETTER MAY 2016

Terms on Which Boys are Placed in Homes

All Applicants must be endorsed by the Committee.

Boys fifteen years old are expected to work till they are eighteen for their board and clothes. At the end of that time they are at liberty to make their own arrangements.

Boys between twelve and fifteen are expected to work for their board and clothes till they are eighteen, but must be sent to school a part of each year, after that it is expected that they receive wages.

Boys under twelve are expected to remain till they are eighteen, and must be treated by the applicants as one of their own children in matters of schooling, clothing and training.

Should a removal be necessary it can be arranged through the committee or by writing to the Agent. The Society reserves the right of removing a boy at any time for just cause. We desire to hear from every child twice a year. All expenses of transportation are paid by the Society.

Children’s Aid Society

24 St. Marks Place, N.Y.

E. Trott, Agent

There have been many books written about the Orphan Trains. Many are first hand accounts from children who were adopted from the Orphan Trains.

You can look at the census records in Texas and you will find many families with children listed as born in New York. These are most likely children from the orphan trains. Most of these children were never legally adopted but were raised as a member of the family.

The far from perfect way of placing children eventually ended. The orphan train's last run was through East Texas with its final stop in Sulphur Springs in 1929.

PAGE 5 GRIMES COUNTY HISTORICAL COMMISSION NEWSLETTER MAY 2016

Grimes County Orphans These children listed below were riders on the Orphan Train that came to Grimes County sometime between 1905-1910.

Mary (Brooks) Burzynski born 1902

Asa Busa born 1904

Catherine (Katie) Carns born 1905

Julius Cicero born 1906

Mary Clyvinski born 1902

Ben Clyvinski born 1904

Mary Geisinger born 1902

Pascal Gottselio born 1900

Ida Gottselio born 1902

James Griggs born 1892

Gerry Grockett born 1900

John Grockett born 1901

Henry Hack born??

Alfonzo Hatminer born 1901

John (Knetch) Imhoff born 1900

Caro Jolly born 1904

Hattie Johnson born 1904

Hedwig Johansen born

Margeretta Kielbasinski born 1902

Mark Keilbasinski born 1903

Edward Klodzinski born 1900

Catherine (Kuntze) Kladzinski born 1903

Raymond Kolbasinski born 1900

August (Dolls) Kolbachinski born 1901

Edna (Kolm) Burzynski born 1902

Charles (Kolm) Burzynski born 1898

Fred Kopecky born 1898

Felix Kopecky born 1902

Rita Kopecky born 1904

Martin Navack (Nowak?) born 1899

James Nishganoits born 1902

Elizabeth Nishganoits born 1903

Agnes Osborn born 1903

Frank Pavlock born 1901

Alice (O’Conner) Pavlock born 1902

Edward Phillip born 1900

Robert (McIntosh) Posinski born 1901

Jenetta Schatz born 1897

Eva Schatz born 1904

Agnes Stillwell born 1901

Mark Shimshack born 1899

Clementine Smith born 1899

Julie Smith born 1897

William Stanley Smith 1900

Mary Symeak (Szymczak) born 1902

Mark Symacak (Szymczak) born 1899

Anna Elizabeth Taylor born 1902

Bernard (Hirsch) Urbanowski born ??

Marian (Cameron) Urbanowski 1901

Tommy Ubnoski born 1900

Adam Ubenoski born 1900

Annie Ubenoski born 1904

Willie Ubenoskie born 1899

Mary Volciski born 1902

Reimond Wolf born 1903

Josephinea Wolf born 1904

If you know of someone who was one of the Orphan Train riders we would love to hear from you.

PAGE 6 GRIMES COUNTY HISTORICAL COMMISSION NEWSLETTER MAY 2016

The New York Foundling Hospital

After the Civil War one of the most gripping of New York’s social problems was the abandonment of infants in the streets of the City. Poverty, immigration, inadequate housing, and a financial depression were the factors which made abandonment in ever present evil.

In 1869, it had no longer become an item of news, or even of interest, to find an abandoned infant on the doorsteps of a rich family, in the hallway of a tenement, or at the entrance to a convent. St. Peter’s Convent on Barclay Street was a favorite refuge of distraught mothers and very often the Sisters on opening their door in the morning would find a tiny waif deposited on the doorstep.

Sister Mary Irene, of St. Peter’s Convent called the attention of Mother Mary Jerome, the Superior of the Sisters of Charity, to the need of rescuing these children. When the matter was as placed before Archbishop (afterwards Cardinal) McCloskey, he not only sanctioned the plan of providing an asylum for the care of abandoned children, but urged the Sisters to put this plan into execution. Accordingly Mother Mary Jerome directed Sister Irene to make a beginning. With only $5.00 as capital, but with undaunted courage and unlimited faith and confidence in God, Sister Irene undertook the work.

On October 8, 1869 the New York Foundling Asylum of the Sisters of Charity, in the City of New York was incorporated. Three days later on October 11th, the Feast of the Maternity of Our Lady, Sister Irene and her two companions, Sister Teresa Vincent and Sister Ann Aloysia, moved into a small house at 17 East 12th Street. Although they expected to spend three months in preparing for the opening of the institutions, an infant was laid on the door -step that very first night.

Before January 1, 1870, the proposed opening date, they had received 123 babies. Within a year, a larger house at 3 Washington Square was secured. Soon this also proved to be inadequate. In 1870, the State Legislature authorized the City to grant a site for a new building, and appropriated $100,000 toward its erection on condition that a similar amount be raised for the same purpose by private contributions. Sister Irene at once set to work to take advantage of this help and organized a committee amongst some of the leading financiers and business men of the time. The construction of the buildings on the property bounded by 68th and 69th Streets and by Lexington and Third Avenues was begun in 1872.

In November 1873, the main building was completed and occupied. Through the years other buildings were added until the Foundling Hospital was completed. While the building was in progress the services of the institution were expanding. Shortly after its establishment, the Foundling became a refuge not only for abandoned babies but also for unmarried mothers. Another important development was the inauguration of the Boarding Department. Because of the lack of room in the late house on 12th Street, the Sisters asked their neighbors to care for some of the infants in their own homes. Thus was inaugurated, on November 15, 1869, the Boarding department of the Foundling. As soon as Sister Irene was settled in the new building on 68th Street, she established the Adoption Department to find suitable permanent homes for those children who were legally free for adoption. Every care was taken to ensure proper guardianship for each child.

The date of the first recorded placement of a child in a free home, with a view to adoption, was May 1873. In 1880, one of Sister Irene’s dreams was realized when St. Anne’s Maternity Pavilion was erected, in order to shelter friendless, expectant

PAGE 7 GRIMES COUNTY HISTORICAL COMMISSION NEWSLETTER MAY 2016

mothers, whether married or unmarried, and to provide proper confinement care for them. Although originally planned only for mother’s care by the Sisters, St. Anne’s was opened in 1915 to outside physicians who wished to send private patients for confinement. In 1946, St. Anne’s Maternity Pavilion was closed to private cases in order to expand and improve services to the unmarried mothers who were the original objects of Sister Irene’s concern.

In 1881 St. John’s Hospital for Children, and Pediatric Service of the New York Foundling Hospital was erected. In 1944, the Hospital service of St. John’s was discontinued in order to expand and improve services to well children in need of care away from their own homes and thus meet an urgent need in this community.

In 1910, St. Joseph By The Sea, at Huguenot, Staten Island, was opened as an annex to the New York foundling Hospital.

In 1930, a Social Service Department was established in order to provide casework services for unmarried mothers cared for in the Shelter. It was about the same time that professionally trained workers were added to the staff of the Boarding and Adoption Departments.

The Foundling Hospital also has a training school for the training of young ladies as Infant Care Technicians, a Pediatric Clinic for foster children, a Prenatal Clinic, a Development clinic for children being considered for adoptive placement, and –its newest service—a Child Guidance Clinic.

In 1958 in order to carry on the work of the New York foundling Hospital and to give adequate coverage to the number of dependent and neglected children in need of care away from their own homes, the buildings on 68th Street were replaced by the modern fire-proof building equipped with all the facilities necessary to carry out

a program according to the highest standards of child care.

As the New York Foundling Hospital enters its 100th year of service, it may be described as a mult-ifunctional social agency providing the following services:

Nursery care on an emergency basis to abandoned and neglected children regardless of creed or color;

Casework services to families requesting placement of children;

Placement and supervision of Catholic children in boarding and adoption homes;

After-Care supervision of children discharged from foster care;

Shelter care and casework services to unmarried mothers.

The unwavering faith, hope, and Christ-like charity with which Sister Irene opened the first Foundling on East 12th Street have characterized the unique dedication of the Sisters of Charity, staff and volunteers who have carried on her work to the present day. It is our prayer that -that unique spirit—the spirit of Christ—will continue to guide those who have dedicated themselves to the work of the New York Foundling Hospital in the years to come.

PAGE 8 GRIMES COUNTY HISTORICAL COMMISSION NEWSLETTER MAY 2016

The Orphan Train Program

Priests in towns along the railroad routes were notified that the Foundling had children in need of homes. The priest would make an announcement to his congregation and ask for volunteers to take the children. At that point, adults could sign up for a child, specifying hair color and the color of eyes they preferred. Of course, specifying a boy or girl was respected.

The Priest would notify the Foundling that they could take a specific number of children with blond hair and blue eyes; brown hair and brown eyes; black hair and blue eyes; or a certain darkness of skin. One such request was for a boy with red hair because the farmer had 5 red haired daughters and no sons. He was not only delivered the requested red haired boy, but the boy later inherited the family farm.

The Foundling selected the requested children believing if a family got a child that “fit in” everyone would be better served. An “Indenture” form was used to place the children. It was a legal document that gave the Foundling legal recourse without going to court, should the placement not be satisfactory and the child had to be removed.

Often called an early form of adoption, it was not adoption as we know it today, because with adoption a child is legally a parent’s natural child. Indentured children that were not legally adopted were ineligible to inherit unless the adults left a will specifying the indentured child was to be given an inheritance.

Mary Elizabeth Delaney Prazak Maresh, age 105, died on Sunday, January 11, 2015. Mary Elizabeth Delaney was born April 28, 1909 in New York Foundling Hospital. At the age of 21 months old, she was placed on an Orphan Train to Texas. Mary was indentured to Anna Marek of the Frenstat community on January 24, 1911 and eight months later was indentured to Bohumil and Mary Charanza Prazak also of the Frenstat community. Mary was adopted on January 15, 1913 and became Mary Elizabeth Prazak. She was one of the few living and the oldest surviving Orphan Train Riders.

There will be a presentation called “Riders on the Orphan Train” on Saturday, June 18, 2016 at the St. Stanislaus Catholic Church Parish Hall in Anderson. In this ninety-minute presentation, historian Alison Moore and musician Phil Lancaster chronicle the history of the orphan train program, which operated in the U.S. from 1854 to 1929.

PAGE 9 GRIMES COUNTY HISTORICAL COMMISSION NEWSLETTER MAY 2016

SHIRO, TEXAS, Abraham Zuber and William McGuffin were two of Stephen F. Austin’s “original 300”. By 1890, descendants of these two colonists, along with other families including the Edwards, Mayfields, Harmons, Neasons, Franklows, Thomases, Davis’s and Oliphants, were living in the area soon to become Shiro. Most of them were cotton farmers; and the nearest established community was Prairie Plains, also referred to as Red Top, just three miles east of present Shiro. In 1892, a the Star Mail Route was established by the Post Office and running tri-weekly between Prairie Plans and Roans Prairie. By 1898, Prairie Plains had three cotton gins: the Bookman gin and store, the Keisler Brothers gin and store, and John Thomas gin and sawmill. There was the A.F. Rea General Store, Bederson Jewelry, and the Mrs. Stewart grocery store. The Methodist church which was situated one mile west of present Shiro, was the only church in the area and nearby was a five room frame school building.

In January 1902, a post office was established at Shiro with Frances Marion Mayfield appointed as postmaster. The same year the townsite and streets were mapped.

In 1904, Reid Rickard and Lon Norman built a mercantile store, and later a drug store.

In 1905 the Trinity and Brazos Valley Railroad was surveyed through the town site, with Marion Mayfield and Dr. Hamp Franklow giving land for the right-of-way. Meanwhile, the Post Office Department in Washington D.C. requested that the new post office and town site be named. There are several versions of how this was accomplished, but the one most widely accepted was that a group of town fathers got together, chose a name and submitted it to Washington. It was rejected. After

three such efforts, Marion Mayfield, postmaster, who also sold Japanese fruit trees and shrubs, selected the name Shiro from a nursery catalog. The name was submitted in 1907 and accepted by the Post Office Department. In Japanese the word is pronounced She-row.

The railroad was completed in 1908 and Shiro began to grow with stores, blacksmith shop, saddle shop, jail and Shiro Independent School District was born with a new two story brick building built in town on a four acre site given by E.A. Edwards. Prairie Plains had “moved” to Shiro.

The Prairie Plains Cumberland Presbyterian Church was moved to Shiro in 1909 to its present site on land donated by Virginia Lee Edwards Mayfield. This culminated the moving of Prairie Plains to Shiro.

In 1912, J.G. Davis helped start the Baptist church and the Methodist church was moved in to its present location with Walter and Beulah Horton getting married inside the building while the move was in progress. By this time there were stock yards and a bank had been organized by Dr. Hamp Franklow. The train stopped each morning at 11 a.m and again at 5 p.m. where everyone who could would come to meet it. The postmaster was always there with his bag of mail until someone rigged up a pole near the track to leave it on. Nearly every farmer grew cotton, so by late summer wagonloads of cotton traveled to and from the gins day and night.

Then in 1915 Shiro had several major disasters. Fire destroyed the business section north of town, leveling that whole block of buildings. Later, fierce winds and heavy rains, lasting three days, did much damaged to crops and buildings.

The town quickly rebuilt and in 1916 Edwin Harmon bought the first automobile in Shiro, a Model T Ford. This he paid for by running a jitney service to Huntsville.

PAGE 10 GRIMES COUNTY HISTORICAL COMMISSION NEWSLETTER MAY 2016

Before automobiles the county roads were unpaved and often impassable. It took an entire day to go to and from Navasota from Shiro. Jasper Rotan recalls that once, when Barnum’s Circus passed through town via the old Richard’s road, the wagons loaded with animals and equipment got stuck. Whereupon the elephants were put to work pushing the wagons free while the monkeys got loose and scrambled up on to the camels and giraffes for a ride. This is known as “the day the circus came to town” and stayed for a week gathering spectators from all around. According the an article published in the East Texas Accent September 1979, Walter Horton recalls, “Kids could hire on to work and get a free ticket, so I did.”

Along came World War I, with about 26 men serving from the Shiro area.* When an Armistice was declared, the station agent, at the railroad depot, was first to hear by telegram from Washington D.C. Mrs. Ed Foster organized the kids into a parade with noisemakers and red, white and blue crepe paper streamers. Everyone went to her home afterward for a party.

Electricity came to Shiro about 1918, but it was only from 5 p.m. each day until 8 in the morning. No appliances could be used until 1921. Meanwhile the railroad was the center of town life. During national elections everyone waited around the station until the outcome was wired to the station agent. When someone was sick enough to need hospital care he was loaded onto a cot and placed in the baggage car to be sent to Houston.

By 1924 there were 16 businesses establishments, including a Ford dealership, two garages, and two hotels. Besides the jail, the bank, and the post office, there were three churches and a Masonic Hall housed in the old church building when the Baptist church built their present brick building.

With the coming of the automobile and paved highways, the tide turned away from Shiro. Old timers stayed behind, but the young ones moved to big cities like Houston. Many of the young folks who moved away in the 30’s retired and came back to Shiro. As a true testimony to faith and steadfastness, Shiro’s four original churches refused to give up on her and her people. Their doors being the only ones to have remained opened continuously with the ebb and flow of the population. There is indeed a “new spirit” in Shiro, as Janis J. Mayfield reported in her History of Shiro, Texas. It began in 1980 with the inception of the Shiro Volunteer Fire Department and the formation of the Shiro Civic Association.

Today she boasts of the Shiro Gas and Grocery Store, the post office, Mrs. Ina True’s bookkeeping service and gift shop, Granny’s Country Kitchen, an antique shop (in the original Davis building), and a feed store. The Shiro Preservation and Historic Society was formed in 2003 with a vision to “spruce up” Shiro and archive her history for generations to come.

George F. Wingard, Jr. was born 1924 in Shiro. He flew 50 combat missions while serving as engineer-top turret gunner on B-24 during World War II.

The population, an estimated 500 in 1936, declined after World War II; by 1950 it had fallen to an estimated 310 residents, who supported nine rated businesses. In 1969 the population had fallen to an estimated 205, but the decline leveled off thereafter. In 1990 Shiro had a reported population of 205 and two rated businesses. The population remained the same in 2000.

Sources: Excerpts from Early History of Grimes County, E.L. Blair, 1930 were taken from Reflections of Grimes County, Texas 1994. Other sources include: The Navasota Examiner and Grimes County Review, The History of Shiro, Texas by Janis J. Mayfield.

PAGE 11 GRIMES COUNTY HISTORICAL COMMISSION NEWSLETTER MAY 2016

BLACK, JOHN S. (1790–1851?). John Sullivan Black, early Texas colonist, participant in the Texas Revolution, and Indian commissioner, was born in Tennessee in 1790 and settled in Grimes County, Texas, in 1830. Like many other settlers who came to Texas during this time, he came from a family that had taken part in the American Revolution. His father, Gavin Black, was a lieutenant in the American army. His grandfather, George Black, signed the Tryon Declaration of Independence in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1775. Black staked out his claim on the Coushatta Trace, on an "open picturesque prairie dotted with small groves of timber and covered with a carpet of tall nutritious grass." His title for a league of this land, later known as Black's Prairie, was granted on April 6, 1831. He later received an adjacent quarter league abandoned by his brother Marcus, who returned to Tennessee.

In 1835 Black served as a cavalryman under the command of Stephen F. Austin. He and his son Monroe took part in the siege of Bexar on December 5–9, 1835, under the command of Gen. Edward Burleson. Black went on to participate in the battle of San Jacinto as a captain in the quartermaster's corps. In 1838 he received two bounty warrants for land for his service in the Texas army. After independence, he remained in the service of the Republic of Texas in the quartermaster's depot in Houston. After 1842 he was an Indian commissioner. Under the leadership of Sam Houston, he worked to gather many Indian groups to persuade them to remain at peace and engage in commerce with the white man. Black was one of three Texas Indian commissioners who met with eight Texas Indian groups on Tehuacana Creek on March 8, 1843. This meeting was a

preparation for a larger general council to be held in the fall of that year. On April 10, 1843, Houston authorized a payment of $200 to Black for his services as Indian commissioner in the fall and winter of 1842, as well as $175 for his continued service on the Texas frontier. Black was a devoted Mason who tried to settle his area exclusively by Masons. His name is listed on a monument under the old Masonic Oak in Brazoria. He died around 1851 and was buried on a hill near his land, which is today south of a roadside park. His wife, Mary, was buried next to him in 1868.

John S. Black was forty years old at the time of his application for land (1830). He was then married, and had a family consisting of his wife, Mary (then thirty-two years old), and five children, three sons and two daughters, namely: Monroe, Gavin Bingley, John S. Junior, Lucinda, and William. Monroe Black married and raised a family, but the writer has no information concerning his descendants. Gavin Bingley Black (born February 19, 1822; died October 4, 1868) married Margaret Anna Moore (born December 17, 1826).

PAGE 12 GRIMES COUNTY HISTORICAL COMMISSION NEWSLETTER MAY 2016

ZUBER, ABRAHAM (1780–1848). Abraham Zuber, carpenter, merchant, and pioneer farmer, the son of Abraham and Mary (Bartling) Zuber, was born in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, on November 14, 1780. In 1786 the elder Zuber, son of a German immigrant, moved his family to Oglethorpe County, Georgia, where young Abraham began to practice carpentry. In 1814 the younger Zuber established a country store in Putnam County, Georgia, and the following year transferred his business to Marion, Georgia, where, on February 16, 1816, he married Mary Ann Mann, a native of South Carolina. They had two children. In 1822 Zuber moved to Montgomery County, Alabama; in 1824 to East Feliciana Parish, Louisiana; and in 1827 to St. Helena Parish, Louisiana. In 1830 he settled on the Ayish Bayou in the area that became San Augustine County, Texas. In 1827, Zuber applied for a land grant in Texas as Austin colonists, and in 1930 when Abraham was 50, they migrated to Texas from Marion, GA. Mary Ann was 37 and the couple had 2 children: William Physick (10) and Mary Ann (4). In 1831 he moved his family to Harrisburg while he searched for a headright tract in the Austin colony. In January 1832 he temporarily rented a farm in the Brazos bottoms that later became part of Brazoria County; he worked the farm with the aid of four slaves borrowed from Jared E. Groce. In January 1833 Zuber moved his family to a league of land on Lake Creek, then in Montgomery County, later eastern Grimes County, only to learn that much of another settler's headright had been inadvertently included in his survey. He thereupon laid claim to a league elsewhere in the Lake Creek bottoms-at the site of an abandoned Kickapoo Indian village near the site of present Shiro. His family occupied one of the two remaining sod cabins on the

grounds, and the slaves occupied the other. Six years later he constructed a double-room log house on his property some two miles west of his original homestead. They were the first family of Shiro, TX.

In March and April 1836 Zuber and his family participated in the Runaway Scrape. Upon returning to his farm, he encountered a refugee from the Alamo, an old acquaintance named Louis Moses Rose, and received from him a dramatic eyewitness account of the fortress's fall. He was an old friend who had joined Travis at the Alamo. When Travis drew his famous line, inviting all who wished to remain and fight the enemy to cross over, Rose was the only one who didn't. He escaped and made his way through the wilderness, resting in cabins abandoned by settlers as they fled from the enemy, until he arrived, exhausted and covered with wounds from cactus thorns, at the Zuber cabin. The Zubers cared for him several weeks during which he recounted the final days at the Alamo, and 36 years later William Zuber retold the story that was recorded in The Texas Almanac of 1873. Zuber served as the first district clerk of Montgomery County after it was organized in 1837. He died on November 24, 1848, at his home in Grimes County. Abraham and Mary Ann Zuber are buried on a lonely pine knoll near the old homesite just south of present-day Shiro. Also buried there are their daughter, Mary Ann, her husband, J.R. Edwards, several other members of the family, a stranger, and one of their Negro slaves. Their son William Physick Zuber joined the Company of Capt Joseph L. Bennett at Kennard's place on March 6, 1836, he was barely 16 years old. He served in the Confederate Army and in March 1909 was honored by the Texas Legislature with a gold medal for his service with the Army of San Jacinto, he was the last survivor of that Army.

PAGE 13 GRIMES COUNTY HISTORICAL COMMISSION NEWSLETTER MAY 2016

LA BAHIA ROAD

UPPER COUSHATTA TRACE

The Upper Coushatta Trace was an alternate, wet-weather route of the Coushatta Trace. It branched off the latter in what is now eastern Grimes County and ran northward, while the main Coushatta Trace continued eastward en route to a Coushatta village on the east bank of the Sabine River. The Upper Coushatta Trace was used by a substantial number of Stephen F. Austin's colonists entering the future Grimes County to locate homesteads. After passing near the sites of Anderson, Shiro, and Roans Prairie, it turned eastward into what is now Walker County and proceeded across higher ground north of the headwaters of the San Jacinto River. It next passed through the southern part of the future Walker County and rejoined the principal trace at the Battise Village on the west bank of the Trinity River, at a site now in San Jacinto County. Surveyors' field notes for some of the land surveys in this area refer to this trail as the contraband or smugglers' road. The principal Coushatta Trace went across Montgomery County and provided the most direct route from Austin's colony on the Brazos River to the Battise Village. The disadvantage of this route, however, was that it went across the drainage basin of the San Jacinto River, which was difficult to traverse in wet weather. W. P. Zuber, a veteran of the battle of San Jacinto, wrote that his family lived near the Upper Coushatta Trace and used it in the Runaway Scrape in 1836.

This marker is located on Fanthorp St. in Anderson, Texas. Erected April 20, 2008 by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas

William Physick Zuber 1820-1913

PAGE 14 GRIMES COUNTY HISTORICAL COMMISSION NEWSLETTER MAY 2016

COUSHATTA INDIANS. The Coushattas (Koasatis), an important Muskogean-speaking Indian tribe, had moved to village sites near what is now Montgomery, Alabama, when discovered by the French at the beginning of the eighteenth century. This tribe was a member of the Upper Creek (or Muskogee) Confederacy and has always been closely associated with the Alabama (Alibamu) Indian tribe. When the English defeated the French, and the latter began leaving the territory east of the Mississippi River after 1763, many Alabamas and Coushattas left their homes on the Alabama River and migrated to Louisiana. Of several villages the Coushattas established in various sections of Louisiana, the largest was near the mouth of Quicksand Creek on the east bank of the Sabine River about eighty miles south of Natchitoches, Louisiana. In the 1780s the Coushattas began drifting across the border into Spanish Texas. There they were welcomed by the Spanish officials in Nacogdoches, Texas, who expected them to strengthen the bulwark of friendly tribes on the eastern border of Texas. During the early nineteenth century the Coushattas blazed an important trail from their Sabine River village westward to La Bahía. This trail, known as the Coushatta Trace, was a wilderness thoroughfare used by Indians, adventurers, and smugglers journeying between Louisiana and Mexico.

To control this traffic through the heart of Texas, the Spanish posted Coushattas at strategic points along the Trinity River to serve as sentinels and scouts. They were to inform the Spanish in Nacogdoches of any activity on the Coushatta Trace or the Trinity River. In 1830 about 600 Coushattas were living in or near three Coushatta communities, and the population living in independent villages reached its zenith. They hunted, gathered, fished, and farmed, and they traded with white settlers. In what is now San Jacinto County, where the

Coushatta Trace crossed the Trinity River, was the Upper Coushatta Village (Battise Villageqv). This village site was on the opposite side of the Trinity River from the site of Onalaska in Polk County and is now under the waters of Lake Livingston. John R. Swanton quoted William Bollaert's estimate that in 1850 there were 500 Coushatta warriors in the Battise Village and Colita's Village. Long King's Village, the Middle Coushatta village, was at the confluence of Tempe Creek and Long King Creek, in Polk County about two miles north of the present site of Lake Livingston Dam on the Trinity River. This village could be called the headquarters of the Coushatta Tribe: here lived Long King, the principal chief above all other Coushatta chiefs. The village's importance in the Big Thicket during the 1830s was further evidenced by the trails that radiated from it like spokes from the hub of a wheel. The location of Long King's Village is shown on various maps prepared by the General Land Office in Austin. The last in this series of GLO maps indicating the continued existence of this village is dated 1856.

Colita, one of the best-known Indian chiefs in East Texas, lived in the Lower Coushatta Village. He succeeded Long King as principal chief in the latter part of the 1830s. His village was on the Logan league in what is now San Jacinto County, in a great bend of the Trinity River called the Shirt-tail Bend by the steamboat sailors. As indicated in the estimate for the Battise Village, the population of Colita's Village remained at a substantial level until at least 1850. The Coushatta chiefs Long King, Tempe, and Long Tom all had creeks named after them in Polk County. In addition to these chiefs and Colita, other Texas Coushatta chiefs were Ben-Ash, Canasa Gimingu, Chickasaw Abbey, Mingo, Payacho, Pia Mingo, and Usacho. The Coushattas remained neutral during the Texas Revolution at the request of Gen. Sam Houston. But during the Runaway

PAGE 15 GRIMES COUNTY HISTORICAL COMMISSION NEWSLETTER MAY 2016

Scrape, when Texas families fled before Antonio López de Santa Anna's advancing Mexican army, the Coushattas fed and cared for white settlers who surged through their villages. During the early years of the Republic of Texas, Mexican agents tried to incite counterrevolution in several areas and apparently were able to influence Kickapoos and members of other Indian tribes in East Texas. Coushatta chief Colita, however, managed to maintain peaceful relations with the white settlers. Nonetheless, the Coushattas could not entirely avoid the turmoil of the period 1836–39. A Comanche raiding party approached Long King's Village from the north in 1839; in the valley of Long King Creek the Coushattas defeated and turned back the invaders.

For nearly a century after 1763 the Coushattas were compelled to move from one place to another in search of permanent homes. Whenever white men wanted the land on which Coushattas happened to be living, the Indians moved. Their prospects seemed to brighten when the Congress of the Republic of Texas in 1840 granted two leagues of land (including Battise Village and Colita's Village) to the Coushattas for permanent reservations. Though the land was surveyed and the field notes filed, the grants were never made effective because white settlers had already claimed the land. In the 1850s two events further darkened the Coushatta prospects. First, in 1852, Chief Colita died. He had been such an effective leader that the Galveston News editorially lamented his passing. His death left the tribe leaderless at a critical time. Second, the Coushattas failed to obtain land for a reservation. Though the Texas legislature in 1855 granted them 640 acres for a permanent home, suitable land was no longer available in Polk County, and the grant remained only a scrap of paper. Fortunately for the Coushattas, however, their kinsmen, the Alabamas, had received

a grant of Polk County land in 1854. With the permission of the Alabamas, most of the Coushattas settled on this reservation in 1859. A few remained on the site of Colita's Village in San Jacinto County until 1906, when they joined the others on the Polk County reservation.

Colita (Kalita, Coleto, Colluta), Coushatta Indian leader, was born during the mid-1700s, possibly in the village of Coosawda, on the Alabama River near the site of present Montgomery, Alabama. He served first as chief of the Lower Coushatta Village (also known as Colita's Village) on the Trinity River succeeded Long King as principal chief of all the Texas Coushattas after Long King's death around 1838. Among Republic of Texas officials Colita was well known for tribal leadership and for his role in helping to maintain peaceful relations between Indians and white settlers in the lower Trinity River region. When white settlers fleeing eastward along the Coushatta Trace in the Runaway Scrape (1836) reached the Coushatta villages on the Trinity River, Colita directed the Coushattas' efforts to help the settlers cross the river and then to feed them. In a letter to Gen. Sam Houston of August 17, 1838, Samuel C. Hiroms, who lived near Colita's Village and acted as interpreter for him, reported that Colita talked with the Coushattas at Long King's Village to persuade them to remain peaceful. A German traveler, Friedrich W. von Wrede, wrote that while visiting Texas in October 1838, he contacted Colita, who informed him through Hiroms that Houston had directed the Coushatta chief to go to a distant Indian village to warn its inhabitants against participating in the revolt at Nacogdoches.

Colita reported to President Mirabeau B. Lamar, in a letter written for him by Hiroms on June 10, 1839, that difficulties had arisen between Coushattas and their white neighbors. In a letter to Colita on July 9, 1839, Lamar expressed regret that there

PAGE 16 GRIMES COUNTY HISTORICAL COMMISSION NEWSLETTER MAY 2016

had been disturbances between Indians and white settlers, and he announced the appointment of Joseph Lindley as agent for the Coushattas to serve as mediator in all future difficulties that might arise between these groups. On April 4, 1842, President Houston directed Gen. James Davis to visit the Alabamas and Coushattas and assure them of the protection of the Republic of Texas. He specifically asked Davis to send Colita to him for additional discussions of conflicts. Colita continued to serve as leader of the Coushattas until his death on July 7, 1852, while on a hunting trip in the area of present Liberty County. He was thought to be 100 or older. A brief account of the life and death of this prominent Coushatta chief was included in the Texas State Gazette for July 17, 1852. A monument in honor of Colita was placed on Texas Highway 146 twelve miles north of Liberty by the Sophia Lee Harrison Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

This is a cenotaph. Colita died while on a hunting trip in the immediate area and was buried in an unknown location. His name, written as Kalita on the stone, is most commonly spelled Colita but Kalita, Coleto or Colluta has also been used.