Ida Robinson Sedberry

Topic: Early Versions
John Robinson’s sister, Ida, was born in 1874, and married William Sedberry in 1895. [1]  If last names are an indicator, his grandfather was brought from Tennessee by William Rush Sedberry in the winter of 1852–1853. [2]

Rush was born in North Carolina, and moved to Maury County [3] in central Tennessee where he married in 1844. [4]  By 1850, he owned six slaves. [5]  William’s grandfather, Captain Sedberry, and his wife, Polly, are thought to have had two sons by then, Elias Bob, born in 1832, and Clark, born in 1848. [6]  Given the gap between birth dates, there may have been other children, perhaps girls, who were sold or faded into obscurity when they married.

William’s father, Samuel, was born in 1853, apparently just before the move. [7]  He married Martha Barnes, a woman born in Texas. [8]  Rush and Sam Barnes were trustees for Bosque County’s Clifton College where it was organized in 1860. [9]

Sedberry, like John Robinson, was a cook.  When John married in 1906, Ida played the wedding march in the Meridian, Texas, Cumberland Presbyterian church.  Ida and “Basey” held the reception in Alvardao, Texas. [10]  It sat on two railroad lines. [11]

In 1911, Sedberry went by himself to Lubbock to work for the Merrill Hotel, but found the town so hostile, he returned to Waxahachie. [12]  That city was just east of Alvarado, on the same rail lines. [13]

Lubbock was a rail stop on the Llano Estacado, [14] which was founded by men like John Lomax’s father [15] who wanted a “white man’s country” that was not “polluted by a lot of worthless” Blacks. [16]

Farmers had begun growing cotton after the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad came through in 1909. [17]  They depended on Spanish-speaking migratory workers to pick the crops and leave. [18]

This changed in 1919, when demands from World War I led to an expansion of agriculture.  The cotton crop was too large for the existing labor supply, and too valuable to leave in the fields. [19]  In November, “a hundred cotton pickers, mostly Negroes, had arrived in Lubbock.  They were lured to the area by a rumor of high wages.” [20]

Robert Foster noted many stayed “by default; they could do no better than stay and tolerate the anti-Negro sentiment.” [21]  A community began developing along Avenue A, with businesses that served African Americans.  By 1920, there was a café with an adjacent pool hall [22] and a Masonic lodge. [23]  They served the same functions for different groups of mobile men as the Poro Society had among the Mende. [24]

Sedberry returned in 1921 to work for the Merrill Hotel. [25]  Ida joined him in 1923. [26]  Sometime after that, in 1923 or 1924, he had his own café, but apparently continued to work at the hotel. [27]  John’s wife, Ella, remembered Sedberry “was the first black man who had a car” and that he owned his own bakery. [28]

Sedberry bought a lot for a Cumberland Presbyterian Church in 1928, then began raising money for the building. [29]  The congregation was formed in 1933. [30]  John and Ella moved to Lubbock in 1930 while the church was being birthed. [31]

Ida joined John and Ella when they sang “Lord, will you come by here?” for Lomax in 1937.  At the same session, two of Ida’s children, Charles and Maude, recorded two religious songs with Juanita Pollard. [32]  They indicated the third generation of Robinson musicians did not eschew dance music, so long as it had a sacred text. [33]

“I’m on the battlefield for my Lord” was recorded in 1929 by Rev. D. C. Rice and His Sanctified Congregation. [34]  A female soloist sang the verses, and the group joined her on the choruses. [35]  The accompanying instruments, a piano, trumpet, trombone, bass, drums, and triangle, borrowed from contemporary jazz. [36]

“I woke up this mawnin’ with my mind set on Jesus” was more recent.  It had been recorded in 1936 by Roosevelt Graves. [37]  His sang the verses, while his brother, Uaroy, either sang with him, started a beat behind, or made comments.  The blues accompaniment included a guitar and a rhythm instrument. [38]

Charles’ son, Ida’s grandson, carried on the family tradition.  As mentioned in the post for 18 April 2021, he played at John’s funeral in 1952.

William died in 1960, [39] and Ida became the Ruling Elder of the church.  When she passed in 1968, her honorary pallbearers included members of the Heroines of Jericho, [40] a woman’s organization within the Masons. [41]

Graphics
Her photograph appears on the Photos C tab.

End Notes
John Robinson’s wife Ella gave copies of photographs and family papers to the Archives of the Bosque County Historical Commission, Meridian, Texas.  Copies were provided by Bill Calhoon, Manager of Bosque County Collection.

1.  David Sifford.  “Ida Robinson Sedberry.”  Find a Grave website.  2 November 2003.

2.  Ralph O. Bass. “Sedberry Family.”  666 in Bosque County: Land and People.  Edited by Nell Gillam Jensen.  Meridian, Texas: Bosque County History Book Committee, 1985.  “Rush and Caroline brought a number of slaves with them to Bosque County, and many of the descendants carry the name Sedberry today.”

3.  “Sedberry, William Rush (1823–1863).”  Handbook of Texas Online website.
4.  Bass.
5.  William Rush Sedberry, Texas Online.
6.  “‘Captain’ Sedberry.”  Ancestry website.
7.  Captain Sedberry.  Samuel’s last name was spelled “Sadberry.”
8.  “William M. Sedberry.”  Ancestry website.

9.  William C. Pool.  A History of Bosque County Texas.  San Marcos, Texas: San Marcos Record Press, 1954.  64.

10.  Ella Hampton Robinson.  “Eulogy of the late Elder J. M. Robinson by EHR.”  Typed document in Ella Robinson collection.

11.  David Minor.  “Alvarado, TX.”  Handbook of Texas Online website.

12.  Robert L. Foster.  “Black Lubbock: a History of Negroes in Lubbock, Texas, to 1940.”  Master of Arts thesis.  Texas Tech University, December 1974.  38.  His source was Charles Sedberry.  Interview, 8 April 1969.

13.  Margaret L. Felty.  “Waxahachie, TX.”  Handbook of Texas Online website.
14.  Wikipedia.  “Lubbock Texas.”
15. Lomax was quoted in the post for 4 April 2021.

16.  Editorial in Lubbock Avalanche, Lubbock, Texas, 20 January 1910.  Quoted by Foster.  33.

17.  Foster.  27.  The actual railroad, the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway, was a subsidiary of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad Company. [42]

18.  Foster.  30.
19.  Foster.  32.

20.  Foster.  36.  On 13 November 1919, the editor of the Lubbock [Texas] Avalanche wrote: “with the present conditions they have to be endured, so that the great crops of our country can be gathered and sold.  They are here now, hundreds of them, and from the number of wagon loads of cotton coming into town daily, they are gathering the ‘fleecy dough.’”  This was the same year, John Robinson’s crop failed and he and Ella had to pick cotton in the fall for cash. [43]

21.  Foster.  36.
22.  Foster.  42.
23.  Foster.  44.  His source was Ms. Waymon Henry.  Interview, 29 March 1969.

24.  The role of the Poro in a society disrupted by the slave trade is discussed in the post for 31 March 2019.  Betty M. Kuyk discussed Igbo influences in “The African Derivation of Black Fraternal Orders in the United States.”  Comparative Studies in Society and History 25:559–592:1983.

25.  Almo Sedberry, Ida’s son.  Quoted by Katie Parks.  Remember When?: A History of African Americans in Lubbock, Texas.  Lubbock: Texas Tech University, 1999.  39.  He said the rest of the family picked cotton until they got jobs at the hotel.

26.  “Mrs. Sedberry’s Rites Wednesday.”  Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, Lubbock, Texas, 24 June 1968.  39.  Posted online by debrahale55.  24 February 2020.

27.  Foster.  42.  His source was Charles Sedberry.  Interview, 8 April 1969.

28.  Ella Hampton Robinson.  Quoted by Simone Wichers Voss.  “Roots: Bosque County-Style.”  Meridian Tribune, Meridian, Texas, 26 February 2014.  7B.

29.  Foster.  69–70.  His sources were:

Charles Sedberry.  Interview, 8 April 1969.

Messiah United Presbyterian Church.  Program Celebrating the 37th Anniversary, July 5, 1928-July 5, 1965.   Southwest Collection, Texas Tech University.

30.  “Rev. Walker To Be Installed As Messiah Pastor.”  Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, Lubbock, Texas, 27 September 1964.  49.

31.  Ella Hampton Robinson, eulogy.

32.  The list of recordings is from the Library of Congress website.  Pollard read “Man Who Gave Us Christmas” at the Messiah Presbyterian church’s Silver Tree and Silver Offering on 13 December 1939.  Program in Ella Robinson collection.  Maude Marie Sedberry, 1902–1975, married someone named Hamilton.  Charles Ray Sedberry, 1900–1985, [44] worked as a cook at the same hospital John worked from 1926 to 1970. [45]

33.  The post for 18 April 2021 quotes John describing reels as “devil’s music.”

34.  Rev. D. C. Rice and His Sanctified Congregation.  “I’m in the Battlefield for my Lord.”  Vocalion 1262.  Chicago, 22 February 1929.  78 rpm. [46]

35.  The song entered the commercial folk-music revival when Harry Smith issued his Anthology of American Folk Music in 1952 on Folkways as FP 251, FP 252, and FP 253.  In addition to a reissue of that boxed-set by the Smithsonian Institution as SFW4090, Rice’s recording has been reissued by Document Records on Rev D. C. Rice (1928-1930).  Document DOCD-5071.  2002.

Thomas Dorsey published an arrangement in 1946 that credited Sylvania Bell and E. V. Banks. [47]  Estelle Viola McKinley Banks copyrighted the version in 1946.  Her application indicated she wrote the music, Sylvana Bell wrote the lyrics, and Thomas A. Dorsey made the arrangement. [48] After that, it entered the African-American gospel music repertoire.

36.  Jeff Place.  “Annotations.”  Liner notes for Anthology of American Folk Music.  Washington DC: Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 1997.

37.  Roosevelt Graves And Brother.  “Woke Up This Morning (With My Mind On Jesus).”  Perfect 6-11-74.  Hattiesburg, Mississippi, 1936.  78 rpm, shellac. [49]

38.  Graves’ recording has been reissued by Document Records on Blind Roosevelt Graves (1929-1936).  Document DOCD 5105.  1992.  Robert Wesby revised it as “woke up this morning with my mind stayed on freedom” [50] in 1962. [51]

39.  David Sifford.  “William Sedberry.”  Find a Grave website.  2 November 2003.
40.  Ida Robinson Sedberry, obituary.

41.  “Is the Order of the Eastern Star the oldest American Masonic organization for women?”  Scottish Rite Masons website.  “The degree was almost destroyed during the anti-Masonic period, but it is still worked by Prince Hall Royal Arch Masons and their relatives.”

42.  George C. Werner.  “Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway.”  Handbook of Texas Online website.

43.  See post for 18 April 2021.
44.  “William M. Sedberry,” Ancestry website.

45.  Charles R. Sedberry.  Interviewed by Bobby Weaver.  31 January 1979.  Texas Tech University, Southwest Collections website.

46.  Place.

47.  Sylvania Bell and E. V. Banks.  “I’m on the Battle-field for My Lord.”  Chicago: Thos A. Dorsey, 1946.  Listed in index to “Luvenia A. George Collection.”  Indiana University website.

48.  E. Banks.  “I am on the battle-field for my Lord.”  2 March 1946.  United States Copyright Office.  Catalog of Copyright Entries.  Third Series.  January-June 1950.  14.

49.  Discogs entry, and liner notes to Document Records reissue by Ken Romanowski.
50.  Wikipedia.  “Woke Up This Morning (With My Mind Stayed On Freedom).”

51.  “Woke Up This Morning With My Mind on Freedom.”  The Traditional Ballad Index.  California State University-Fresno website.  Version 4.5.

John Robinson

Topic: Early Versions
John M. Robinson was born in 1877, [1] just after the close of Reconstruction. [2]  When he was 14, younger than when his uncle John was leased to work as a slave in 1860, [3] this John was working in a private residence where he was taught to cook. [4]  That was 1891, just as Jim Crow laws were beginning to be passed by Southern states. [5]

Fifteen years later, in 1906, he married Ella Hampton.  His obituary said he had worked as a cook in hotels in Texas and New Mexico, and on railway dining cars. [6]  This must have occurred while he was single.  When he married he was working in a hotel in Ballinger, [7] Texas.  The town was located on the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railroad line from Galveston to Santa Fé. [8]

The couple returned to Meridian in 1907, where John’s older brother Pete wanted him to help with his cotton crop.  It failed in the drought, and John and Ella picked cotton in the fall “to make payment on the lumber to build our house.”  John and Frank Crawford also built all the city’s culverts the same year. [9]

John’s sister Josie [10] may have married George Clyde Crawford. [11]  After she died in 1896, Crawford apparently married John’s younger sister Lula. [12]  Frank may have been a son, brother, or other relative of George’s.

The financial Panic of 1907 closed in, and the Robinsons moved to Austin in 1908 where John worked as a porter in the state senate.  Ella was hired as a nurse-maid. [13]

The Robinsons were able to return to Meridian in 1909 [14] where George Campbell was planing a school to train Methodists ministers. [15]  John and Frank Crawford were hired by the masonry contractors. [16]  When the school opened, John became the cook and Ella did laundry. [17]

Meridian College closed in 1927, after three fires and low attendance. [18]  John went to Waco to work for the Spring Lake Country Club.  The economy crashed in 1929, and the Robinsons moved to Lubbock [19] where his sister Ida was living. [20]  He first worked in a dormitory at Texas Technological College, then was the cook for West Texas Hospital. [21]

The Robinson family began receiving outside recognition in the mid-1930s.  John’s grandmother was interviewed by a representative from the Federal Writers Project for the WPA collection of slave narratives in 1936. [22]  John Lomax recorded John’s singing in Lubbock in 1937. [23]

Perhaps more important, Lomax selected two of the recordings by John for a BBC series on American music: [24] “Soon be done with the troubles of the world” and “Wade in the Water.” [25]  These two, plus two other songs John recorded, “When I was sinking down” and “As I went in the valley to pray” were collected by Fisk University. [26]

This doesn’t imply John learned them from concerts by the Fisk Jubilee Students.  Instead, it suggests a cultural continuity between his Colored Cumberland Presbyterian church community, rooted in the Cane Ridge revival, and Nashville, Tennessee, where the Fisk is located and the songs were collected.

“Wade,” along with two other songs John recorded, “Do Lord” and “Lord, will you come by here?” were included in an anthology published by the National Baptist Convention in 1927. [27]  Robinson didn’t learn them from the songbook.  He told a Lubbock reporter in 1938 he learned his songs at camp meetings. [28]

In Lubbock, the African-American churches were not strongly sectarian in the 1930s.  Robert Foster said “when one church would have a special function, all blacks attended.  This was especially true of revivals, which were usually non denominational.” [30]  Thus a Presbyterian could learn a Baptist song, and then pass it on at a Presbyterian meeting.

John told the reporter that he didn’t sing “devil songs.”  These were the ones “not permitted at church services.  Other names given them are ‘sinful’ and ‘reels’.” [31]  Still John knew them, perhaps from his father. [32]  He recorded “Dan Tucker” and “Old Aunt Dinah” for Lomax.

John turned 65 in 1942, and returned to Meridian. [33]  In June 1944, Ella staged a recital by her piano students.  World War II still was being fought, and John sang a popular song [34] recorded in 1942 by Lucky Millinder, “When The Lights Go On Again.” [35]  The other side of the 78 rpm record featured Rosetta Tharpe singing a humorous warning to the unsaved. [36]

John was an elder in the Meridian church, [37] but he also was active in local fraternal organizations.  He joined the Masons in 1912, and the Ancient Order of Pilgrims in 1917. [38]  The mutual benefit society was reorganized as the Progressive Order in 1932, [39] and he became a trustee of its Supreme Home. [40]

He died in 1952 soon after celebrating his 75th birthday. [41]  Ella remembered:

“He always wanted a beautiful home.  A home with a lawn, trees, and shubbery, and never wanted a tree cut-down.  His last work on earth was the planting of a hedge around our home.” [42]

At his funeral, Odessa Wyant and Ida’s grandson, Charles Sedberry, Jr., played “He will make it plain,” “What a friend,” and “Asleep in Jesus.” [43]  The first was included in the standard collection of Isaac Watts hymns used in this country. [44]  The second was popularized by Ira D. Sankey in 1875. [45]  The tune for the last, written by William Bradbury in 1843, became associated with Margaret Mackay’s text [46] in an 1862 collection of Sunday school songs. [47]

In addition, three women [48] sang more recent songs: the 1894 “Only a look” from the Methodist Holiness tradition, [49] the 1904 “God will take care” by a convert to the Disciples of Christ, [50] and “He’ll Understand,” which was introduced at the 1933 National Baptist convention in 1933 by Lucie Eddie Campbell. [51]  The other solo, [52] “The day is passed and gone” was included in one of the earliest hymnals produced by Presbyterians influenced by Cane Ridge. [53]

Graphics
1.  Peter Robinson and his five sons.  Ella Robinson collection.  Reproduced in June Rayfield Welch.  People and Places in the Texas Past.  Dallas: G. L. A. Press, 1974.  107.

2.  “John M. & Ella Robinson Home.”  Ella Robinson collection.

3.  John Robinson’s picture appears on the Photos C tab.

End Notes
Robinson’s wife Ella gave copies of photographs, family papers, and John’s funeral book to the Archives of the Bosque County Historical Commission, Meridian, Texas.  Copies were provided by Bill Calhoon, Manager of Bosque County Collection.

1.  “John Robinson, Pioneer Chef, Rites at Meridian.”  Clipping in John Robinson funeral book; only the year, 1952, was penciled in.  The “M” was never identified.

2.  Reconstruction formally ended when Rutherford B. Hayes ordered the Federal army to leave the South on 31 March 1877. [54]

3.  John’s family is discussed in the post for 11 April 2021.
4.  John Robinson, obituary.

5.  The first law ordering segregation by railroads and streetcars was passed by Florida in 1887. [55]  In 1890, Mississippi was the first Southern state to rewrite its Reconstruction era constitution to disenfranchise African Americans.  In Plessy vs Ferguson, the Supreme Court upheld the doctrine of separate but equal in 1896. [56]  The impact of these laws on African-American regional religious meetings is documented in the post for 15 March 2020.

6.  John Robinson, obituary.

7.  Ella Hampton Robinson.  “Eulogy of the late Elder J. M. Robinson by EHR.”  Typed document in Ella Robinson collection.

8.  Kathryn Pinkney.  “Ballinger, TX.”   Handbook of Texas Online website.
9.  Ella Robinson, eulogy.

10.  Rebecca Radde.  “Robinson, Priscilla.”  634 in Bosque County: Land and People.  Edited by Nell Gillam Jensen.  Meridian, Texas: Bosque County History Book Committee, 1985.

11.  This is a surmise.  Josephine Crawford is identified as the wife of G. C. Crawford from her monument in the cemetery.  Her parents are not named. [57]  One daughter, Comail, married a Robinson, but her Find a Grave entry doesn’t name her spouse. [58]

12.  Lula Robinson isn’t identified as Crawford’s wife, [59] but her birth and death dates are the same as those of Lula Crawford. [60]

13.  Ella Robinson, eulogy.
14.  Ella Robinson, eulogy.

15.  H. Allen Anderson.  “Meridian Junior College.”  Handbook of Texas Online website.  15 June 2010.

16.  Ella Robinson, eulogy.  Frank died “a week after it was completed.”
17.  Radde.
18.  Anderson.
19.  John Robinson, obituary.

20.  “Mrs. Sedberry’s Rites Wednesday.”  The Lubbock [Texas] Avalanche-Journal.  24 June 1968.  39.  Posted by debrahale55 on 24 February 2020.

21.  John Robinson, obituary.

22.  See the post for 11 April 2021 for more details.  The Lubbock newspaper said “Aunt Miriah was photographed and interviewed by an Avalanche-Journal reporter when she came here last spring for a church convention.” [61]  This could be the source for the unpublished WPA interview, or it could have been the original one.

23.  The list of recordings is from the Library of Congress website.  The WPA Project prepared the notes.

24.  “Voice of Ex-Meridian Negro To Be Heard on British Broadcasts.”  [Lubbock, Texas] Evening Journal.  Clipping in Ella Robinson collection; internal evidence suggests it was published in 1938.

25.  John Robinson, obituary.

26.  “Soon-a Will Be Done.”  15 in Folk Songs of the American Negro.  Edited by Frederick J. Work and John Wesley Work.  Nashville: 1907.

“Wade in the Water.”  8–9 in New Jubilee Songs.  Edited by Frederick J. Work.  Nashville: Fisk University, 1902.   He said it was “a favorite among Southern Baptists while a baptism is in progress.”  This was brought to by attention by Steve Sullivan.  “Wade in the Water (1965)—Staple Singers.”  387 in Encyclopedia of Great Popular Song Recordings.  Lanham, Maryland: Rowan and Littlefield, volumes 3 and 4, 2017.  I haven’t been able to locate a copy or table of contents of the Work collection.

“When I was sinking down” is the second verse of “Wondrous Love.”   The shape-note song was popularized by William Walker’s The Southern Harmony [62] in 1835.  John W. Work arranged it for the Fisk Jubilee Singers around 1954. [63]

“As I went in the valley to pray” [64] was collected as “The Good Old Way” by George Heyward Allan in Nashville, Tennessee, [65] in 1865, when he was the General Relief Agent there for the American Union Commission. [66]  It was included in Slave Songs of the United States in 1867 [68] and sung by the Fisk Jubilee Singers in the 1880s as “Come, Let Us All Go Down.” [69]

27.  Edward Boatner.  Spirituals Triumphant Old and New. Nashville, Tennessee: National Baptist Convention, Sunday School Publishing Board, 1927 edition. “Wade in the Water,” 37; “Do, Lord, Remember Me,” 54, and “Now is the Needy Time,” 16.

28.  Evening Journal.

30.  Robert L. Foster.  “Black Lubbock: a History of Negroes in Lubbock, Texas, to 1940.”  Master of Arts thesis.  Texas Tech University, December 1974.  68–69.

31.  Evening Journal.
32.  Peter’s fiddle playing is mentioned in the post for 11 April 20121.
33.  John Robinson, obituary.  It said he “came back to spend his retired years.”
34.  “Recital.”  Typed program, 9 June 1944.  Ella Robinson collection.

35.  Lucky Millinder And His Orchestra.  “When The Lights Go On Again.”  Decca 18496, A side.  Shellac, 1942.  [Discogs entry.]  There were other recordings, including one by Vaughn Monroe in 1943, [70] but the one by African-American artists seems the one most likely to have been heard by John.

36.  Lucky Millinder And His Orchestra With Rosetta Tharpe.  “That’s All.”  Decca 18496, B side.  Shellac, 1942.  [Discogs entry.]

37.  Ella Robinson, eulogy.

38.  John Robinson, obituary. The order sent two representatives from Houston to his funeral.

39.  Ron Bass.  “Ancient Order of Pilgrims.”  Handbook of Texas Online website.
40.  John Robinson, obituary.
41.  John Robinson, obituary.
42.  Ella Robinson, eulogy.
43.  John Robinson, funeral book.

44.  “God moves in a mysterious way.”  548 in The Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs of the Rev. Isaac Watts.  Edited by Samuel M. Worcester.  Boston: Crocker and Brewster, 1848.  It was written in 1774 by William Cowper. [71]

45.  H. Bonar and Charles C. Converse. “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”  30 in Gospel Hymns and Sacred Songs.  Edited by P. P. Bliss and Ira D. Sankey.  New York: Biglow and Main, 1875.  The text actually was written by Joseph Medlicott Scriven.  This was brought to my attention by Donald P.  Hustad.  Dictionary-Handbook to Hymns for the Living Church.  Carol Stream, Illinois: Hope Publishing, 1978.  147.

46.  “Asleep in Jesus! Blessed Sleep.” Hymnary website.  It was written in 1832 and published in the Watts collection in 1848. [72]

47.  Wm B. Bradbury.  “Rest.”  39 in Bradbury’s Golden Shower of S. S. Melodies.  Edited by William B. Bradbury.  New York: Ivison, Phinney, Blakeman, and Company, 1862.  The subtitle was “Asleep in Jesus.”  This collection is mentioned in the post for 28 October 2020.

48.  John Robinson, funeral book.  They were Mrs. R. V. Haliburton of Waco, Texas; Mrs. Kemp Houston, and Mrs. Guy Eula Rogers of Abilene, Texas.

49.  Fred S. Shepard and W. A. Ogden.  “Only a Look!”  157 in Pentecostal Hymns.  Edited by Henry Date, Elisha A. Hoffman, and J. H. Tenney.  Chicago: Hope Publishing Company, 1894.  This collection and its role in the Holiness tradition is discussed in the post for 9 August 2020.

50.  Civilla D. Martin.  “God Will Take Care of You.”  Songs of Redemption and Praise.  Edited by John A. Davis, W. Stillman Martin, and C. D. Martin.  Chicago: Bilhorn Brothers, 1905. [73]  She first married a Congregational minister, then Stillman Martin, who was a Baptist one.  In 1916, they joined the Disciples. [74]

51.  Lucie Eddie Campbell.  “He’ll Understand and Say Well Done.”  1933.  It wasn’t published until later.  [Hymnary entry.]

52.  John Robinson, funeral book.  She was Mrs. Johnnie Bell of Cleburne, Texas.

53.  “The Day is Passed and Gone.”  233 in The Christian Hymn-Book.  Cincinnati: Looker and Wallace, 1815 edition. [75]  The text was written by John Leland in 1792. [76]

54.  Wikipedia.  “Reconstruction Era.”

55.  C. Vann Woodward.  “The Case of the Louisiana Traveler.”  University of Minnesota, Department of Sociology website.

56.  Wikipedia.  “Jim Crow Laws.”

57.  Linda Huff.  “Josephine Crawford.”  Find a Grave website.  15 March 2008.  Last updated by Abby Streight Birdwell.

58.  Linda Huff.  “Comail Crawford Robinson.”  Find a Grave website.  15 March 2008.  Last updated by Abby Streight Birdwell.

59.  “Crawford, Lula.”  In Texas Gen Website page for “Meridian Cemetery, A-F.”

60.  Linda Huff.  “Peter Robinson Jr.”  Find a Grave website.  15 March 2008.  Last updated by Abby Streight Birdwell.  She is listed as Lula Robinson.

61.  Evening Journal.

62.  C. Michael Hawn.  “History of Hymns: ‘What Wondrous Love Is This’.”  The United Methodist Church Discipleship Ministries website.  Walker is mentioned in the post for 21 December 2017.

63.  The Fisk Jubilee Singers.  The Gold and Blue Album.  Folkways 2372.  Vinyl LP, 1955.  John W. Work, director.

64.  These references were brought to my attention by Wikipedia.  “Down in the River to Pray.”

65.  William Francis Allen.  “Introduction.”  The Slave Songs of the United States.  Edited by Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison.  New York: A. Simpson and Company, 1867.  xli.

66.  “George Hayward Allan.”  The New England Historical and Genealogical Register 40:411:1886.  The complete entry is not available on line.  The American Union Commission evolved into the American Freedmen’s Bureau. [67]

67.  Wikipedia.  “Lyman Abbott.”
68.  Allen.  84.  This collection is mentioned in the post for 20 September 2018.

69.  “Come, Let Us All Go Down.”  156 in J. B. T. Marsh.  The Story of the Jubilee Singers.  Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1880 revised edition.

70.  Wikipedia.  “When the Lights Go On Again.”
71.  “God Moves in a Mysterious Way.”  Hymnary website.
72.  Worcester.  759.  The suggested tune was “Federal St.”
73.  Hustad.  143.
74.  “Civilla D. Martin.”  Hymnary website.

75.  “Hymnals of the Stone-Campbell Movement.”  Lincoln Christian University website.  It was edited by John Thompson, who later rejoined the Presbyterians.  Three denominations emerged after Cane Ridge: the Cumberland Presbyterians, the Disciples of Christ, and the Christian Church.  The last two merged, and other smaller groups like that of Thompson existed briefly.  The song continued to be included in  Disciples of Christ hymnals.

76.  “Evening Song.”  Hymnary website.

John, Ella, and Ida Robinson - Lord, Will You Come by Here

 

Topic: Early Versions
John Lomax recorded a version of “Come by Here” in 1937 from a man raised in Meridian, Texas, the county seat of Bosque County where Lomax lived as a child. [1]  The owners of both of John Robinson’s parents were men moving to Texas under clouded conditions.

Robinson’s grandmother, Priscilla, was born in Alabama about 1819. [2]  Her owner, Ridley Robinson, was taking her, her four sons, and some cattle to California when he died in a fight with a Mexican in Bosque County in 1860. [3]  His motives are unknown.  If he were taking just cattle with a couple hands, one may guess he was hoping to profit from the provisions trade in mining areas.

The alternative is that he was rushing to move his assets from the South before war began.  In 1860, John’s father Peter was 34 years old and his uncle John was 16.  Zachiariah was the youngest, and Jack’s birth date is unknown. [4]

Seven years earlier, in 1853, the owner of John’s mother, Mariah, gave her to his daughter when she married.  Her husband was living in Bosque County at the time, and Josephine, Mariah, and Mariah’s aunt and uncle followed him west. [5]  The slaves were seized in New Orleans because “our massa, Massa Bob Young, he a cotton buyer and he done left Georgia without payin’ a cotton debt and dey holds us for dat.” [6]

Josephine’s father, Warren Jordan Hill, was the son of Theophilus Hill who received a headright grant for 15 people in Georgia in the late 1790s.  The count included himself, his wife, five children, and eight slaves, who would have been acquired when the Atlantic slave trade was legal.  He died in 1829 with 42 slaves. [7]  Warren may have been given some by his father, or acquired Josephine’s mother from domestic sellers in Georgia.

Ridley’s death didn’t free his slaves.  They were taken to Meridian where a court-appointed administrator hired them out on one-year contracts.  Robinson’s father, Peter, always worked for Allison Nelson, [8] an Atlanta lawyer who had moved to Meridian in 1856.  After Nelson died from typhoid fever in the Confederate army in 1862, [9] his widow continued to lease him. [10]

Life for Mariah and Peter was easier than it was for slaves in Sumter County.  She said she was “a house-girl an stay’d in de house; nebber did stay out in de slave quarters” [11] in Georgia.  When she was in Texas,

“de slaves was allowed to visit at a set time, usually Saturday night an’ Sunday after noon.” [12] Peter and his brother John [13] were fiddlers who played “foh both whites an’ blacks to dance all over de country.” [14]

Mariah remembered “Dere was quite a bunch of us an’ in de meantime durin de war I met Peter Robinson.  We had a court-ship an got married after gettin’ permission from each of our bosses.  We was married by Ceasar Berry (a slave of Buck Berry, an a colored preacher).” [15]

Reconstruction was almost as ugly in Texas as it was in Alabama. [16]  In early 1870, after Republicans had won the state elections, an Austin newspaper reported “Bosque County was averaging two killings each week.” [17]

It must have been at this time that Peter was a teacher, registrar, trustee assigned to aiding war widows, and a representative in the state legislature. [18]  He survived, bought land, and built a house in 1872. [19]  However, Mariah recalled “twice we was burnt out in de same place.” [20]

While Sumter County closed its boundaries, outsiders continued to move into Bosque County.  In 1878, James Sadler, two brothers and a sister came from Tennessee and founded what became the African-American colony of Rock Springs. [21]

They were members of the Colored Cumberland Presbyterian church.  As mentioned in the post for 28 August 2019, the parent body was formed in 1810 after the Cane Ridge revival by individuals who valued religious experience over seminary education, and sang hymns as well as psalms.  African Americans departed in 1874. [22]

Sadler was a preacher who organized his own church. [23]  He also helped Peter establish a Cumberland Presbyterian church in Meridian. [24]  Mariah remembered “we use to go to de church annual meetins’ in covered wagons.” [25]

Peter and Mariah had ten children. [26]  Their daughter Ida married William Sedberry in 1896.  John married Ella Hampton in 1906.  Her mother had been brought to Texas from Tennessee. [27]

Notes on Performers
John Robinson [28]
1877 Born in Bosque County, Texas
1952 Die in Meridian, Texas

Ella Hampton Robinson [29]
1885 Ella Hampton born in Bosque County, Texas
1906 Ella marry John Robinson in Meridian, Texas, become Ella Robinson
1984 Ella Robinson die in Meridian, Texas

Ida Robinson Sedberry [30]
1874    Ida Robinson born in Bosque County, Texas, sister of John
1896    Ida Robinson marry William M. Sedberry, become Ida R. Sedberry
1968    Ida Sedberry die in Lubbock, Texas

Availability
John Robinson, Ella Robinson, and Ida Sedbury. [31]  “Lord, Will You Come by Here.”  Collected by John Lomax in Lubbock, Texas, 19 January 1937.  Archive of American Folk Song.

Graphics
1.  Mariah Hill Robinson with her daughter Lula.  Ella Robinson collection.  Reproduced in June Rayfield Welch.  People and Places in the Texas Past.  Dallas: G. L. A. Press, 1974.  107.

2.  Home of Peter and Mariah Robinson.  Ella Robinson collection.  Reproduced by Welch.  105.

3.  Photographs of John, Ella, and Ida appear on the Photos C tab.

End Notes
Ella Robinson gave copies of photographs and family papers to the Archives of the Bosque County Historical Commission, Meridian, Texas.  Copies were provided by Bill Calhoon, Manager of Bosque County Collection.

1.  The Lubbock [Texas] Evening Journal reported: “Despite the fact that both Lomax and John spent their early childhoods at Meridian, it was only by chance that the former got recordings here of the negro’s voice.” [32]

2.  Rebecca Raddle.  “Robinson, Priscilla.”  634 in Bosque County: Land and People.  Meridian: Bosque County History Book Committee, 1985.

3.  Mariah Robinson.  Interview by the Federal Writers Project for the WPA’s Slave Narratives collection from Texas, volume 3.  Washington: Library of Congress, 1941. [33]

4.  Ages based on dates in Find a Grave entries for the Meridian Cemetery in Meridian, Texas.

5.  There’s no indication if “uncle” and “aunt” were blood or communal titles.

6.  Robinson, published version.  Young’s father went to New Orleans to settle the matter.

7.  Lodowick Johnson Hill, Sr.  The Hills of Wilkes County, Georgia and Allied Families.  Atlanta, Georgia: Johnson-Dallas Company, 1922.  He said Theophilus received a “bounty grant” between 1794 and 1800.  Alex Hitz said those had expired, but the Bounty Reserve was opened to headright settlers between 1790 and 1796. [34]

8.  Raddle.

9.  Thomas W. Cutrer.  “Nelson, Allison.”  Handbook of Texas Online website.  15 June 2010; last updated 26 November 2014.

10.  Raddle.

11.  Mariah Robinson.  Interview by the Federal Writers Project that was not included in the published volume, but has been posted on s website as “Robinson, Mariah TX-3 35380.”

12.  Robinson, unpublished version.
13.  Raddle.
14.  Robinson, unpublished version.  I assume they learned while they were in Alabama.
15.  Robinson, unpublished version.

16.  One reason for the differences between the two states was the responses of the Republican governors.  In Alabama, William Hugh Smith “rejected close identification with freed people,” and made reconciliation with whites his “basic priority.”  Michael Fitzgerald said “he denied reports of Klan activity, refused to arm a state militia, and opposed federal antiterrorist legislation, even after it became clear that local officials were thoroughly intimidated.” [35]

In Texas, Allen Trelease said Edmund Jackson Davis organized a state police force that included all county officials.  “Between July 1870 and December 1871 the state police arrested 4,580 persons, 829 of them for murder or attempted murder.” [36]

17.  [Austin, Texas] Daily State Journal.  Cited by “History of Bosque County.”  Bosque County website.

19.  Robinson, unpublished version.
19.  Calculated date.
20.  Robinson, unpublished version.

21.  Gordon Nowlin.  “James B. Sadler.”  Website for the Historical Foundation of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church and the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in America.

22.  Wikipedia.  “Cumberland Presbyterian Church in America.”
23.  Nowlin.
24.  Robinson, published version.
25.  Robinson, unpublished version.
26.  Robinson, published version.

27.  “Annie Elizabeth Hampton.”  Obituary.  Probably 1911.  Copy in Ella Robinson collection.

28.  “John Robinson, Pioneer Chef, Rites at Meridian.”  Obituary.  1952.  Copy in Ella Robinson collection.

29.  “Ella Robinson.”  Obituary.  Meridian [Texas] Tribune.  15 November 1985.  5.  Copy in Ella Robinson collection.

30.  David Sifford.  “Ida Robinson Sedberry.”  Find a Grave website.  2 November 2003.

31.  This is the spelling used by the Archives.

32.  “Voice of Ex-Meridian Negro To Be Heard on British Broadcasts.”  The Lubbock [Texas] Evening Journal.  1938.  Clipping in Ella Robinson collection; date from internal evidence.

33.  For more information on the WPA Slave Narratives project, see the post for 23 January 2019.

34.  Alex M. Hitz.  “Georgia Bounty Land Grants.”  The Georgia Historical Quarterly 38:337–348:1954.  344.

35.  Michael W. Fitzgerald.  “Congressional Reconstruction in Alabama.”  Encyclopedia of Alabama website.  11 August 2008; last updated 24 October 2017.

36.  Allen W. Trelease.  White Terror.  New York: Harper and Row, 1971; paperback edition issued by Louisiana State University Press of Baton Rouge in 1995.  148.

Gone to Texas

Topic: Early Versions
One popular narrative from the Reconstruction years in Alabama is that whites were so disgruntled with Republican rule that they abandoned the state.  A 1905 state history said:

“There were two movements of emigration from the state — culminating in 1869 and in 1873-1874.  Those were the gloomiest periods of Reconstruction, especially for the white man in the Black Belt.  Most of the emigrants went to Texas, others to Mexico, to Brazil, to the North, and to Tennessee and Georgia, where the whites were in power.  It was estimated that in this emigration the state lost more of its population than by war.” [1]

Sumter County’s white population fell about 12% in the 1860s. [2]  Part of that came from the deaths of soldiers, and part from the low birth rate during the war when young men were away.  Among the wealthiest planters, 43% held onto their positions, compared with 52% in the previous decade. [3]

The image of Texas as a refuge developed during the Texas Republic, which lasted from 1836 to 1845. [4]  During the hard times that followed the economic crash of 1837, this was a place men could migrate beyond the reach of United States law.  Joseph Baldwin compared local men hurt by the panic with a version of this stereotype known in Gainesville, Alabama, in the early 1850s:

“If he made a bad bargain, how could he expect to get rid of it?  He knew nothing of the elaborate machinery of ingenious chicane,—such as feigning bankruptcy—fraudulent conveyances—making over to his wife—running property—and had never heard of such tricks of trade as sending out coffins to the graveyard, with negroes inside, carried off by sudden spells of imaginary disease, to be ‘resurrected,’ in due time, grinning, on the banks of the Brazos.” [5]

Baldwin was describing James Hamilton, a Charleston, South Carolina, planter who fancied himself a financier: he owned sixteen plantations in four states in 1836 and all were mortgaged. [6]  After the panic, he stopped paying debts. [7]  He had illegally used money from his wife’s trust, and, in 1843, he had her sue him to protect the assets from his creditors. [8]

The same year he moved to a cotton plantation in Russell County, Alabama, near the Georgia line.  The 6,000 acres were actually a business partnership that owned the 300 slaves.  During the drought of 1845, he took some slaves to his Texas plantation near Stephen Austin’s colony at the mouth of Brazos, which was another partnership.  His first attempts at processing sugar failed.  He sold more land, and moved 130 more slaves to Brazoria County.  Six banks had mortgages on them. [9]

Once Texas was admitted into the union, and a reliable state government established, people from Sumter County began migrating there.  The first went to Panola County, the northern blue circle on the map.  In the 1850s, represented by the red circles, they moved farther inland.  For the most part, these were families that had fewer resources than Hamilton, and each son moved to new land.  When Elisha Lacy died in 1862, he left four children in Sumter County; two in Rankin County, Mississippi; two in Caddo County, Louisiana, just east of Panola County, Texas; and one in Grimes County, Texas, the central green dot. [10]

 

We know people went to Texas after the Civil War to avoid dealing with large numbers of Freedmen.  John Lomax’s father said he left Mississippi for Bosque County, Texas, “to get away from the wreck of the war, and take my young family out of a state of society that can only be expressed by the word ‘chaos.’  The ruling classes possessing all the culture and intelligence were financially ruined, and the State was in the hands of unscrupulous ‘carpet baggers’ and ignorant negroes.  I did not wish my family raised in contact with the negroes, either as slaves or as ‘freed-men’.” [11]

In Sumter County, Nelle Jenkins said planters around Sumterville “sold out and moved west after the slaves were freed.”  However, the reason wasn’t simply bigotry: “the top soil was washed off the hills so the bare lime rock was in evidence everywhere.” [12]  Crops in the state failed in 1865, 1866, and 1867. [13]

This was the period when Texas went from stereotype to metaphor.  The Sumter County sheriff told Congressional investigators in 1871 that he thought W. J. Prater, who was charged with murdering a Freedman and was liberated from jail by a mob, “is in Texas or somewhere else, God Almighty knows where.” [14]  Later, he said a newspaper reported man “taken from the jail in Sumter County, went to Texas and died there, but I don’t believe he was any more dead than I am, and I am a right sharp living man.” [15]

The Texas constitution of 1845 guaranteed the existence of slavery.  Everyone who could took those he owned with him.  There were some slaves brought from New Orleans, and the Caribbean, but most slave communities didn’t change much in Texas. [16]

The largest slave owners monopolized the rich bottom lands near the coast. [17]  The lands settled by migrants from Sumter County tended to be like those they knew in Alabama, rolling plains with post oak vegetation. [18]  Most lived in counties where whites were 50 to 70% of the population in 1860. [19]

More than 50% of the early settlers in Texas were from Alabama, Tennessee, and Mississippi.  Barnes Lathrop said each group favored a different part of the state, with those from Alabama moving to the upper eastern and central counties. [20]  Part of this, at least for individuals from Sumter County, was the result of people moving to places they had heard about from kinfolk who stayed in Alabama.

For instance, Lacy’s brother, Martin, [21] was a pioneer settler in Smith County, [22] just west of Panola County were Elisha’s son William was living in 1842. [23]  William apparently moved back to Louisiana, [24] while his brother Thomas went down to Grimes County. [25]  Meantime, Jenkins said some “Yarbroughs all went to Smith County, Texas and lived as neighbors to George, Wiley, Burk and other Littleton Yarbrough (of St. Clair County, Alabama) children who called each other ‘cousin’.” [26]

Sumter County’s slaves came from Virginia or the Carolinas.  Many of the slaves in Tennessee and Mississippi came from Kentucky.  This created an opportunity for more cultural exchange after Emancipation than occurred in Sumter County, but most probably lived in homogenous communities before.

Abner Strobel has researched the first Texas settlements along the lower Brazos River, and noted the persistence of early differences in slave communities.  He said of Hamilton’s plantation: “You could tell his slaves by their politeness and courtly manners.” [27]  At least some of these must have come from his wife’s rice plantations where Gullah was spoken.

Graphics
Locations of Migrants from Sumter County, Alabama, to Texas.
Blue: 1840s
Red: 1850s
Green: 1860s

Base map:  David Benbennick.  “Map of Texas.”  Wikimedia Commons.  12 February 2006.

End Notes
1.  Walter L. Fleming.  Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama.  New York: The Macmillan Company, 1905.  769.

2.  My calculation.

3.  Jonathan M. Wiener.  “Planter Persistence and Social Change: Alabama, 1850-1870.”  The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 7:235–260:1976.  247.  He defined persistence as the appearance of the same family name in two consecutive census reports.  He admitted this understated persistence because lands that passed through daughters were difficult to detect.  Inheritance by daughters would have been greater after sons were killed in the war.  By comparison, the persistence rate was lower than in other parts of the country.

4.  Wikipedia.  “History of Texas.”

5.  Joseph G. Baldwin.  “How the Times Served the Virginians.”  72–105 in The Flush Times of Alabama and Mississippi.  New York: D. Appleton, 1853; 1858 edition.  93.

6.  William A Behan.  Short History of Callawassie Island, South Carolina.  New York: iUniverse, 2004.  42.

7.  Behan.  43.

8.  Robert Tinkler.  James Hamilton of South Carolina.  Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2004.  213.

9.  Tinkler.  On move to Alabama, 213; on Alabama plantation, 213, 214-215; on drought and first sugar crop, 217; on move of slaves to avoid creditors, 231; on ownership of moved slaves, 232.

10.  Nelle Morris Jenkins.  Pioneer Families of Sumter County, Alabama.  Tuscaloosa, Alabama: Willo Publishing Company, 1961.  Reprinted by Bloutsville, Alabama: The Yarbrough National Genealogical and Historical Association, 14 June 2015.  142–143.  Other information on the migration of individuals from Sumter County to Texas was found by searching Jenkins’ document for the word “Texas.”  There were many references, but not many with both a date and location.

11.  John Avery Lomax.  “Recollections of J. A. Lomax, as Dictated to W. F. Graves.”  142–146 in Joseph Lomax.  Genealogical and Historical Sketches of the Lomax Family.  Grand Rapids, Michigan: The Rookus Printing House, 1894.  144.

12.  Jenkins.  18.

13.  Michael W. Fitzgerald.  “Congressional Reconstruction in Alabama.”  Encyclopedia of Alabama website.  11 August 2008; last updated 24 October 2017.

14.  Allen E. Moore.  Testimony, Livingston, Alabama.  20 October 1871.  United States Congress.  Joint Select Committee.  The Condition of Affairs in Late Insurrectionary States.  Alabama.  Volume III.  Washington: Government Printing Office, 1872.  1576.

15.  Moore.  1577.  Thomas Cobbs was hired to defend Prater.  He described him as “a drunken maniac.  He came from Mississippi here.” [28]  Most likely he was William Jabel Praytor, who Robert Spratt said was a member of “a purely social organization of unmarried men known” that included Spratt’s father and Cobbs.  It formed “just after the Civil War.” [29]  Jabe’s father and older brother died in the war.  His younger brother rose in the planter aristocracy when he married a granddaughter of John Evander Brown. [30]  His own position fell: he worked as a mail clerk. [31]  As mentioned in the post for 20 September 2020, African-American railroad employees were being driven from their jobs at this time.  Jabe may have been living in Mississippi then, since Meridian was the rail center.  His descendants believe he died in Birmingham in 1878 at age 28. [32]

16.  Randolph B. Campbell.  “Slavery.”  Handbook of Texas Online website.  “The great majority of slaves in Texas came with their owners from the older slave states.  Sizable numbers, however, came through the domestic slave trade.  New Orleans was the center of this trade in the Deep South, but there were slave dealers in Galveston and Houston, too.  A relatively few slaves, perhaps as many as 2,000 between 1835 and 1865, came through the illegal African trade.”

17.  Campbell.  “Slavery spread over the eastern two-fifths of Texas by 1860 but flourished most vigorously along the rivers that provided rich soil and relatively inexpensive transportation.”

18.  Entries for counties on map posted by Handbook of Texas website.

19.  Campbell.  The exception was Grimes County where the one Lacy child lived.  It had been settled during the Mexican period by Jared Ellison Groce who moved from Virginia to South Carolina, Georgia, and Mobile, Alabama area, [33] before going to Texas in 1823.  He was the wealthiest man in Austin’s colony. [34]

20.  Barnes F. Lathrop.  “Migration into East Texas, 1835-1860 (Continued).”  The Southwestern Historical Quarterly 52:184–208:1948.  184.

21.  Elisha and Martin were born in the Pendleton District of South Carolina.  While Elisha moved to Alabama, [35] Martin moved to Kentucky, then down to Texas when it was part of México where he became an Indian trader. [36]

22.  Vista K. McCroskey.  “Smith County.”  Handbook of Texas Online website.
23.  Jenkins.  235.
24.  Jenkins.  143.
25.  Jenkins.  142–143.
26.  Jenkins.  233.

27.  Abner J. Strobel.  “The Old Plantations and Their Owners of Brazoria County, Texas.”  Originally published in 1926.  15–62 in A History of Brazoria County.  Edited by T. L. Smith, Junior.  1958.  No other publication information about either.  46.

28.  Thomas Cobbs.  Testimony, Livingston, Alabama.  31 October 1871.  Alabama.  Volume III.  1621.

29.  Robert D. Spratt.  A History of the Town of Livingston, Alabama.  Edited by Nathaniel Reed.  Livingston: University of West Alabama, 1997.  12.

30.  H. Martin Prather.  “James Thomas Praytor, Prather.”  Prather Genealogy website.  Last updated 28 July 2015.  James was Jabe’s father.

Jenkins.  176.

31.  H. Martin Prather.  “William Jabel Praytor.”  Prather Genealogy website.  Last updated 28 July 2015.

32.  Prather, “William Jabel.”

33.  Brian Weir.  “Wharton, Sarah Ann Groce (1810–1878).”  Handbook of Texas Online website.

34.  Charles Christopher Jackson.  “Groce, Jared Ellison (1782–1839).”  Handbook of Texas Online website.

35.  Butterfly Rose.  “Capt Elisha Lacy.”  Find a Grave website.  3 March 2009.

36.  David Mark Cordell.  “Martin Lacy (1789 - 1842).”  Wiki Tree website.  23 August 2011; last updated 5 September 2017.