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.