GENEALOGY EXPRESS

 

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CHAPTER LXI.

     AN ACT to authorize and require the Commissioner of the General Land Office to issue patents out of the regular order in which they were filed in the Land Office.
     SEC. 1.  Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of Texas, That the Commissioner of the General Land Office is authorized and required to patent surveys out of the regular order of application; Provided such surveys shall have been regularly mapped, or there be sufficient evidence that no previous survey legally filed in the Land Office covering the same ground as represented on the maps of the office.
     SEC. 2.  That this act take effect from and after is passage.
     Approved April 8, 1861.

A RIOT IN FREETOWN.
ONE WHITE MAN AND THIRTEEN NEGROES LOSE THEIR LIVES.
Armed Negroes Occupy a Colored Minister's House in His Absence and Murder a White an - They Pay Very Dearly for It.

     NEW ORLEANS, August 17 - A dispatch from New Iberia says that F. P. Smith was buried to-day with military and civic honors.  The trouble of yesterday grew out of a spirit of revenge on the part of the negroes.  The better element of this and neighboring parishes had found it impossible longer to tolerate a certain class of idle and immoral characters and had ordered them from various places.  Many found refuge at Freetown, a small village composed entirely of negro families.  There they told their stories to their friends and nursed their anger.
     On Monday last reports reached this place that the negroes were arming and congregating at Freetown.  Their number was estimated at from five hundred to six hundred mounted men.  On Tuesday they were reinforced sufficiently to double their number.  Feeling their strength, they assumed a threatening attitude boldly declaring that refugees should not leave the parish and should not be molested.  On Wednesday the number of armed negroes further increased and people of the surrounding country began to feel some alarm lest these negroes over estimating their strength, might attempt some act of violence.
     On Thursday matters had not improved up to noon.  By this time residents and property owners of this section began to collect at points a short distance from Freetown, their object being to disperse these negroes without violence and to send those who did not belong their to their homes.

CITIZENS RIDE TO FREETOWN.

     Citizens rode into Freetown and found as rumored, a large number of armed negroes quartered there.  They asked the meaning of this, and the negroes were silent.  They demanded the surrender of the negroes arms, promising that when they learned to behave themselves, the arms would be returned.
     The negroes were ordered to at once disperse.  The great majority of them accepted the terms and surrendered their arms, which were found without one exception to be loaded with ball or buckshot.  Rev. H. Nora, a colored minister, left Freetown in the morning to attend a conference of ministers at New Iberia.
     During his absence his residence was taken possession of by a number of armed negroes.  This house they refused to surrender, returning word they were there to be taken.  The whites then sent a messenger to the house saying they would give them twenty minutes in which to lay down their arms.  The negroes again refused.

BESEIGED IN A MINISTER'S HOUSE.

     In this house, situated a short distance from the main road or street, about fifteen negroes were quartered, among the number their leaders.  A squad of mounted white citizens were someone hundred and fifty yards from the house, awaiting the expiration of the twenty minutes before time was up.  The door of the house was thrown upon and a volley fired at them.  One horse was wounded.  Immediately firing became general and the door of the house was closed, but a constant fire was kept up from the windows for quite an interval.  Later firing was carried on by both sides, lasting in all nearly an hour and a half.  At this time E. P. Smith broke from his lines and made for the house.  His comrades implored him to return, but, deaf to their entreaties he went on to the house door, where he was fired upon and he fell.  At his side was a comrade who had followed him on his fatal errand.  When Smith fell his comrade returned, escaping unhurt.  At this stage of the fight the negroes became panic-stricken and attempted to flee from the house.  The deadly work was so closed.

THIRTEEN NEGROES SHOT TO DEATH.

     When the fight was over the bodies of eight negroes were found in the house and five others were found outside.  It is reported that three or four more were killed.  It is thought by some that a few made their escape, but others who were at the scene deny this.  A coroner's jury was empannelled and proceeded to Freetown to view the remains of the negroes.  They returned to-night having deferred the taking of testimony until a latter date.  The negroes who surrendered were not harmed in any way.

NEGROES HANGED
Three Negroes Strung Up for the Shooting and Fatally Wounding of Two Deputy Sheriffs - Mob Was Determined.
     Tiptonville, Tenn., Nov. 25. - Three dead bodies dangling from an improvised scaffold erected in front of the pulpit of a negro church in district No. 4 (Lake county), five miles from this city, was the awful spectacle which greeted the crowd of curious people who gathered about the church this morning to view the work of the mob which took from the Tiptonville jail last night Marshall, Ed and Jim Stinebock, the negroes who shot and fatally wounded two deputy sheriffs in front of this same church last Saturday Night.
     The lynching of these negroes was planned with deliberation and executed with a gruesome coolness that has rarely been witnessed in the work of mobs.  All day yesterday this little city was filled with an excited mob numbering anywhere from 150 to 500 men.  This mob, however, seemed willing to listen to reason and for some hours it was thought that the leaders had agreed to allow the law to take its course.  Later in the afternoon the mob dispersed.

Gathering of the Mob.

     The negroes were arrested near Ridgeley and taken to Tiptonville.  No sooner had this been accomplished than a mob of determined men began to gather, and within an hour preparations to carry into execution the work of vengeance determined upon were well under way and the leaders began to gather their forces about them to make the assult on the jail.
     The crowds made up of determined and angry men slowly surrounded the jail, but soon it was met by one of the county's most prominent lawyers, J. T. Burnett, who made in impassioned address urging the mob to desist from any act of violence and promising to use his influence in seeing that the negroes got a speedy trail.
     This did not appeal to the mob, and finally S. J. Caldwell, another lawyer, proposed that if the mob was determined to lynch the negroes at least to wait until even the semblence of a trial could be had, and he suggested that Justice Davis be authorized to summons a jury and let the negroes be duly sentenced to death, and the mob could execute the sentence.

Mob Watched the Jail

     This was agreed to and the mob except just enough to watch the jail and see that Sheriff Hains did not attempt to slip the negroes out and carry them to a place of safety, left the jail building to await the trial set for 5 o'clock in the afternoon.

Efforts to Prevent Lynching

     In the meantime, after the story of the proposed lynching had been sent out and thus became known in Nashville, Mr. Haines and others received telegrams from Gov. Patterson plead with them "for God's sake to prevent the proposed lynching as it would be a disgrace to the State."  He also agreed to order a special term of the Criminal Court to try the negroes.
     Sheriff Haines also communicated with Attorney General Caldwell at Union City, and he in turn called up a number of men here, including Cheek Rarrus, father of Richard Rarrus, the special deputy killed by the negroes, and Mrs. Rarrus.  After taking with Gen. Caldwell, Rarrrus said he was will for the law to take its course, and he advised leaders of the mob to go home and let the negroes be tried in the regular way.

The Lynching

     The men were finally taken from the jail by the mob, placed in a wagon and driven to the church, where the negroes had committed their crimes.
     Here the mob, following out the cold calculating determination which had characterized all of its previous plans and proceedings erected within the church a scaffold just in front of the pulpit from which the three negroes were hanged, Marshall Stinebeck, the larger of the three brothers swung in the center of the beam, with Ed and Johnston back on either end.
     After the negroes had been swung up a member of the mob stepped forward and fired a shot into the body of Marshall Stiebeck, aiming at the exact spot in which the negro had shot Deputy Sheriff John Hall.
     The mob then quietly dispersed.

KILLED NEGRO; HANGED
Baton Rouge, La (ANP) - Roosevelt Swain was hanged last Friday for the murder of Alfred Harris, last December.

HISTORICALLY SPEAKING by Willie Dixon, Jr.
North and South Negro Contributions to the war effort (1863-1865)
     "Official records show that a total of 178,985 enlisted men and 7,122 officers served in Negro regiments during the Civil War, nearly 10% of the Union army.  These men fought in 449 engagements, of which 39 were major battles.  Approximately 37,300 Negros lost their lives while serving in the Union Army.  Seventeen Colored soldiers and four Negro sailors were awarded Congressional Medals of Honor.  Colored men were understandably proud of their record in the civil war."
     The cabinet of Abraham Lincoln was faced with a most paramount dilemma.  In 1862 the war was slipping into the hands of the Confederate war machine.  Unless Lincoln took such drastic actions as necessary, the union would be lost!  In 1860 with a newly elected President, amid the awesome threat of secession, 11 southern states left the union.  "They did so chiefly because they feared Lincoln would restrict their right to do as they chose about the question of Negro slavery.  The north entered the war only to reunite the nation, not to abolish slavery!"
     Before Lincoln could issue the Emancipation Proclamation he must have a staggering military victory!  Such an occurrence happened at the battle of Antietam Sept. 17, 1862.  Five days later, on Sept. 22, 1862 Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.  If those rebellious southern states did not return to the union by Jan. 1, 1863, the slaves were to be declared "forever free."  As anticipated, the south rejected Lincoln's offer.  Lincoln's action as Commander and Chief was termed "a fit and necessary war measure."
     As I sat and watched this euphemistic melodrama called North and South, I felt obligated to do what historians and media people have never done - tell you the truth of Black involvement in that epic period of the Civil War.  After the shot that was heard around the world: the firing of Fort Sumter,  April 12, 1861, Blacks rushed to enlist their services toward the cause of saving the union.  However, racial bigotry and an obdurate feeling that slaves and freemen of color would not raise arms against their masters, prompted secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton to refuse their request.  Among other things he intimated that a white man would never allow himself to be reduced to fighting beside a Negro!
     History as a strange course of events has a way of taking the plausability of certainty and reversing it to an extent that events that would never be, are every day happenstance.  Not only did Black soldiers fight side-by-side with white units, they fought as assault troops in front of white union soldiers.
     In spite of voluminous research to the contrary, a majority of laymen and some historians maintain that Blacks never were prominent as a fighting force; that they stood as docile beings praying for white troops to win the victory and benevolently grant them their freedom.  Such is the folly of fools.
     In January, 1863, Colonel Higginson led his regiment on a military foray along the St. Mary's River, which forms the boundaries of Florida and Georgia.  The Colonel stated: "The men have been repeatedly under fire; have had infantry, calvary, and even artillery arrayed against them, and have in every instance come off not only with unblemished honor, but with undisputed triumph".  The Colonel concludes: "No officer in their regiment now doubts that the key to the successful prosecution of this war lies in the unlimited employment of Black troops."  On April 30, 1863, General David Hunter, Commander of northern troops in the south, reported to Secretary Stanton:  "I am happy to be able to announce to you my complete and eminent satisfaction with the results of the organization of Negro regiments in this department..."
     Mar. 23, 1863, the New York Tribune reported editorially:  "Facts are beginning to dispel prejudices.  Enemies of the Negro race, who have persistently denied the capacity and doubted the courage of the Blacks are unanswerably confuted by the good conduct and gallant deeds of the men whom they persecute and slander."  Not only was the ex-slave an excellent fighting man, he served in many other capacities.  He was to act as drayman, ammunition bearer, builder of breastworks, spy, saboteur, and man servant.  White troops from the north, officers and enlisted men alike, had no knowledge of the terrain; the southern Black turned soldier had knowledge of every gully and stream.   Thus with all this information and labor direct toward his own freedom the Negro has found to be an invaluable force.
     The of course, there were the Black troops from the north.  In the summer of 1863, the War Department granted authority to northern states to fill their enlistment quotas with Negro troops.  By the summer's end of 1863, there stood in military readiness some 58 regiments of Negro troops in the Union Army.  On July 11, 1863, the Anglo African issued a manifesto to white America to wit:  "White America remember!  That we know that in going to the field we will neither get bounty, or as much wages even as you will receive for the performance of the same duty - that we are well aware of the fact that if captured we will be treated like beasts by our enemies - that the avenue to honor and promotion is close to us; but these things we care not..."
     Many Black soldiers, recent freedman or fugitive slaves still wore the brand of slavery of their back, while in their breast beat a stout brave heart; anxious for hte moment when they might perchance encounter on the razor's point of their bayonets the blood of their former masters.  One such regiment was "The Native Guard" which General Butler formed when he entered New Orleans.
     All line officers of the regiment were Black.  They were from the most influential and wealthy freemen of New Orleans.  It was rumored that not one of these officers was worth less than 25,000 dollars.  Of this number Captain Andre' Callioux was magnificent.  Unmistakenly Black, he prided himself as being the Blackest man in the Cresent City.  Bravery among these Blacks was infectiously chauvinistic as they requested the prime position of assult in the upcoming battle, and it was granted.  Thus on May 27, 1863, two full regiments of New Orleans free Negroes and ex-slaves sprang from their concealment, with muskets at the port arms and advanced toward the confederate stronghold on the lower Mississippi, forever to be written in the blood and dying agony of Black troops called Port Hudson!
     As the Stars and Strips, adjacent to the regimental colors caught the gleam of a bright spring morning, those standard bearers, Black as coal, ex-slaves, now wearing union blue, ranks were thinned out by confederate musket fire.  On they came, transfixed on the notion of taking Johnny Reb's blood.  They stepped over their wounded as they lie in their last agony.  Amid the pools of bright red blood and broken bone, while Black men suffered their last, they relentlessly came singing their own version of the Battle hymn of the Republic.  "We is done hoeing cotton; we is done hoeing corn; we is Colored yankee soldiers, sho as you is born.  When old master hears us holler he will think it's Gabriel's horn as we go marching on."  The Rebs had found the range now, with a blistering fire of shell, canister, grape and musketry.  Native guard's ranks would waver and thin at the falling of the dead and wounded, only to regroup and with perfect rank and file assult the accursed confederates once again.  This field of honor, to the Blackman's glory and determination to be free, was soaked in his blood with scattered bits of flesh and membrane steeped in falls of flowing vermillion streams of his search for liberty.  As the ranks faltered and the colors were tumbling to the ground another Black hand would take up the cause and advance on this devastating impregnable wall of b___ing ball and shot.
     "No matter how gallantly the men behaved... it was not in the course of things that this gallant brigade should take these works by charge."  Yet charge after charge was ordered in this frontal assault on certain death.  Six charges in all that resulted in countless deaths was ordered.  At about one o'clock the last charge was made.  Captain Callioux's arm, dangling, being splintered by a shot, was broken above the elbow.  In his right he held his gleeming sword as rivers of red streamed from his agonizing wound.  His hoarse voice could be heard inspiring his men on.  A shell struck the brave Callioux and in the midst of a cloud of a dark grey explosion the immortal Captain fell in advance of his men!
     Well, I hardly suppose a narrative as was just witnessed, did, or will, ever be shown on television.  But because truth and you are so very precious to me, I thought you ought to know.  You must never, never forget that white folks didn't free Black folks; Black folks freed Black folks.  And so it goes!
     The moving finger writes and having wit moves on ... not all your piety nor all your wit can change a single word of it.
     Historically Speaking,
     Mr. Willie Dixon, Jr.

School playground near the John Taylor funeral home.
     The little school that almost no one talks about was the St. Mary's Colored School that survived on the grounds of St. Mary's from 1891 until 1949. A new small wooden schoolhouse with a small attic dormer room was built in 1903. Two school Sisters of Notre Dame were teaching in the school and one of them received a paid annual salary provided by a generous donation by a charitable lady in the area by the name of Louise Morrell.
     In 1910 with $15 from the Saint Teresa Beneficial Society, $200 raised by the African-American parishioners Easter festival and the remainder being given by Ms. Morrell, an additional classroom was added and a cellar was excavated to receive modern heating apparatus. The school grew in numbers and in 1921 14 first-graders were turned away because of the lack of seats.
     Many of the students were non Catholic; however, from time to time prior to graduation, both boys and girls were converted and received their holy communion. Graduation was always followed by a day at the Priest's Farm on the Severn River for a picnic.
     When you talk with those who reside in Annapolis about their experiences at the St. Mary's Colored school they all remember one thing. It was clear that they were segregated from the white school population almost all of the time.
     It is noted in the history of St. Mary's and the Colored school that during World War II both the colored children and the white children participated in the drills required in the event of an air raid. Both were taken to the corridor and music room on the first floor of the convent.
     According to former students, the children of color were allowed to participate in the activities during Lent; however, they were forced to sit in the back of the church when attending with white students. It is also worthy to note that in May 1943, children of the Colored School participated with students in a church ceremony at which they were solemnly consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This event was repeated in 1946 and 1948.
      The black children who attended St. Mary's Colored school were from all over the City of Annapolis both uptown and downtown and were not necessarily Catholics. Some of them who attended in the late 30's, early 40's remembered that their parents paid a stipend, although very small, to help with their education. These adults still remember the names of many of the Sisters that taught them at St. Mary's, including Sister Mary Damian Gretz who remained at St. Mary's until 1973.
     These same adults also remember that they always knew that they were segregated from the white students in the same school. As mentioned earlier, although there were several programs in which they attended with whites they were always segregated from them. They also remember that there was a strong sense of discipline in the colored school, there are many who remember like my own father that the sisters used rulers to crack their knuckles and the pointers used for the blackboard doubled as switches used to sting their legs and backsides.
     The children of the Colored School also remembered having a wood stove in the late 1930's and early 1940's although the history records that modern heating was used as early as 1910.
     These former students always remembered feeling that they were treated differently because they were not allowed to use inside restroom facilities. Many of them used an outhouse until Father Augustine Smith arrived in 1942. Considerable improvements were made to include electricity, a masonry lavatory wing with modern toilets and sinks in 1943.
     After St. Mary's, many who could afford it continued on to high school in Baltimore and Washington until the Wiley H. Bates Colored School was opened in 1932. On June 12, 1949 the last class graduated from St. Mary's Colored School. In September 1949, the black school and congregation left Duke of Gloucester Street to a new church and school for African Americans in the black community of the old 4th Ward. The school built on Bates Street, St. Augustine's, opened and due to an act of nature was closed in 1967. But that's another story. For more on St. Mary's please see Robert Worden's new book called, "St. Mary's Church in Annapolis."

Welcome to Annapolis
     To our visitors, welcome! This year I would like to personally welcome all the boaters, in particular those attending the fourth annual Black Boaters Summit Reunion.
     Welcome Capt. Paul Mixon from Honey Let's Travel and your crew! I also want to welcome Capt. Bill Pinkney of the Amistad who will be with us Saturday. I'm looking forward to updates on the travels of the Amistad since last year and what is planned for this year. During your stay in Annapolis please enjoy your stay, the food and the people in the best historic seaport in America.
     Please don't forget Sunday marks 240 years since Alex Haley's ancestor, Kunta Kinte, was sold in Annapolis to a Virginia planter. I look forward to sharing our incredible history with you at 3 p.m. Sunday for "High Tea & History" at Reynolds Tavern on Church Circle, one of the city's most notorious sites of slave sales. Reservations are a must, seats are limited, $25 per person.

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The columnist is a native of Annapolis and a recent recipient of R.E.S.P.E.C.T, Inc., Co-Chairpersons Award for "Outstanding Community Leadership and significant contributions to community development, coalition building and organizational unity." E-mail: Ourlocallegacy@aol.com.

James "Jimmy" Miller: Colorado's first execution as a state was a Buffalo Soldier who killed the wrong man.
Capital punishment has walked hand in hand with much of the its sketchy history in Colorado. Michael Radelet from the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder, counts 102 legal executions and 175 lynchings.
     He notes that William Gilpin, Colorado's first territorial governor, first authorized the death penalty on Nov. 5, 1861, and two years later "under territorial authority took the life of William S. Van Horn, who was hanged before a crowd of thousands" in Central City" on Dec. 18, 1863.
     Though a pretty bold way to introduce the color of law to the Wild West's storied history of swift justice, it does not match the story of the first death under a figurative state flag.
     James "Jimmy" Miller was a 23-year-old Buffalo Soldier private in the U.S. Colored Troops at Fort Lyon on Aug. 26, 1876 — 25 days after Colorado became a state — when he attended a dance in tiny Las Animas.
     According to the story, a drunk white man whose name is lost to history told Miller the dance hall was for whites only and drove him out at the point of the gun, as another white patron, John Sutherland, tried to step in on Miller's behalf.
     "Miller and a friend, Benjamin Smith, later returned and randomly shot into the bar, missing the thug but killing Sutherland. Both men received death sentences; the governor commuted Smith's sentence," according to the Colorado State Public Defender's Office "Catalog of Colorado Executions."
     Some context of the times: The Buffalo Soldiers today are honored as the heros they were, freed slaves who took up arms to defend a country that, until the Civil War, had viewed them as little more than chattel. Fort Lyon, had been under a cloud of national shame since it served as the base from which Col. John Chivington led 700 Colorado militia volunteers on a merciless attack on peaceful Arapaho and Cheyenne, killing 128 women,children and elders — a cowardly attack The History Channel called "a depraved slaughter," in which bodies were scalped and mutilated, including sexual organs.
     The Buffalo Soldiers came west to help stem the retaliatory attacks from numerous tribes and help ensure safe passage for overwhelmingly white settlers, but in 1869, when white soldiers at Fort Lyon instigated a brawl in a theater, Buffalo Soldiers with the 10th Cavalry were pulled from the area, leaving the 9th Cavalry, to which the doomed Miller belonged.
     The Colorado Catalog of Executions describes Miller's end this way:
     "At the hanging, which the governor delayed two weeks so Miller could join a church and be married, the trapdoor would not open at first, and when it did, it fell to the ground. Miller dropped through the opening in the platform, but the rope was too long and his feet came to rest on the trap door that had fallen below him. The trap door was quickly removed so Miller could swing unimpeded. He hung for twenty-five minutes before expiring. Later, the sheriff, distraught over the bungled hanging, resigned his position and left the community."
     Oddly, Fort Lyon today is a state prison, and its end is uncertain.

Former slaves who fought in Civil War remembered
ST. LOUIS • They fought for a country that refused to recognize them as citizens and died in virtual anonymity, their remains lumped together in a single burial plot.
     For nearly 150 years, the freed slaves of the 56th United States Colored Infantry who fought for the Union Army in the Civil War were a historical footnote, buried in a mass grave after cholera killed the troops as they prepared to go home. Even after the remains of more than 100 veterans were relocated to Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery near St. Louis in 1939, they were buried as unknown soldiers.
     But on Monday, a small group of local historians braved a late-morning Memorial Day downpour in a bid to reclaim the memory of the individual men in the 56th Regiment.
     Members of the St. Louis African American History and Genealogy Society recited each of the 173 names at a graveside ceremony, after an area veteran uncovered the soldiers' identities with some cursory research at a St. Louis County library.
     A bronze grave marker with those names will be added to a roughly 6-foot-tall obelisk marking the 56th's burial site later this summer. Two adjacent headstones that refer to unknown soldiers will be removed at the cemetery, which is the final burial place for more than 180,000 soldiers dating to 1826, including hundreds of other mass graves and thousands of unknown soldiers.
"In the military, you can't walk from here to that tree without your name being on a list," said Sarah Cato, a retired lawyer and the society's vice president. "The names were always known. ... We didn't make some phenomenal discovery. We just brought it to (public) attention."
     Cato and other group members enlisted the support of Missouri's congressional delegation soon after a member of the Jefferson Barracks Chapel Association alerted them to the oversight. Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Ballwin, spoke at the group's inaugural memorial ceremony for the regiment nine months ago.
     The grave marker will include the names of 55 soldiers whose remains could not be recovered but were believed to have been buried on the banks of the Mississippi River on an outpost once known as Quarantine Island for its role in preventing the spread of diseases. Like other units at the time, the regiment was led by white officers.
     The regiment's ranks included men such as William Alexander, a Company E private, and Marion Woodson, a Company B private. By and large, little is known about the unit's individual members, Cato said.
     Historians with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs' National Cemetery Administration helped verify the authenticity of the 56th Regiment military records.
     "We want them to be properly recognized," cemetery director Jeff Barnes said.
     But he noted that even with the newest discovery, Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery still contains 564 mass graves and more than 3,000 unknown soldiers, primarily from the Civil War.
     Though formed in St. Louis in 1863, the 56th Regiment was initially known as the 3rd Arkansas Infantry Regiment (African Descent). Troops were stationed in Helena, a river town in eastern Arkansas, primarily working in logistical support units that guarded railroad bridges and loaded supplies.
     In July 1864, they withstood a Confederate attack at Wallace's Ferry in which their commander was killed. The cholera outbreak occurred as the soldiers prepared to return home by ship in the summer of 1866.
     "Today we celebrate the lives, courage and commitment of the men of the 56th," Cato said in the brief ceremony. "As we read their names, let them know, Lord, that they are not forgotten."