WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1836
397
a few years in Alabama, he decided to go to Texas. He arrived there, March 2, 1835, with a wife and a daughter, and on October 9, of the same year, secured a league and labor of land in Zavala's Colony on the cast shore of Galveston Bay (Spanish Archives, General Land Office of Texas). Baker was an able, but a 1·estless, impulsive man. Almost imme- diately upon his arrival in Texas he opposed the Mexican policy towards Texas, and he was one of the nine men whom Ugatechea ordered to be arrested at San Felipe, Ju)~,, 1835. He entered the Texas Army on Feb- ruary 3, 1836, as captain of a company that he had recruited, and it was this command that prevented the Mexicans from crossing the Brazos alt San Felipe. While he was in command at that point (March 29, 1836), he ordered the town to be burned in order to prevent its capture by the enemy-he said by Houston's order. Houston, however, always contended that his orders had been misinterpreted. Grave differences developed between these two men over this matter. At the Battle of San Jacinto, Haker commanded Compny D of the First Regiment of Texas Volunteers (Comptrolle1·'s Military Sen, 1 ice Re.cords, Texas State Library), and was slightly wounded. After the Republic had been set up, he was elected to a seat in the House of the First Congress (October 3, 1836-June 13, 1837) from Austin County and to the Third Congress (November 5, 1838-Jan- uary 24, 1839) from Galveston County, but he was defeated in the cam- paign for the Sixth Congress. He moved to Houston and died there November 4, 1848. See Yoakum, II, 115; Thrall, A Pictorial History of Texas, 498; Dixon and Kemp, He1·oes of San Jacinto, 181. There is an interesting letter from Mrs. A. D. Darden-Mosely's daughter Fanny-to Ashbel Smith, June 16, 1884, on the occasion of the publication of J. J. Lynn's Reminiscences of Fifty Years in Texas. She tells much of the history of her father's early life in this letter. This letter is in the Ashbel Smith Pape1·s, The University of Texas Library. 3 William Kimbrough (also found spelled Kimbro, Kirnbo) was born in Bedford County, Tennessee, but came to Texas in 1831 with a wife and one child (Spanish Archives). He settled in Burnet's Colony. In Septem- ber, 1835, he raised a company for the Texas Army, in the San Augustine municipality. This company became known as the Eighth Company of the Second Texas Regiment. In 1837, William Kimbrough was elected sheriff of San Augustine County, and held that office till 1843. In 1853, he sold his home in San Augustine and moved to Anderson County, where he lived till his death. See George L. Crocket, Two Centuries in East Texas, 183, 209; also, Memo·rial and B-iographical History of Dallas County (1892), pp. 888-889. ·1 Benjamin Franklin Bryant was a Texas pioneer and Indian fighter who was born in Georgia, March 15, 1800. On September 4, 1834, he moved from Macon County, Georgia, to Texas, bringing with him a wife and child, also a young nephew, Hardy Price (see Spanish Archives). They settled about fifteen miles east of the town of San Augustine. In 1836, Bryant raised a company of volunteers of which he was elected captain, and on March 31, 1836, his company joined Houston's army on the Brazos (see Houston to Rusk, April 3, 1836), but he retired from the army at the expiration of his term of enlistment, April 29, 1836. But this did not end his services as a military man, for he later became an im·eterate Indian fighter. He moved to Milam County, where he built a fort, known to this day as Bryant's Station. It is on Little River, not far from the
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