17
WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1832-1853
I do hope you will have the goodness to write me, and let me hear the prospect of success. Sam Houston William Duncan esquire Do pray save my timber, and command me. H. P. S. If I go to Washington City, please address me there. Houston. [Addressed] : To William Duncan esquire Sheriff Liberty County Texas Free Sam Houston Sam Houston Mail 1 Original among the Williann B. Duncan Papers, San Jacinto Museum of History, Houston, Texas. William B. Duncan left extensive diaries and cor- respondence, which are now the property of the San Jacinto Museum of History. For the document copied here, as well as for the biographical material on· William B. Duncan which follows, we are indebted to Mr. Ike Moore. William Berry Duncan (March 2, 1818-August 19, 1867), cattleman and county official of Liberty County, Texas, was born near St. Martinville, Louisiana. He came to Texas in 1825 with his father, William Duncan, who settled at Atascosito, on the Trinity River about three miles north of the present town of Liberty. William Duncan, George Orr, Humphrey Jackson, and other members of the Atascosito settlement assisted in putting down the Fredonian Rebellion, and for their loyalty received title to their lands. The Duncan family moved to the town of Liberty when it was established in 1831. William Duncan died in 1836. William B. Duncan was in the cattle business from the early 1840's until the outbreak of the Civil War. He immediately entered that war on the side of the Confederacy, and rose to the rank of Captain in the Colonel A. W. Spaight Regiment of Texas Volunteers. He served in the army stationed near Beaumont that protected Texas from land movements of the Federal army in Louisiana. Duncan's first wife was Catherine Lamb (1832-1856), the adopted daugh- ter of Dr. E. J. Gillard, who came to Texas in 1845. His second wife was Celina de Blanc (1832-1925), whom he married May 10, 1858. She was the niece and foster daughter of Dr. Gillard. Duncan had two children by the first marriage, Emma and Kate; and four children by the second marriage, Chessie, Julia, Emory, and William. 2sam Houston and Andrew J. Yates engaged in an eight-year legal battle over the Cedar Point league of land, a tract of land located in Liberty County, and jutting into Galveston Bay. The suit arose over the fact that both Houston and Yates bought the land. There were two persons who claimed ownership of the land; one sold it to Houston, the other sold to Yates. The court records of the case are voluminous; briefly told, the story is as :follows:
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