WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1839
311
Felipe and met the leading men of th~t part of Texas, Stephen F. Austin, Henry Smith, William B. Travis, R. M. Williamson, and others who were prominently identified with Texan affairs. Early in 1835 he became judge of the municipality of Nacogdoches, and on December 10, 1835, he was appointed aide to Governor Smith with the rank of colonel. In the same month he was appointed commissioner with Sam Houston and John Cameron to make a treaty of peace with the Cherokee Indians and their associated bands. John Cameron declined to serve on this commission, so Houston and Forbes went to the Cherokee nation and after three days of conference with the chiefs succeeded in making a treaty, binding them to neutrality at one of the most critical periods of ea1·ly Texas history. As aide to Governor Smith, located at Nacogdoches as recruiting officer for the Texas Army, he administered the oath of allegiance to Texas to many recruits for the Texas Army. (See Forbes to Robinson, January 12, 1836, Lamar Pape1·s, I, 297.) On February 17, 1836, Forbes was appointed aide to General Hous- ton, and was ordered to Velasco to forward troops to the main army then on the Brazos. He sent to the army in the field three companies com- manded by Captains Turner, Roman, and Fisher. He also forwarded a large supply of munitions of war. On April 2, 1836, he was appointed commissary general of the Texas Army, and took part in the battle of San Jacinto, and at that battle had charge of all captured property. He 1·eceived his discharge on November 17, 1836. (See Comptroller's 1ltlilitary Service Records, Texas State Library.) His last official appointment was that of aide to Governor Coke in 1876. He died at Nacogdoches. Both he and his wife, who died in 1870, are buried in Oak Grove, the c:ty Cemetery at Nacogdoches. See Lamar Pavers, I, 245-302 passim; Yoakum, History o; Texas, II, 50, 110, 114; Wooten (ed.), Comprehensive History of Texas, I, 213, 221, 265, 267, 280-284. William C. Binkley (ed.) Official Corre- spondence of the Texa,n, Revolut-ion, 2 vols., passim. 3 David Spangler Kaufman (December 18, 1813c..January 31, 1851), lawyer, representative of Texas in the National Congress, was born at Boiling Springs, Pennsylvania, and as a youth attended the public schools of his native town; then, he entered Princeton College and graduated in 1833. He studied law and was admitted to the bar at Natchez, Mississ:ppi, in 1836, whereupon he moved to Nacogdoches, Texas, in 1837, and the next year was elected to the lower house of the Texas Congress, and served his district in that body from 1839 to 1843, and in the Senate of the Texas Congress from 1843 to 1845. He was chosen speaker of the lower house in 1839, and again in 1840. In 1845 he was appointed cha,-gc d'affail-es at Washington for the Texas Republic. He moved to Lowe's Ferry on the Sabine in the same year. At the first election for members from the State of Texas to the United States Congress, he was chosen to represent the eastern district of Texas, and was reelected in 1847 and 1849. He served his state as representative to the National Congress from March 30, 1846, till his death, which occurred in Washington, January 31, 1851. He is buried in the Congressional Cemetery at Washington. A Texas county hns been named in his honor. See Z. T. Fulmore, The Histo1·y c111d Geogl'aphy of Texas a.s Told in County Nctmes, 139. Biographical Dil'er.tory of the Ameri- can Congress, 1774-1927 (1928), 1167. •Elisha Roberts was born near Knoxville, Tennessee in 1785, and grew up and married there. He moved from the home of his birth to Barren County, Kentucky, and in 1811 moved to Washington Parish, Louisiana.
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