WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1860
126
also served as senator from 1839 to 1840, and again from 1841 to 1852. And he was mayor of Houston for several terms. From 1859 through 1860 he was chief geologist for the State of Texas. From specimens obtained, he believed that the country between the Pecos River and the Rio Grande abounded in great mineral wealth, and he urgently advocated a geological survey of the entire state. While serving as mayor of Houston he was very energetic to improve all public roads and to better transportation conditions in various ways. After he had retired from the position of state geologist in February, 1861, he went North and entered the service of a copper mining company which sent him to the Lake Superior region to study the possibility of opening new copper mines. He died there in 1864, from injuries received in a fall. He was a fine orator, an intelligent and moderate newspaper editor, and a man of unusual ability along many lines of learning. In private life, as well as in business, he is said to have been one of the purest men in early Texas history; being a Presbyterian of the Old School persuasion, he lived up to his faith. See Thrall, A Pictoi·ial History of Texas, 595; George Plunkett Red, The Medicine Man in Texas, 242; D. W. c: Baker, A Texas Scmp Book, 273; Encyclopedia of the New West, 580; Texas Almanac, 1860, 91-99; Austin City Gazette, January 29, February 5, 1840; Texa-s Sentinel, June 17, 1841; Dc£ily B11lletin, December 3, 1841; Houston Telegravh, August 3, 1864. To [CHARLES L.J MANN 1 Austin, August 27, 1860 My Dear Colonel, I have now the pleasure of thanking you for two letters. When the first arrived, I was so situated that I could not write. The second came two days since, and I reply at my first leisure. On the 12th inst. Mrs. Houston presented me with another son; of course, a fine child in midwife parlance. Since then she has been so unwell that for ten nights I was not undressed, so you may think that I have had a protectorate at home to· claim my attention. Well, you will have received a letter ere this reaches you from Hon. John Hancock,2 than whom there [is] no more worthy gentle- man, and he is fully reliable. You may say to him everything, as well as anything. All the talk about raising funds in the United . States is gammon. If the bond holders cannot be approached, it would take years to raise a reliable force to achieve any glorious result. I know of no one more competent to consider and mature the manner, as well as the subject, as yourself. The judge has from correspondence of Mr. Richardson 3 to me, long since written to him to see the company, and has invited them to send an agent to New York and will meet him there, and, of course, yourself; and if they, the bond holders, will go into it, to know on what terms with mutual guarantees for the
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