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WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1860
To RoRERT R. NEYLAND 1
Executive Department, Austin, September 4, 1860.
To R.R. Neyland, Esq., Agent for Alabama Indians. Dear Sir: By virtue of your commission this day sent, you will proceed at once to Superintend the affairs of the Alabama Indians and take care that they receive the protection guaranteed to them by the Laws. You will in the name of the State of Texas, maintain their rights against all trespassers, and you are hereby authorized and empowered, in case any unlawful attempts are made to dispossess them of their property or do them bodily harm, to call upon the Chief Justice, or any other Officer of the peace in and for Tyler County, who will ·order the Sheriff of said County to Summon an adequate force to enable you to carry out the guarantees of the Government towards them. You will immediately make a report of their Condition to this Department. By the Governor Sam Houston. E. W. Cave, Secretary of State. 1 Executive Records, 1859-1861, p. 104, Texas State Library. Robert R. Neyland, son of Dr. William Neyland, was born near Wash- ington, D.C., in 1832. His father was a native of Mississippi, but had moved to Louisiana early in life, where he was a planter of extensive in- terests. He moved his family to Texas in 1840, when young Robert was only eight years old, and became one of the pioneers of Jasper County. While still a boy Robert began the study of law, and while still a very young man was a successful lawyer of Tyler County. He married Emily Wells, daughter of James M. Wells, who was a graduate of West Point, and served as an army officer in Texas and other points of the South- west. On her mother's side, Emily Wells was a graddaughter of John Forbes, a distinguisehd Texas pioneer. When the Civil War broke out, Robert R. Neyland joined the Confed- erate Army, and was conanissioned a lieutenant colonel of a Texas regi- ment, with which he served until his death in 1862, from malarial fever. At the time of his death his regiment was stationed at Shreveport, but he was buried at Shelbyville, Texas. He had two brothers, Lieutenant Colonel William M. Neyland, who commanded another Texas regiment in the same brigade in which his brother Robert served; and Dr. A. Carroll Neyland, who was with Lee's army in Virginia. See Johnson-Barker, Texas and Texans, IV, 1816.
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