WRITINGS OF 5AM HOUSTON, 1860
4
T'o JOHN H. CocHRAN 1
Executive Department, Austin, April 4, 1860.
Lieutenant John H. Cochran, Belknap Sir: Your letter of March 27th enclosing muster roll, Chief Justice certificate &c. is this morning to hand. Considering the circumstances under which your detachment was organized, authority is hereby given you to make such changes in your men as you many think will be beneficial to the seryice, substi- tuting wherever necessary. Sam Houston. 1 Exewtive Rec.ords, 1859-1861, p, 121, Texas State Library. John Hughes Cochran was born at Columbia, Tennessee, on January 28, 1838. At the age of five years, his parents brought him to Texas and set- tled in Dallas County. The boy John was educated in the common schools of Dallas County, and at McKenzie College, since merged with Southwest- ern University at Georgetown, Texas. In 1860, as this and other docu- ments of 1860 show, Governor Houston commis.sioned him a State ranger, and during a part of 1860, he served as deputy under General William D. Young, the United States Marshal for the Northern District of Texas; he took the census in the Young County District, a district which at that time comprised nine counties. In 1860, also, he married Martha Johnson, of Young County. They had six children. When the Civil War broke out, John H. Cochran enlisted in the Confed- erate Army (September, 1861) as a private in Company C, Sixth Texas Cavalry, General Ben McCulloch's Brigade, in General Albert Sidney Johnston's Division of the Army of Tennessee. After the war ht! returned to civil life and was elected assessor and collector of taxes in Dallas County, a position he filled for four years. He was then elected by the Democratic party representative of Dallas County to the 14th, 15th, 16th, and 18th Leg- islatures. He was the Speaker of the House during the 16th Legislature, and as chairman of the House Committee on Revenue and Taxation dur- ing the 15th, being author of the tax laws passed by that body, which placed Texas in a fairly healthy financial condition. In 1885, President Cleve- land appointed him postmaster of the City of Dallas, a position in which he served for four years, retiring voluntarily, September 15, 1889. Again be was elected to represent Dallas County in the 22d and 23d Legislatures, and was the Speaker of the House during the 23d Legislature. He was a Master Mason, and a member of the Methodist Church. See L. W. Daniell, Personnel of the Texas State Government (1892), 330; William S. Speer (ed.), The Encyclopedia of the New West, 163-164; George Jackson, Sixty Years in Texas, 98; Mamie Yeary, Reminiscences of the Boys in Gray, 140; Memorial and Biographical History of Dallas County, 685-696 (Lewis Pub- lishing Company); Biographical Encyclopedia of Texas, 273-274.
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