336
WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1836
and the military life of early Texas, and he, no doubt, is the man whom Houston mentions here. During Houston's first administration as President of the Republic of Texas (1836-1838), George Blonnell was the Commis- sioner of Indian Affairs for Texas. On November 3, 1838, he made a long report in which he stated that Mexican emissaries had been among the Indians to stir them up against the whites, and had promised the Indians all of Indian Territory if they would expel the whites (Senate Reports, 30th Congress, 1st Session, 512, Doc. 171, pp. 38-50). In 1840 George W. Blonnell was editing a Texas newspaper-The Texas Sentinel (Southwest- ern Historiccil Quarterly, XXXV, 190). He joined the ill-fated Mier Expe- dition with the rank of a major; on that expedition he was captured and murdered. See J. D. McCutcheon's Diary (MS.), Rosenburg Library; also the Glasscock Diary (MS.), Te_xas State Library. Both of these diaries are day by day accounts of the happenings on the Mier expedition. Also see Houston Wade, Notes and F1·agments of the Mie1· Expedition (1936), 121. GStephen William Blount was born in Burke County, Georgia, on Febru- ary 3, 1808, and died at San Antonio, Texas, in 1890. He moved to Texas in the summer of 1835, and settled at San Augustine. From the first he was a staunch advocate of Texas independence from Mexico, and was chosen-along with Edward O. Legrand-as a delegate to the Convention that met at Washington-on-the-Brazos, March 1, 1836. He was a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, and on his way home heard the cannon at the Battle of San Jacinto. He and Legrand hurried on to take a part in the fighting, but reached the field too late; they were in time, however, to take part in chasing the defeated Mexicans. Blount was the first county clerk of San Augustine County; he was also the postmaster of the town of San Augustine, 1846-1851. He never held a State office, but had great influence in State politics; his chief interest, however, was in his mercantile business. Part of his commercial career was in partner- ship with Colonel Elijah Price, but for the greater part of his business life he was sole owner and manager of his own stores. In the fall of 1835 he married Mary Landon, of San Augustine, and they reared a family of three sons and three daughters, all of whom became worthy citizens of East Texas. See Sam Houston Dixon, 11'Ien Who Made Texas Free, 98-102. George Louis Crocket, Two Centuries in East Texas, 179, 180, 209. John- son-Barker, Texas and Texans, V, 2625-2626. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, XXXIX, 1-13. 6 For a biography of James Butler Bonham, see the one written by his great-nephew in Southwestern .Histo1-ical Qua,·terly, XXXV, 124-236. 7 James W. Robinson, lawyer, politician, was born in Ohio. In 1824 he settled at Nacogdoches, from which municipality he was sent as a dele- gate to the Consultation in 1835. Upon the setting up of the Provincial Government, he was elected Lieutenant Governor, and when Henry Smith was deposed by the Council, he becaming Acting Governor of Texas. He fought at San Jacinto as a private. When the constitutional government was organized, Robinson was appointed a district judge, but soon resigned the position rather than preside at the trial of one of his friends who had been charged with murder. When General Woll captured San Antonio in 1842, Judge Robinson was one of the prisoners captured and carried to Mexico. While in prison in the City of Mexico, he addressed a letter to
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