LIST OF JURORS, APRIL TERM
NP [DeWitt Colony, Gonzales County? ca.1840]. Single sheet of lined paper, 32 cm., old fold lines, docketed on verso. A manuscript list of jurors, some 48 names, with a few others struck through. Written in ink in two columns in a clerical hand. The jurors include several men known to have been members of the DeWitt Colony or residents of Gonzales Town in Gonzales County by 1840, including Joseph Tumlinson, John Tumlinson, Arthur Swift, T[homas] J[efferson] Pilgrim, H[enry] E[ustace] McCulloch, Benj. McCulloch, Eli Mitchell, J[ames] B[lair] Patrick, Prospect McCoy, French Smith, and Ezekiel Smith. Item #68331
DeWitt's Colony was founded by Green DeWitt and James Kerr in 1825. By 1830, the population stood at 377, according to the Handbook of Texas History online, primarily settled along the Guadalupe, San Marcos, and Lavaca Rivers. The center of the colony was Gonzales Town, and most of the settlement was later incorporated into the County of Gonzales, one of the original counties in the Republic of Texas in 1836.
Ezekiel Smith was one of the participants in the Mier Expedition and was taken prisoner in 1842, at the age of 62. He survived captivity in Mexico and returned to his family in 1844. Arthur Swift was Tax Collector, Clerk and Constable in the town of Gonzales in 1841. Thomas Jefferson Pilgrim was a friend of Stephen Austin and an organizer of the Gonzales Baptist Church. James B. Patrick arrived in DeWitt Colony in 1829, and later served as its comisario of police. Henry McCulloch and his brother Benjamin moved to Gonzales to survey and locate lands, and Henry later served as a Texas Ranger and as sheriff of Gonzales County from 1843-1845. Benjamin McCulloch also served as a Texas Ranger and was a brigadier-general in the Confederate army, killed at the Battle of Pea Ridge in 1862. Eli Mitchell moved to Texas in 1824, and was one of the Old Three Hundred, receiving a land grant in Stephen Austin's first colony; he participated in the battle of Gonzales at the beginning of the Texas Revolution. John Tumlinson and his brother Joseph were likewise early settlers in Texas, arriving with their parents in 1821. [see their brief biographies in the Handbook of Texas History online].
Price: $250.00