"So eager for education...”:

Freedmen’s Bureau Schools in Brenham and Washington County

by Charles Swenson

With emancipation in Texas came a number of thorny problems which the Freedmen’s Bureau attempted to address. The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands was established by Congress by the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill on March 3, 1865 and operated under the auspices of the War Department to deal with “the supervision and management of all abandoned lands, and the control of all subjects relating to refugees and freedmen from rebel states.”¹ Originally established for one year, it was renewed by Congress with an override of President Andrew Johnson’s veto. Most of it’s funding was lost by 1869, and three years later the Bureau was completely disbanded. While it was active in Texas, it dealt with primarily with the pressing issues of a newly liberated populace of former slaves. Among these were protecting the civil rights of these recently recognized citizens, negotiating labor issues to promote their economic independence and reuniting previously separated families. But one often overlooked concern was the education of a large number of people who had previously been actively denied the basics of literacy. The amount spent on education in Texas by the Bureau was very limited, never more than $20,000 in any given year and far less than was spent in other areas of the country. However, there was a small level of literacy already present among the freedmen, estimated to be around 5% at the time of emancipation,² and they played an important role in supplementing the meager resources in funds and instructors provided by the Bureau. A search of the paperwork generated by America’s first national social welfare bureaucracy allows insights into how the first black schools functioned in Brenham and Washington County, the difficulties they faced and how many of the needs that arose were met by members of their local communities.

On January 31, 1866, the Superintendent of Freedman’s Schools in Texas, Edwin M. Wheelock submitted a report on the state of Freedman’s schools in Texas to his superior, Brigadier General Edgar M. Gregory, the Assistant Commissioner of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands in Texas. He stated that there were 26 schools in operation, 12 of them evening schools and 14 day schools, generally housed in black churches. These were a total of 1,691 students taught by a total of fourteen teachers for both the evening and day schools, with a stunning average of over 129 students per teacher, though more teachers were hoped for in the coming months. Wheelock effusively described the teachers as “effective and competent” and the students as “orderly, studious and attentive. Nothing can be more cheering than the extraordinary thirst for information which the pupils, both old and young, exhibit.” The schools were financed by the freedmen themselves by a monthly tuition of $1.50 per student, since there were no funds as yet allotted for them by the government.

The teachers were reported to be experiencing no “abuse or outrage...as the Military arm of the Government is their shield.” He also reported that “the old pro slavery malice is by no means appeased by this display of capacity for improvement in those who were once were Chattels.” A growing interest from some planters in obtaining teachers was also expressed, since they were learning “that whatever contents and dignifies their labor is a reciprocal benefit to themselves.” ³ A 1866 “Letter from Texas” to an Ohio newspaper described the situation based on a conversation with Reverend George Honey, assistant superintendent of schools with for Gregory. “There are not above ten or twelve schools yet in the State. Chaplain Honey says he could employ one hundred teachers within the next thirty days, if they could be obtained. A planter at Hempstead a few days ago offered to pay him $500 a year, in gold, and a year’s board, for a teacher for the negroes on his plantation. Rather surprised at the offer, the Chaplain inquired somewhat as to his reasons in making it. The planter replied that, aside from all considerations of right, it would be a transaction for profit, “for,” said he, “the negroes are so eager for education that I can get all I want to work for me by promising to educate their children. “He employed over sixty. General Wilson, living ten miles this side of Brenham, “an old officer in the regular army,” made the same offer.”⁴

A month later, Wheelock reported that there were now 2,445 students in 27 day schools, 8 night schools and 10 Sunday schools, taught by 28 teachers. The schools were held in “either the Colored Churches, or temporary structures, designed to be gradually superseded by something better.” The enthusiasm of the students was again emphasized. “Both old and young earnestly clutch at the hitherto forbidden fruit of knowledge, and are persisting in its acquisition. It is the cheerfully expressed opinion of our teachers that they acquire the elements of learning with gratifying rapidity. The question incredulously iterated...here, “Can a nigger learn?” is receiving its answer in every Freedman’s schoolhouse, where like swarming bees, a crowd of dusky upturned faces express their eager desire to be fed with the crumbs of knowledge. Corporal punishment is not needed and in general the system of discipline adopted here conforms to the best and most approved methods employed in the New England schools.”⁵

By the end of March, the total number of students had risen to 4,590 students, 1,760 of them adults, in 42 day schools, 29 night schools and 19 Sunday schools. The total number of teachers was 43, with 16 of them white males, 13 white females, and 14 “colored.” In addition there were “some eighteen or twenty private schools for Freedmen scattered through the State...taught by such of the colored people as have obtained a small degree of elementary knowledge.” Wheelock reported that “many hundreds of the colored race into whose hands the Primer was placed for the first time in January last, can now spell with rapidity and correctness, write neatly and read with facility in the first and second Reader. The study for which they show the least aptitude is that of arithmetic.” Teachers, despite “all the prejudices and hostilities to such an undertaking” were subject to “every degree of opposition short of violence...yet in no instance has any ground been yielded, or a school once organized been suffered to be dispersed, terrorized or broken up.”⁶

The following month there was little growth in the number of schools or students, “owing to the reduction of the military force, compelling us to suspend the proposed location of schools at numerous promising points. Some of the schools already solid and prosperous, will have to be abandoned, at no distant day.” The number of teachers also was about the same, but there was promise of more “trained instructors from the wreck of the Louisiana school system...and from the prospect of obtaining a number of excellent teachers from the volunteer regiments which are being mustered out in the state.”⁷

In Wheelock’s May 31, 1866 report to Gregory, he stated that due to the educational efforts of the Bureau “it is believed, from the best data we can obtain, that there are to day in Texas more schools in operation, and a greater number of scholars under instruction, of the colored population than of the white,” with 99 schools and 4,799 students. He again commented that the 53 overworked “teachers have mostly been drawn from Louisiana, where the widespread ruin of the colored schools had thrown out of employment large numbers of trained and competent teachers, accustomed to the Negro and wonted to the climate.”

However, the level of abuse that teachers were being subjected to was on the rise. “In a recent instance where, after much persuasion, a white family was induced to receive a female teacher to board, the citizens raised a sum equal to the price of a years boarding, and tendered it to the family, with a ‘request’ for the instant dismissal of the ‘nigger teacher.’ It was done, and without an hours notice the lady turned out into the street, after dark and in the rain, to find quarters where she could.” Threats were becoming common, with “anonymous and menacing letters...frequently sent to those supposed to be accessible to this chivalrous mode of assault, and in the case of female teachers scurrilous and scandalous reports are circulated to blacken their reputation, while the press stands conveniently ready to give wings to every defamatory word. In this warfare of venom and stings the women of Texas are foremost and worst, and next to the women are the preachers.”

The students were also being discouraged from attending the Bureau’s schools “by bribes, threats or the promise of free instruction at home.” Some plantations were working to “prevent or anticipate our schools, by placing as teachers over their labor ignorant or irresponsible persons.” The lack of buildings for schools remained a problem as well. Churches were still being used, but “the colored churches are few in number. It is impossible to rent suitable buildings, and in now way could a few thousand dollars be invested to produce such prompt and large results, as in the erection of school buildings.”⁸ Although a few dedicated school buildings were being built in Austin, Galveston and Houston, houses for rent and lumber to build new ones was scarce at the time in Brenham and Washington County. Older dilapidated structures were often used; an old blacksmith shop was used for schooling dozens of students in Chappell Hill, and the school in the city of Washington had no windows. These were all problems that were to continue to plague the establishment of Freedman Bureau schools in Brenham from the beginning and for years to come.

Teachers were expected to report to the Superintendent of Schools for the state and to the Sub-Assistant Commissioner of the Bureau of their district on special forms , though there are frequent requests from the teachers indicating the printed forms were often not available to them. The information to be provided was the number of pupils enrolled, admitted and leaving since the last report, total enrollment and average attendance, the amount paying tuition, and how many were always present and punctual. Data was also sought on the number of students engaged in the subject categories of “Alphabet, Primer, 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd Readers, Mental and Written Arith., Writing-Slate and C. Book, Geography” and “Higher Branches,” as well as those over 16 years of age and the number engaged in “Needle Work.” The categories were further broken down into the number of male and female students, and for both day and night schools. A second page headed “The observance of the following Regulations is enjoined on the Teachers of Freedmen of Texas” listing ten requirements covering hours of operation, holidays, discipline, tuition, and reports. There was also a page of questions asking about schools not reporting to the Bureau and their teachers, Sabbath schools, tuition and other remarks.

On February 28, 1866 Lieutenant Arnold wrote to Captain Morse to tell of the only Freedmen’s school operating in Brenham. It was run by two white northerners, Mr. and Mrs. James G. Whann, It is not clear where they were from, although in the 1860 federal census there is a 48 year old James G. Whann in Louisville, Kentucky whose occupation is listed as school teacher, and married to 45 year old Catherine. But what is clear is that from the beginnings, they encountered problems in educating the freedmen.

In 1866 Brenham was the county seat of Washington County, a prosperous cotton growing region where over half the population were newly freed slaves, much to the displeasure of many supporters of the previous Confederate rule who depended on them as a mainstay of their workforce. As part of a country which had defeated in a deadly and divisive war Brenham was under the rule of an occupying force, with a military post just east of town enforcing the authority of the Freedmen’s Bureau. The Bureau was authorized to adjudicate in legal disputes, especially any involving blacks and whites and mediated in labor contracts for blacks that were essential in stabilizing Washington County’s cotton based economy. The federal government’s interventions in these areas was often actively resisted by many of the white populace, and the same resistance was often encountered in the Bureau’s educational efforts.

In Arnold’s letter he alluded to the problems encountered in Brenham. “Of the school now in operation at this place I scarcely know what to say as it has not yet had a fair trial, of one thing I can speak positively, the difficulty we experienced in obtaining a building to teach in and boarding for the teachers...Some of the Freedmen at this place spoke very confidently...of their ability and willingness to purchase a house suitable for the purpose of Church & school but with my utmost endeavors I could not raise $200, though I do not attribute this to their indifference to the subject. When set free they had comparatively nothing and what money they have made since has been expended for clothing and other necessaries to enable them to start in business for themselves. “⁹

In March of 1866 the Whanns had 32 female and 17 male students. Although most of the students were listed as children, two were adults. There was a Sunday School as well as a day school; night school was not taught on account of the “slim attendance and shortness of the evenings.” Learning the alphabet, spelling and reading were the primary subjects taught, with 8 pupils reported as being able to write in a copy book and 8 “on slate or black board.” When the school was opened only 9 students “were reading, 6 in words of one syllable and 3 in letters. And now I have but few who do not spell in 2 syllables, and pronounced well.” School began at 9 in the morning with either the singing of a hymn, a prayer or a reading from the bible. Over the course of the month, out of 48 students initially enrolled 12 more were added but 11 left. It’s not indicated why they left; some schools did indicate discipline problems but according to Bureau regulations “corporal punishment is not required...the modes of discipline must not differ from those employed in the best school systems of the North.”¹⁰

A month after the Whanns began operating their school out of a rented house in Brenham, James Whann reported that the building “has been sold and if the house is not vacated by the 1^st of July it will be torn down.” Whann believed “for more than one reason” that this was a means to “break the school up here.” He pleaded with the Bureau for assistance to help purchase land and build a purpose built school house, necessary because the blacks were “too poor to raise the funds.” This goal of financial aid from the government would be pursued for the next four years before funding would finally be found for a freestanding Freedmen’s school in Brenham.

The problems encountered by the Whanns was brought up again in a letter from Sub Assistant Commissioner of the Bureau in a letter to his superior Colonel Sinclair on June 2, 1866. Although he admitted knowing nothing about Whann’s “previous character or history” he did acknowledge his difficulty “on account of prejudice, personal or official” of finding room and board, with the only real options being “at the public hotels, where day board is $20, specie (coined rather than paper money), board & room $30 specie.”¹¹

Whann was becoming more leery of the situation in Brenham. In a letter to E.M. Wheelock on May 2, he anxiously wrote that he had heard rumors that the troops at the Post of Brenham would soon be leaving. In anticipation he asked that he be telegraphed “as soon as this comes to hand for I in this event must leave with the troops. For no school can be kept here except they are over-awed by soldiers. A few miles out from here they have murdered 3 Freedmen who were witnesses in a case of another Freedmen who they would be likely to have acquitted if their evidence were to be had. Thus you see these outlaws are to be free from all restraint.”¹²

The situation in Brenham was becoming increasingly untenable for the Whanns. In a letter to Wheelock in early May he complained that “I had had positive proof that Mr Arnold is no friend of mine...always averse to build a church or school house. I spoke to him once of trying to get the white citizens to contribute something” but Arnold would not. “I knew myself they would rather burn a school house down than give one dollar in aid of its erection...I was informed by a freedwoman that he said I was only robbing the freedmen in charging them a quarter dollar for the rent of the school room. This kind of language has a bad effect on my school. I have advanced two months rent for the school room, that is $25, and have not received $11.” Furthermore, Whann said that Arnold “stated that the Bureau wants a young man as a teacher...who would teach the same number of hours they did in the white schools...” and that if this was so he needed to know before he spent any more of his own money on a school room.¹³

At a July the 4^th dinner held by the freedmen in Brenham, Whann and his school children made an appearance, even though the school had been closed when the house was sold. The children, dressed in red, white and blue costumes “made a fine appearance...But without my permission they returned from the dinner ground at about 11 o’clock,” marching through the town singing “Up with the Flag, and Down with the Traitors, which had been rehearsed in school for them to sing on the dinner ground. To which they added Hang Jeff Davis On a Sour Apple Tree. To these hateful songs the Rebs took exception. The next morning he received a letter which “said my life and family’s wife would surely be taken, and take a friends advice and leave at once.” He had received the letter early enough to leave on the morning train, “but I was stubborn enough not to go.”

This would prove to be the beginning of a battle against the Whanns in the press which led to their eventual departure. The editor of the The Banner, Daniel Leonidas McGary was a lawyer who had previously served as the first U.S. District Attorney for the State of Nebraska before eventually moving to Independence, Texas. During the Civil War he was wounded while fighting with the Confederacy, and afterward returned to Brenham as “an unreconstructed rebel major” to found The Southern Banner with John Rankin. The paper described itself as a “Red Hot Democratic Journal, with it’s pro-southern sympathies reflected in subscription rates that were twice as high for “Yankees, Carpetbaggers and Scalawags.”

McGary began printing articles mocking the efforts of the Whanns, including saying that they were teaching students that Texas was spelled “Taxes.” This was a not so subtle criticism of the collection of taxes which had not been paid by the South during the war to help pay for the conflict. His editorial satires caught the attention of the Sub-assistant Commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau Samuel Craig, who ordered McGary to stop his “persistent abuse of the teachers of the Freedmen’s Schools at this place, and... publishing libelous statements with regard to their having collected under false pretenses money from the freed people.”¹⁴ Claiming freedom of speech, McGary continued his taunts in the press to the point of claiming he was defrauding the freedpeople, leading Craig to call him into his office to fine him for his disobedience. McGary pleaded that he did not have the two hundred dollars he was being fined, needing to return to his office to obtain the sum. Instead, he fled to the Union post east of town and sought sanctuary there, much to the ire of Craig and the irritation of the post commander, Brevet Major George W. Smith. Smith felt that the military was to maintain the peace rather than act as an enforcement arm for civil legal cases brought by the Freedmen’s Bureau, and declined to turn him over to Craig.¹⁵

A series of communications between Craig and the Bureau headquarters ensued about the matter. Craig had previously had some difficulties with the Whanns, who felt they did not need to report directly to him, and the escalation in problems related to the presence was far from welcome. The friction between them became became apparent in a letter Craig sent in August to Wheelock, Whann’s superior in which he complained that “Whann himself fails to manage well. That he is unfitted to conduct a school of the kind. That he fails to command an influence sufficient with the freedmen to raise as large a school as might be raised here. It is with great difficulty that the old man can see.” His ire was not only directed to Mr. Whann, but toward his wife as well.

“...if you please I hope to see you soon when I can better explain how objectionable Mrs Whann is. You remember I mentioned some of her conduct when here. She has not improved in that particular. Her house is a constant nest for freedwomen & men, many of them known to be bad characters by the people who see her sociably chatting with them in a public place, such as her house is situated in. I saw her a few days ago follow among a large crowd of men and boys white and black, a couple of nags fighting (?) across this vacant lot, just by my agent; Mr Whann in the crowd too; both bare-headed. I have traced gossip to her house which has reflected on people living here. She bragged to me that she met and called a lawyer of this place the “son of a whore,” for some rough expressions he had indulged in with regard to her, told her by freedmen. (She never did this, however, as I ascertained.)”¹⁶

Smith released McGary, but Craig then rearrested him, and after a continued refusal to pay his fine had him confined in the local jail. The jailer was evidently sympathetic to McGary’s cause, as the jail house door was left open and the prisoner visiting freely with other townspeople on the sidewalk in front of it. Craig eventually had to release the jailer from his duties and had to act as guard for his own prisoner. From jail McGary continued to issue biting editorials critical of Craig and the Freedman’s bureau. A typical editorial read

“Captain Craig is a profound joker, and his best joke is when he calls his Bureau a ‘court.’ The idea of a court without a judge, a court which arrests parties without affidavit or warrant, which violates the constitutional guarantees of freedom of the press, which denies the right of habeas corpus, and which adjudges a party guilty and inflicts the punishment without allowing hi a trial! Is not such an idea a sublime joke. The jurisdiction of Craig’s Bureau extends, as we understand it, only to refugees, freedmen and abandoned lands. Under which of these heads, we wonder, do we come? We are not a refugee, we are not a freedman – perhaps we may be abandoned lands. The question as to the arrest has been reported to President Johnson by Governor Throckmorton.”¹⁷

The ongoing conflict between was indeed being raised to a higher level when Governor Throckmorton brought it to the attention of the president, and increasing political pressure was being put on the Freedmen’s Bureau to resolve the issue. In the midst of all this tension, Whann continued his efforts to teach, despite the lack of funds to rent a house to teach in and clearly feeling the resistance he was encountering in his efforts. He expressed this, as well as his ongoing irritation with McGary, in yet another letter to Wheelock late in August of 1866.

“I might build a log house if I had or could rent a lot to set it on. I shall make the last effort to build one. I have opened the school again & shall open the night school on the 1^st Sept if I can get a house. McGary the editor is in Prison, if it can be called so, as he comes out to take the fresh air and talk with his friends. He has the keys of the out door certain as a freedman who knows all about this matter has informed me in all secrecy. McGary is now trying to get some of the freedmen to swear that I cheated them. He told on that if he could do this he would be all right. He threatens Capt. Craig with his displeasure & is sure the President will have him discharged soon and then we may look for more of his villainy. I suppose you have seen the notification of Capt. Craig & McGary’s comment & threat beneath it in the spirit of defiance. I supposed he would have been sent down to Headquarters, but not so; the fine he is determined not to pay. I am denied the privilege of the press here, but I think the time will come when he will have to answer for some of his slander of us, for I shall not forget it if he is let slip so easy. Finally if I cannot get a house built, I shall have to give up. Please to give all the advice you can on this point.”¹⁸

He was still expressing hopes of obtaining a lot to build on, especially “when the freedmen found “the sesesh are trying to deceive them & deprive them from learning...one of them who had a lot for himself gave it up & I shall go on & build.” At this point he was determined to stay and build a school house “as to go from here to some distant land penniless does not suit me.”¹⁹ This optimism was short lived, and by September 5 he wrote to Kiddo to complain that “it has been very hard on me...I have had to pay out of $75 Rent $62 out of my own Pocket. Everything to live on is very dear here so that I shall have to leave Texas Pennyless after 7 months toil day & night.”²⁰ The same day he wrote to Wheelock informing him that the school house he had rented “comes down on the 8^th without fail..I cannot stay any longer here, nor go without Transportation. I therefore make requisition for myself wife child and Baggage to New Orleans as I have no time to loose.”²¹ But larger issues than education were soon to overtake the Whanns, and although it is not clear from existing records when he left, it was almost certainly within the following weeks.

On the night of September 7, 1866 several soldiers from the Union post east of Brenham were carousing in the town. After disrupting several social events in town, both white and black, they became engaged in a shootout in which two of the soldiers were wounded. When word reached the post, a body of troops were sent into town, ostensibly to restore order. But ultimately they created more chaos, and before the night was over an entire block of buildings, including McGary’s newspaper office, had been burned to the ground.

Following the departure of the Whanns, education of freedmen in Brenham suffered a serious setback. Another school there would not be opened until April of the following year, but other schools would spring up (and often close soon afterward) throughout Washington County. In June, 1866 Craig reported “that other schools could, and should if possible, be organized in various parts of the country when the number of Freedmen would justify. At Chappel Hill, Washington, etc, but of these places I as yet know comparatively little not having visited in any part of the country.”²² In August, 1866, the mayor of Chappell Hill, F. C. Wilkes, wrote to Wheelock that he was teaching a “Sabbath School” with an attendance of greater than 50 students, and that a school of 25 to 35 students could be established. There had been an effort there for some time to secure a school room, and requested “a man and his wife. She could teach and he could get into profitable employment.” The situation for boarding a single teacher would be difficult, and expensive, costing about $15 a month in hard cash. “Whether any family of our white citizens will board a Lady teacher I think doubtful,” though “if she were a married Lady there would be no difficulty in procuring quarters & board.”²³ Wheelock responded that a man and wife team was not available, and male teachers were difficult to obtain, “for men of good education & character can find more profitable employment.” He did select a single woman for the job, Miss Appleton, “a person of quiet manners, in every way unobjectionable, retiring & modest in her habits, and of assured morality – respectability. She will be faithful in the performance of her duties, will give no needless offence, & will I am confident, prove herself worthy of your official confidence and personal esteem.”²⁴

It is not clear if Miss Appleton ever did teach in Chappell Hill, but in January, 1867 Wilkes again wrote to Captain Allen of the Freedmen’s Bureau that a Reverend Mr. Myers, “a man of intelligence...acceptable to the coloured people, and mostly to the whites also” had “asked me to aid him in getting up a School among the coloured people...He wishes to know whether you are operating as a government agent or an agent for some Voluntary association and...can be become an employee under your plans provided he is Satisfied with them when he knows more about them.” M. P. Myers did open a school there in February, with some thirty students in attendance, half of what he felt could attend if he “had the ability to teach without charge or at very low rates,” due to poverty among the freedmen. The school was being taught in a former blacksmith shop measuring 40 by 20 feet, “entirely unsuited for the purpose being old and dilapidated.” When George Ruby, a black bureau agent who would later be elected as a representative to the Texas Legislature, investigated the school room in June of 1867, he estimated it would take $300 “to make the building at all suitable.”²⁵

At the same time, there were at least three other schools operating in Washington County, according to Edward Collins, the local Sub-assistant Commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau. In response to a request from the bureau on private schools for Freedmen in his district, he mentioned the Chappell Hill school, one of about 25 students on a plantation near Independence run by “a colored teacher named ‘Sally,’” one at Mill Creek run by a teacher “name not recollected” with about 40 students and one in the vicinity of Washington run by a white teacher with some 40 students.²⁶ The school near Independence was probably on the plantation of Mr. C. Smith, who had requested a teacher three months earlier. In reporting on that request, Collins had investigated and found that “there is a room proper for a school room, a good place at the proprietor’s house and an attendance of about forty scholars. It is proper to state that the proprietor is a single man and has a colored housekeeper and colored cook both females who with himself are the only occupants of the house. There is no other boarding placement.”²⁷

Brenham was also working again on a school for freedmen and their children. By April of 1867, Collins reported that a Baptist church there was holding a Sunday school, with over a hundred attendees, over half of them adults. Teachers there were “inadequate, some half dozen attending very irregularly, with a tenth of the students able to “read the scriptures indifferently well, one tenth learning the alphabet, the rest...in primary lessons.” The freedmen were also attempting to complete a 30 by 50 foot school building, to be completed “once sufficiently far advanced to warrant the expenditure of the $400 allowed from the fund.” The construction of the school building was probably being held up, at least in part, by the difficulty in obtaining lumber in a town trying desperately to rebuild itself after so much of it had been burned to the ground. As will be seen, the completion of an adequately equipped school building with assistance would continue to be held up for years to come. In the meantime a day school was established “at the Freedmens Village in the suburbs of Brenham, the number of scholars...limited to the capacity of the building, about 30, the children mostly small and learning the alphabet.”²⁸

The Bureau’s attempts to find a teacher for the day school were unsuccessful, so the Freedmen took matters into their own hands and supplied their own teacher. Martha Watrous, in a letter she sent with her first monthly report to the Bureau, wrote that “I have taken up A School by the request of the people” and that “Mr. A. Neley is teaching in the church.”²⁹ Born in Kentucky in 1810, she was married to Benjamin O. Watrous, a well known and respected freedman involved in local politics who had lived in Texas 16 years. As the wife of a successful wheelwright, minister and politician and a literate woman as well she stepped into the role of teaching the freedmen’s primary school for children in April of 1867. In lieu of other candidates, the Freedmen’s Bureau authorized Collins to pay her a salary of $20 a month, as well as $15 a month for the rent of the house owned by her husband in which she was teaching.³⁰

Martha Watrous did not serve long in her role as teacher, with a notation in the Bureau records indicating she was discharged as a teacher on June 30, 1867. Although over the summer the Sunday schools remained in operation, the younger students were generally working in the fields with their families on crops, and until these crops came in money to support their tuition was in short supply. It is likely that Martha Watrous did not return to teaching after that summer was an incident involving her husband, who was acting at the time as a voting registrar in Washington County. Many blacks wanting to sign up to exercise their suffrage rights were working on the cotton crop and threatened with losing their contracts if they traveled to Brenham, the county seat, to register. Benjamin Watrous, Louis Edwards, a former Army Captain and Peter Diller, a Unionist who had been forced to flee the county for fear of his life prior to the war, were registering voters in the town of Washington when they were attacked. Watrous was shot, and the sudden need for his care during recovery may have been the reason his wife left her teaching position.³¹

This threat to his life did not stop Mr. Watrous from carrying on his political ambitions, serving as a member of the Texas Constitutional Convention of 1868, a member of the Republican party state central committee and running for the state senate, losing that election to Matthew Gaines. The Freedmen’s Bureau records indicate that the Watrous family remained involved in education as well. Although Martha Watrous quit teaching at the end of June in 1867, the school house continued to be rented to the Bureau by Benjamin Watrous. In the contract he signed with the Bureau in June of 1868, the building being rented is listed as “the Building now held by them as a Church under the control of the Methodist Episcopal Church near the City of Brenham.”³² During his time as a representative at the Constitutional Convention, his checks for rental of the school had to be forwarded to Austin for his signature.

After Martha Watrous quit teaching in June of 1867, there is no school recorded as operating in Washington County until February of 1868. Brenham was not unique in the closure of so many schools, and by September of 1867 only three counties were reporting open schools. Wheelock alluded to this in a letter to the General Superintendent of Freedmen’s Schools, J.W. Alvord. “This is by no means an unsatisfactory showing when it is remembered that in addition to a summer of unusual malarial sickliness, the fever has ravaged every Texas town within one hundred and fifty miles of the coast, while the panic was so great that inland towns numbering twenty five hundred inhabitants have been absolutely unpeopled. Nearly all of the white Teachers have been sick, and two at least have died; nor will it be safe for Teachers from the North to report for duty here before the middle of December next.”³³ This was the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1867, and it ravaged the town of Brenham so badly that two mass graves were dug in what is currently the Brenham Masonic Cemetery, with 200 buried in one and 300 in the other. It is not unreasonable to speculate that the absence of Martha Watrous from any further records may be due to her falling prey to yellow fever.³⁴

The next reported opening of two day schools at Brenham appears in February of 1868, with an A.E Smith and J. M. Foster teaching. Although Smith does not appear again in the records, J. M. Foster does. Little is known other than that he was a white man, and was apparently quite competent in his role as an instructor, since he continued to teach there for a year, until he transferred to a school in nearby Independence in March of 1869.³⁵ Later that spring two other teachers appear in the records. One is Thomas H. Huff, about who more will be said later, while the other is yet another member of that illustrious family after whom one of the two main black communities in Brenham, Watrousville, was named. Oliver Watrous began teaching in May of 1868, presumably in the same church building owned by Benjamin Watrous. His relationship to the family is unclear, a problem exacerbated by the absence of census data on him, and unlike Benjamin Watrous, he does not appear in the 1867 Washington County Voter Registry. There are several newspaper accounts in the Brenham press, one regarding a divorce proceeding in 1889 from his wife Carrie, and several accounts of real estate transfers from 1892, 1893 and 1900, the last to Carrie Watrous for “other considerations and $1.” There is a mention of an Oliver Watrous from the 1890 Minutes of the Annual Conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church Texas Conference as a “Superannuated Preacher.” But the most intriguing bit of data on Oliver Watrous comes from an 1888 application for benefits filed in Texas which lists him as a veteran of the 96^th Union Colored Infantry, having served as a Sergeant Major in the 2^nd Corps de Afrique Engineers, which served in the Department of the Gulf.³⁶

From May through October of 1868, the school taught by Oliver Watrous was closed. It was reopened, in the same building, with a new teacher. George W. Schobey, a white teacher from Illinois with ten years of teaching experience. He continued in Brenham until March, 1869, when he transferred to a school in Austin and was replaced by J.J. Burke, who had previously taught in Austin County. A second school in Brenham was also being taught by a Mr. M. Foster, in a building owned by a black carpenter, Charlie Childs.³⁷ Although many of the reports he sent into the Freedmen’s Bureau exist, little is known about Foster himself other than he continued teaching in Brenham until his transfer to a school in Independence in May of 1869.

Born in South Carolina about 1847, Thomas H. Huff arrived in Brenham around 1867 and began teaching in 1868. He stated at one point that he had a family, although the 1870 Census shows him living with a woman twice his age and her daughter. His experiences as an instructor were more well documented than others due to the number of letters he sent to the Superintendent of Education for the Freedemen’s Bureau in addition to his monthly reports. Huff described himself in correspondence with Superintendent of Education Stevenson as “a colored man destitute as it happened with the misfortune of having only one hand!!! I am Teaching School for a Support though I have so many orphan children to encounter with that I do not make nor clear expense.” Responding to Stevenson, who had replaced Rev. Joseph Welch , Huff lamented his shortcomings as an educator. “I am quite Younger and hardly feel myself competent to fill the position in which I am placed to serve as a scientific Demagogue though I will try. I want to ask you if there could be any chance for a lame man of my standing having only one hand! And the Right at that gone! Could there be any thing obtained from the Government or could there be any chance for me to go to School and prepare myself more competently for my business if so please let me know immediately. I have been Teaching School but actually do not think myself capable of the business though I cannot make a living hardly any other way, and therefore if there is anything allowed or any arrangement so that I could get one more or three Years Schooling I then would be able to make an honest living by that or some other way. I have strived Long and very hard since the war to get a learning but the Teachers are so incompetent and so incorrect that I thought I would given them up and apply to the Government for assistance.” He elaborated on his situation in a following letter. “You ask me if I lost my limb in the War. Yes Sir. I did and I was shot up pretty badly though I am favored with the kind blessing as to have received a small degree of knowledge. Though if you will and can arrange it so as to get me into school for two years I can make a living. I feel myself incompetent to discharge a faithful duty. Somebody ought to be preparing for the future benefit of the advancing race, and I wanted to do so if possible.”³⁸

Since he was teaching so many orphans, who were not able to pay even the $1 tuition at all, Huff was constantly short of funds. In March of 1869, he wrote to the Bureau that he was teaching 50 students in his day school and 56 in a night school, and that “more than one half come without paying because they are not able to pay their Tuition.” By August he was he was pleading that another teacher in Watrousville, J.J. Burk “gave me orders to Teach the orphan Children free and that I would get some aid from the Government but not so. I do not get anything. I can say that I have Sixty Scholars, but about one forth of them pay, and the rest do not. I can say I have House Rent to pay. Board high and I do no business at all. I am a lame man or I could do other work. Answer immediately.” He did eventually receive a voucher for his rent and a $10 per month salary. “I was more than glad to see that this is a small division allowed for me for I have been laboring here for the Freeman To Years and been receiving Orphan children and no thanks hardly for so doing though I have charity yet left within my bossom. I have ten orphan children in my school.” He also mentioned another teacher, George Schobey, had replaced Burk in Watrousville. ³⁹

The school in Chappell Hill had been abandoned, with the teacher “not capable of sustaining the said school in its necessities” having returned to farming. Another school was being formed there and Huff was expressing an interest in teaching there after his school year for 1869 ended. “They have been destitute of schools there and in Washington. For What? The Rebs have threaten, and not only made them but fulfilled them. Shooting and killing men that went there and was able to read and write they had a spite against him.” He mentioned that at that time there were seven teachers in Washington County besides himself, including Benjamin and Oliver Watrous, J. J. Burk, a Mr. and Mrs. Noble, “and only one some portion of the time in Chappell Hill, and for Washington!”

The position in Chappell Hill went instead to Joseph E. Little, who had taught in Austin County until his school closed due to a lack of students. Huff wrote to complain to the Superintendent of Education to complain about Little’s appointment. “I am myself hardly able to Teach School, but when such men as Mr. J. E. Little is allowed to Teach, I think I will resign. He is not able to give the Right pronunciation of a monosyllable, and how is it that he ever has been to school, only got what he knows here and there and if the children don’t do as he tells them they are punished, and I do not approve it not-at-all. The colored people over here are all ignorant and they do not know any better than he is Teacher a Right.”⁴⁰

Huff continued to teach in Brenham the next year, continuing to have difficulties obtaining rent money and a salary from the Freedmen’s Bureau. He wrote to Welch that it had “been reported around the colored people that if they bought their land and forwarded a certificate to the headquarters that the government would Furnish them with the funds to buy the lumber.” A letter had already been sent to Welch regarding the completion of a schoolhouse on a lot being bought by the Board of Trustees of the Freedmen School. The board was formed during “a mass meeting of the Freedmen of this Community” in October of 1869, and consisted of five white men, including its President, W. Kavanaugh, and five black men, Matt Parker, Wiley Estes and Wiley Hubert. The board “at once advertised for a teacher and secured the services of Mr. W. G. Zealy...a gentleman in every respect and worthy to fill the function he now occupies.” William Grayson Zealy was a 31 year old born in South Carolina, and had moved to Brenham with his wife and four children. His salary of $1.50 per student tuition was collected in advance by the board and held by them unti the end of each month. He was teaching around fifty students, most of them female, most of them attending regularly. They were reported by Zealy to be “progressing slowly. In writing, they have made but little progress, owing to the absence of proper furniture for that purpose.” There were a Sunday School and a library associated with the school as well. This letter to Welch asked for any assistance possible, as “the citizens of Brenham have contributed liberally to buy the house in which the school is taught and is now nearly paid for.”⁴¹

Welch never received this letter, having moved on from his position as Superintendent of Education. Kavanaugh then wrote to their newly elected Congressional representative, General William Thomas Clark, reminding him that the freedmen of Brenham “assisted largely in selecting you as our representative.” He described the school house as “large and commodious, and nearly paid for, there is a mortgage on it, for the balance of Seventy four dollars. It will require about $300 to complete the house, making desks and seats...we are in need of funds to school the poor and orphan children and to secure the services of a faithful and competent teacher. The tuition now being paid is insufficient to support a suitable teacher and the one we now have will not remain, unless we get assistance.” He requested their petition for assistance be presented directly to General O. O. Howard, the Commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau in Washington. This letter was accompanied by an endorsement by the commander of the Post of Brenham, Captain James Biddle. In addition to knowing most of the gentlemen of the board, he had a personal note to add about the school. “I have a freed boy in my employ who attends, and from the manner in which he has progressed in his studies in the last three months, and the promptness and readiness displayed by him I am satisfied as to the efficiency of the teachers.”⁴²

This letter to Representative Clark apparently had some effect on Howard. 5 days later Stevenson forwarded a copy of the deed for the school to Howard, along with a letter which questioned the need for the school, as well as the motives of those petitioning for the school. “The school was organized just before the last election, by political enemies of the Republican party and for, I am told, political purposes...if it is the desire of the Commissioner to spend $400 at that place, I would suggest it be done on a building which friends, and not enemies of the Administration, represent.” Based in Austin, he had contacted Texas legislators about the proposed school. “I have talked with Senator Gaines and Representative Stockbridge, one a colored and the other a white man, and both gentlemen opposed expending money on that building, because of its influence upon the people. General Clark ought to have been well informed in reference to the matter, as our State Representative, he having lived at that place.” He even went so far as to misrepresent the current state of the school in Brenham and neglected the hiring of Zealy as an instructor, stating “we have been unfortunate and unable to get a suitable teacher for Brenham, though we have a small school there taught by a freedmen.”⁴³

Kavanaugh wrote again to Stevenson, reminding him that it had been a while since he had sent a copy of the deed for the school. He suggested Stevenson come visit the school, and unaware of the maneuvering against the school which was going on suggested “there are a good many people in Austin at present from Brenham, you can get all the information you want if you can’t visit us.” He sent along a detailed $400 contract for repair and furnishing of the 50 foot by 30 foot school, including “400 feet of lumber for making desks...30 seats, 8 feet long, with backs 20 inches high, made of cedar,” six windows, and a tin framed 3 ½ by 5 foot blackboard. Much of the work, including putting up the ceiling dressing, would be done by the freedmen.⁴⁴

Stevenson’s reservations about the school’s completion were no longer a problem after the appointment of Eugene Carlos Bartholemew as the Superintendent of Education for the Freedmen’s Bureau in July of 1870. Bartholemew forwarded the contract for repairs to Howard, but the money was slow in coming. Kavanaugh eventually had to advance over $200 in gold coinage of his own to pay for the lumber. The work was completed by early August, and he asked Bartholemew to send someone to come inspect the work “as I need daily the money.” Finally, on September 20 Thomas G. Davidson was sent down to inspect the work and reported “that the work has been done in a carpenter-like manner and very becoming to the old building.” It had “new windows on one side, sealing and good seats, desks for writing, a black board and teachers desk.”⁴⁵

During the inspection of the house, Davidson insisted on making some changes to the Board as Trustees whose names were placed on the deed, as he has a perfect Knowledge of the freedmen here. Two of them are alderman of Brenham at this timme, appointed by Gov. Davis and the we have amongst the Freedmen.” The deed transferring the property from Wiley Hubert, the previous owner, to the new Board of Trestees for Freedmen’s School at Brenham, namely Matt Parker, Wiley Hubert, Theordore Stamps, Charles Childs and James Basey. Parker and Hubert had previously been on the Board. Stamps was a well-to-do city alderman and property owner, Basey a farmer, and Childs was a carpenter who had previously rented school houses to the Bureau. And finally, on September 24, 1870, Kavanaugh was finally able to to recoup the money he had put forth to pay for the lumber and labor for the school when a document was issued by Stacy to “at sight please pay to W. Kavanaugh or bearer four hundred the amt appropriated to pay for repairs to the freedman School House of Brenham.” The building, which had been used as a school, a church and a public hall, stood and continued to be used for many years until when in 1896, abandoned after its underpinnings rotted out, it blew down in a storm⁴⁶

Problems with a more permanent school house in Chappell Hill continued. In the same letter to Superintendent of Education Bartholemw in which Davidson approved the Brenham school, he questioned the deed for a lot on which $450 were to be spent for supplies to build a school in a contract suggested by the previous superintendent. The deed for the land did not have the required signature of the wife, which made the purchase questionable under Bureau purchasing statutes.

In the June and July of 1870 reports were sent into the Bureau from a school being taught in Washington (now Washington-on-the-Brazos) by Robert J. Moore. The number of students averaged 24 (mostly female) in June and 45 in July, with a Sunday School also being held. No tuition was being paid by the students in the opening month of June, and a total of only ten students paid the dollar tuition in July. None the less, Moore was optimistic in his written remarks on the school. He remarked on the students being “well conducted, and for the short time I have had them under me, give promise of progress. Our school house is not as well fixed as we could desire, we require desks to write on, and in the winter we will need glass in the windows, but with these exceptions we are very well fixed, and I am hopeful of progress.” The following month he reported that the parents of the students were “pleased with the progress being made by the children.”⁴⁷

Moore is an interesting case of the status that some teachers in Freedmen’s Bureau schools came to hold in their communities even after the Bureau was disbanded. Born in Virginia of a black mother and white father around 1840, he continued to live in Washington with his wife Ann and two children while teaching school and serving as one of four county commissioners. In 1883, 1885 and 1887 he served three terms in the Texas legislature representing his district, remained politically active and was later elected the only black Justice of the Peace to serve in Washington County in the 19^th century. The high esteem in which he was held was demonstrated in 1897, when during a case brought against him while serving his duties as Justice of the Peace his bond of office was set aside on a technicality. Nine of the wealthiest men in the county put up the bond for him, “a high compliment to Justice Moore’s standing in that section of the county, proving conclusively that he has the confidence of the very best men in the community.” He also served as Postmaster of Washington and owned a farm there as well.⁴⁸

Another Freedmen’s Bureau teacher who continued to teach and influence his community was Samuel Love. Although he only shows up in the records in an October 1869 report and a roll of teachers for 1870, he continued this career for many decades in Brenham and Washington County. Born about 1840 in Texas, there are indications that he as may have accompanied Confederate troops as a cook during the Civil War. In the 1870 he also worked as a grocer in Camptown, and in 1871 he chartered The Dollar Savings Bank of Brenham with others, including two black members of the Texas Legislature, Allen Wilder and Matthew Gaines. By 1880, his occupation in the Census is listed as school teacher. The students at the Camptown church where he taught Sunday School presented him with a gold-headed cane “as a testimony of their appreciation of his services.” An 1881 newspaper account took note of his receiving a “first-class certificate” during an examination “as an example of what colored men can do...Mr. Love is an indomitable student; possessing a library of 200 volumes. When not at work you can find him at home solving the knotty problems. He is also studying Latin and making commendable progress.” He also served, along with black alderman Waltman Bynum, as a trustee of the Mount Rose Cemetery Association in the purchase of the land on which Camptown Cemetery now sits.⁴⁹

Love was also politically active and became involved in school financing. In 1886, he was convicted for forgery of school vouchers. Released on bond while awaiting a new trial, he fled before the new court date. A few months after he fled, another black man by the name of Sam Love was lynched by forty men in another Southeast Texas town shortly, leading most Brenham residents to believe he was dead. Using this news to his advantage, Love spent 3 years on the run before being returned to Brenham, where a “large number of colored people...were at the depot to see him brought in and gazed upon him with wonder; as if they were beholding one who had returned from the dead.” On his conviction a large crowd of tearful black citizens saw him off to prison. He suffered a great deal working on the convict farm. “He had never done any work and his hands became blistered and very sore. And now that they are too sore to work the convict guards are said to be in the habit of whipping and beating him. Some of Sam’s white friends have written in his behalf to the guards to be more lenient with him.” A petition with the governor signed by all the county officials in Washington County, and he was released in time for Christmas after serving a little more than a year “in consideration of the high character of the signers.” After his return from prison, and in spite of his conviction, he was still very much appreciated by the citizens of Brenham. Love took up teaching again outside of Brenham, even serving in the Washington County Colored Teachers Institute, eventually even serving on its executive committee. He also would give history talks on the Civil War, perhaps even drawing on his personal experiences in that conflict some thirty years previously.⁵⁰

The Freedmen’s Bureau played an important role in establishing the institution of education among black communities where even the most rudimentary elements of learning were previously discouraged or even forbidden. The Bureau was unable to fully meet this need, often encountering difficulties both financial and cultural. While these problems were daunting at times, to say the least, the black community stepped to fill the gaps in ways that have been largely overlooked. Although there was some financial assistance from the Bureau, most of the funding came from tuition provided by families of the students. Likewise there were some instructors provided by the Bureau, but much of the teaching was supplied by freedmen who previously had some degree of education themselves. The importance of these teachers in their communities carried on past the demise of the short lived Bureau schools. This short survey of Freedmen’s Bureau schools in Brenham and Washington County gives some indication of the difficulties encountered by those schools, and how those difficulties were met. A longer look at two of the local teachers who stepped forward to meet these needs shows the depth of their commitment to education and the appreciation with which they were met.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

References

1Unites States Statutes at Large, Treaties and Proclamations of the United States of America, Vol. 13 (Boston, 1866), p.507

2Smallwood, James (1981), “Black Education in Reconstruction Texas: the Contributions of the Freedmen’s Bureau and Benevolent Societies,” East Texas Historical Journal: Vol. 19: Iss. 1, Article 7.

3National Archives Microfilm Publications M822 Roll 16 Target 2, State Superintendent of Education’s Monthly School Reports, Jan. 1866-May 1970, Frames 4-6. Future references to these records, primarily from M822, will be abbreviated for the sake of brevity, while still allowing ready citation to the records. The source used in the course of this survey were from the online records of the Bureau now available from FamilySearch.org. Some liberties have been taken with the irregular spelling and punctuation in the original documents for the sake of clarity.

4Belmont Chronicle (St. Clairsville, Ohio), March 1, 1866, p2

5M822 Roll 16 Target 2, frames 8-9

6M822 Roll 16 Target 2, frames 11-13

7M822 Roll 16 Target 2, frames 15-16

8M822 Roll 16 Target 2, frames 18-21

9M822 Roll 10, frames 32-35

10M822 Roll 11, frames 133-136. Frame 115 gives the number of students admitted who could read, as well as the fact that Whann himself paid for the books, including the copy books, for a total of $26.30.

11M822 Roll 10, frames 176-177

12M822 Roll 10, frames 833-834

13M822 Roll 10, Frames 889-895

14M821, Roll 4, 913

15William Richter has done one of the most comprehensive studies of the Whann/ McGary incidents in Brenham, and many of those details can be found in his works, Overreached on All Sides: The Freedmen’s Bureau Administrators in Texas, 1865-1868, Texas A&M Press, 1991, p127-131, and “The Brenham Fire of 1866: A Texas Reconstruction Atrocity,” Louisiana Studies, 14 (1975), 289-314.

16M822, Roll 10, 0202 of 1537

17The Florida Sentinel, October 6, 1866, p1

18M822, Roll 10, frames 918-919

19M822, Roll 10, frames 924-925

20M822, Roll 10, 0929

21M822, Roll 10, 0933

22M822, Roll 10, 0176

23M822, Roll 10, 0912

24M822, Roll 10, 0915

25M822, Roll 4, 159; M822, Roll 10, 1239. Ruby had been born a free black in the north, and worked as a journalist in Haiti. He also taught in the Freedmens school in Galveston, after being beaten while trying to open a school in Louisiana. He also served in the Texas Constitutional Convention of 1868, where he surely met and worked with Benjamin O. Watrous, who along with his wife Martha were to play an important role in Brenham Freedmens schools.

26M822, Roll 3, 0377

27M822, Roll 3, 0319

28M822, Roll 3, 0323

29M822, Rol 15, 1339

30M822, Roll 3, 095; the information on her age, birthplace and literacy comes from the 1870 census, her ownership of the building from M1912, Roll 8. 539. Although the census record makes his literacy status unclear, he was able to sign his name, as found found on the 1868 contract for rental of his building to the Bureau. His residency in Washington County comes from the 1867 Washington County Voter Registry.

31M1912, Roll 8, 727 for the note on discharge;

32M821, Roll 16, 1020

33M803, Roll 31, 64

34The information on the mass graves at the Brenham Masonic Cemtery comes courtesy of the Washington County Genealogical Society, who have documented burials at the site. From their pdf on the site, accessed at http://bluebonnetgenealogy.org/wcgs/cemeteries/central/BrenhamMasonic.pdf

35Citation needed

36Brenham Daily Banner, August 15, 1889 p4; Brenham Daily Banner, November 3, 1892 p3; Brenham Daily Banner, March 16, 1893 p9; Brenham Daily Banner, February 7, 1900, p1; Minutes of the Annual Conferences of the Methodist Church, Spring Conferences of 1890, p14; United States Civil War and Later Pension Index, 1861-1917, File Number 23421146

37M1912, Target 2, Roll 14, 485; his status as a carpenter, born in Virginia in 1848, come from the 1880 Census.

38His age comes from the 1870 Census. The correspondence from April of 1870 is from M822, Roll 6, 528, 530 and 539.

39M822, Roll 6, 102, 250 and 306.

40M822, Roll 6, 480

41M822, Roll 6, 528; Roll 10 1458-1462.

42M822,, Rol 10, 1454; M822, Roll 6, 582

43M822, Roll 10, 1451

44M822, Roll 6, 755, 763 and 764.

45M822, Roll 10, 1407; Roll 6, 777, 779, 804 and 807.

46M822, Roll 6, 806, 808 and 811. Occupational data comes from the 1870 Census. The fate of the school house comes from the Brenham Daily Banner, June 9, 1896, p3. The article also states that the school house has previously been on the site of the original Post of Brenham and used as a sutler’s storehouse.

47M822, Roll 19, 1509; M822, Roll 6, 809; M822, Roll 16, 257, 259, 303 and 305

48The date of his birth is from his death certificate, as is his place of birth. Most current sources give his birthplace as Navasota or Washington County, but Virginia is given here since it is also noted on the 1880 Census, though Tennessee on the 1900 Census and Texas on the 1910 Census. His year of birth is given 1844 and 1845 in Washington Countybiographic sketches for the 18^th, 19^th and 20^th Legislatures, which also mention his mixed race birth and mention him as intelligent, modest and of a “decorous behavior.” The bond in the case against him, Bynum vs. Moore, is from the Brenham Daily Banner, December 5, 1895, p7. The “first class certificate” comes from the Brenham Daily Banner, September 16, 1881, p3. The deed information comes from a personal communication from Rob Bubb.

49M822, Roll 15, 642; M822, Roll 16, 213; the implication of his having served as a cook comes from a court case in which the judge mentions Love having served as a cook with his company, in Brenham Daily Banner, September 19, 1889, p4; the legislative act chartering the bank is from Gammel, Hans Peter Mareu Neilsen, “The Laws of Texas, 1822-1897,” Vol 7, 1898, p288. His caning comes from Brenham Weekly Banner, March 28, 1879, p3;

50Brenham Daily Banner, September 16, 1886, p4; Brenham Weekly Banner, September 16, 1886, p3; Brenham Daily Banner, October 10, 1886, p4; The Standard (Clarksville, Texas), July 7, 1887, p2: Brenham Daily Banner, May 25, 1889, p3; Brenham Daily Banner, November 13, 1889, p3; Texas Convict and Conduct Register, 1875-1945, Huntsville, B004456-006375, p504: Brenham Daily Banner, December 25, 1890, p5: Brenham Daily Banner, October 13, 1895, p3:Brenham Daily Banner, 3, 1893, p7; December 8, 1894; October 20, 1895, p3; September 29, 1895, p7; April 26, 1896, p2; Brenham Daily Banner, February 16, 1896, p3.