frontier times – Page 3 – Texas History Notebook

James Kerr

James Augusta Kerr was one of the more interesting people in the early days of Texas. He was born September 24, 1790 in Boyle County, Kentucky to Reverend James Kerr II (1749 – 1811) and Patience Wells Kerr (1759 – 1799). He was the seventh child and second son of the couple’s ten children born over a twenty year period from 1777 to 1797. The father, James, was a farmer and a Baptist minister, more accurately described as a circuit riding preacher. A descendant, James Kerr Crain, writes that Patience, the youngest of a large group of children, had eloped with her husband to be after her parents objected to the relationship, but the union lasted until her untimely death. The mother, Patience, died in 1799 after taking ill on a horseback trip to visit one of their older children. Her husband preached the funeral, which was said to be the first Protestant sermon preached in the sparsely populated Upper Louisiana Territory. Rev. Kerr married a widow by the name of Phoebe Bonham one year after the death of Patience. The family moved to St. Charles County, Missouri in 1808 and Rev. Kerr passed away there in 1811.

Oliver Loving’s Family, Part 2

The children of Oliver Loving and Susan Doggett Loving:

Sarah Irvin Loving (1831 – 1915) married John F. “Jack” Flint (1827 – 1886) in 1853. Jack Flint was about five years older than she was and had come to Texas from Kentucky, as had the Oliver Loving family. The Flints were a farming (and most likely ranching) family, according to the 1870 federal census and had three daughters and two sons born from 1857 to 1867. All the children lived to be adults, except for their first born daughter. The family lived first in Palo Pinto County and later moved to Young County. They had been living in Young County no more than a couple of years when Jack died of pneumonia in 1886. Sarah lived in town and survived him almost thirty years before she also passed. Both Sarah and Jack are buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Graham.

Major Nicholas Nolan

Nicholas Merritt Nolan was born around 1835 in County Kilkenny, Ireland to James Nowlan and Bridget Maher Nowlan. Nolan emigrated to the United States as a youth. In 1852, he enlisted in New York in the United States Army as a private. He was promoted through the ranks and was a first sergeant at the outbreak of the Civil War. During the war, he was commissioned as an officer and served with the 6th United States Cavalry Regiment.

Colonel Ranald Slidell Mackenzie

Ranald Slidell Mackenzie was born on July 27, 1840 in Westchester, New York to Alexander Slidell Mackenzie (1803 – 1848) and Catherine Alexander Robinson Mackenzie (1814 – 1883). He was the oldest of their five children. His father was the son of John Slidell and Mary Mackenzie but his father had adopted the name of Mackenzie (his mother’s maiden name) in 1837. The explanation for the name change was that it was a condition set out in order for him to claim an inheritance from an uncle, his mother’s late brother. Alexander Mackenzie had served for many years in the United States Navy after entering as a midshipman in 1815. He was promoted to lieutenant in 1825 and commander in 1841.

Henri Castro

Henri Castro (sometimes called Compte Henri De Castro de Boxar) was living in Paris, France at the time he arranged in 1842 to secure a land grant from Republic of Texas president Sam Houston. His first grant proposal was to bring 200 families to Texas the following year. He was not able to fulfill this agreement. A second effort was more successful. Castro’s ambitious agreement was to bring 600 families from Alsace in France to settle in Texas.