Book, Gideon Lincecum 1793 – 1874: A Biography Gideon Lincecum, 1793-1874: A Biography by Lois Wood Burkhalter Page 1 of 42 ** PAGE BREAK ** Book, Gideon Lincecum 1793 – 1874: A Biography CHAPTER SIX GIDEON AND THE CHILDREN It is a painful thing to know that the grand hope which I so fondly cherished during the minor ages of my children has ultimated in utter failure. Not one of them will leave a mark that will not be obliterated by the first rude blast that passes after they have left the mundane stage. GID FROM HIS little patriarchy in Long Point, Texas, Gideon wrote in 1866 to an old friend: "We have lost four children, Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 13 are dead; balance are all near and are going well enough ... I used to say to you that I should never be able to bring myself into notice, but that I hoped to shine forth in my posterity." Gideon was rich in progeny but none of his sons and daughters possessed personalities as sparkling as his. He and SARAH BRYAN were parents of thirteen children, all born before they came to Texas. The children, in order of their births, were Lycurgus, Lysander M., Martha Ann Elizabeth, Leonidas L., Leander W. C., Mary Catherine, Lachaon Joseph, Lucullus Garland, Leonora, Cassandra, Sarah Matilde, Lysander Rezin, and Lucifer Hezekiah. Martha Ann Elizabeth died in Columbus, Mississippi, at the age of seventeen months. The first Lysander died in Mississippi in 1832. Gideon once explained his death: "I, with the assistance of another poison doctor, while I was practicing the old school of medicine, killed one of my children, fourteen years old, by administering the tobacco smoke injection." The thirteenth child, Lucifer Hezekiah, was born on October 18, 1847, and on that day Gideon noted: "Born on the 64th year of American Independence. May the boy and the country ever remain free and independent.” One wonders if Gideon’s strange sense of humor was at work when he belatedly bestowed his father’s name on one of his sons and prefaced it with the name of the fallen archangel. It is likely, however, that he was merely continuing the alliteration of the letter L in his sons’ names, and named his last son for Lucifer, the Sardinian prelate, and not Satan. Gideon’s terse statement that No. 13 was dead is the only reference to this unluckily numbered and oddly named child. The family Bible in which Sarah Lincecum carefully recorded the births and deaths of her children and grandchildren, cannot be located. It reportedly was given by a descendant to a Galveston, Texas, minister. Most of the children were born in Cotton Gin Port. When the top six were old enough to go to school, Gideon bought a house in Columbus, Mississippi, where he sent them, with their mother, to be educated, while he remained in Cotton Gin Port to continue the practice he had established as a doctor. At the end of six months he went over to Columbus to see what progress the children had made. He expected great things of them, as they were all "sprightly minded.” They clamored around him excitedly chattering about all the interesting things Columbus had to offer - shows, races, fights, shootings, dances, and parties. Gideon questioned them about geography, history, and arithmetic. Their answers were vague and evasive. Page 2 of 42 ** PAGE BREAK ** Book, Gideon Lincecum 1793 – 1874: A Biography "What is the longest river in the United States ?" "We didn’t study that, we just study geography." "What kind of history do you study ?" "Oh, it's just history." Gideon suggested they ask each other questions, one of them acting the part of the teacher. They brightened at this suggestion, eager to show their newly acquired knowledge. "Who was the first man ?" "Adam." "Who slew his brother?" "Cain.” "Who was the hairy man ?” "Esau." Gideon was appalled at this catechism. I had strained every financial nerve in getting a house at Columbus for them and had exerted my utmost powers to furnish provisions, clothing, etc., to keep them comfortable, and from the oft-repeated high reputation given the teachers in the newspapers I had hoped that I should experience the gratification of seeing signs of progress in my children. I was overwhelmed with disappointment. I felt like the whole world was a sham. My children, after six months' constant attendance at that highly praised institution could answer no question of use; but they could tell me who way the is the hairy man! Before the day was over, Gideon peremptorily ordered them all back to Cotton Gin Port. They did not remain there long. Gideon presently moved his practice to Columbus, where his children returned to school and quickly adapted themselves to city life. The advance of civilization, which had long been choking Gideon, was greatly evident in his children’s behavior. My children were beginning to marry OE and they seemed to think of nothing but frolicking. The boys drank and dressed extravagantly and the girls dressed and danced inimitably. They spent from three to five thousand dollars a year and seemed to act as though the source from which the money came was inexhaustible. I could not get them to set their minds on any kind of business. Parties and dancing schools, shopping and "charge it to Poppa" were all they seemed to care for. The entire community of young people were similar in their habits. To remain and let them marry their equals I could plainly see would terminate in the most abject Poverty and wretchedness. So I determined to carry them to a country where the surroundings and conditions would be more promising. This is the untold cause of my breaking up so abruptly the lucrative business in Columbus. Page 3 of 42 ** PAGE BREAK ** Book, Gideon Lincecum 1793 – 1874: A Biography Lincecum liquidated all his Mississippi property and collected as many outstanding due bills as possible. He had decided on Texas, a three-year-old state of the Union, as the proper place for his family. The oldest son, Lycurgus, then thirty-three, was in charge of a wagon train taking the overland route to Texas. The wagons carried the household goods, Gideon's large collection of fossils and bones, and $6,000 worth of medical supplies. With the caravan were ten slaves and ten extra horses; Lycurgus’ wife, Martha, and their four children; and Leander, the third son. The trip was started in 1847, almost a year before Gideon's departure from Columbus. On March 31, 1848, Gideon, his wife, Sarah, the remaining children, Gideon's mother, and ten additional slaves left Columbus on the Tombigbee River steamboat, New Era - Joseph Estes, captain - for Mobile, Alabama. Marry years after his departure from Columbus, Gideon recalled: "Memory’s pictures last longer than the objects they picture. My letters from Columbus tell me very few of the good people and friends who lined the shore the day we parted are now living; and while I write, undying memory holds up in vivid colors all the lineaments portrayed in that final sad separation.” The Lincecums reached Mobile on the third day and there transferred to another steamboat for New Orleans. There they were met by Gideon's brother Grant and his nephew John who lived in Catahaula Parish, Louisiana, where Grandmother Miriam's relatives, the Bowies, had settled in 1802 after leaving Georgia. The elderly Mrs. Lincecum and a devoted slave, Lewis, who afterwards took the surname of Lincecum, stopped in Louisiana with Grant Lincecum' Mrs. Lincecum died there the following month. Lewis, Gideon's age and a childhood playmate, after the Civil War went to Dallas, Texas, from where he corresponded with Gideon. Gideon's family boarded the steamboat Palmetto at New Orleans for Galveston, Texas, where they arrived April 8, 1848. Three days later they were in Houston, united with Lycurgus and Leander. In six wagons they started across the prairie to Long Point, in Washington County, arriving April 22, Gideon's fifty-fifth birthday. The land he had marked thirteen years before was available. Gideon paid for it in gold and immediately started building a house.1 Washington County is in a section of the vast area of Texas which was settled early in the state’s history as part of the original Stephen F . Austin's grant. On his trip to Texas in the colonial days of 1835, Lincecum had looked longingly at the beautiful prairie land in southeast Texas. The fertility of the black prairie soil, the post-oak belt crossing the land, the Brazos River on the east, the Colorado River southwest, and the not-too-distant Gulf of Mexico indicated to Gideon that it was a good place for farming, grazing, fishing, hunting, and pleasant living. Many small creeks drained the county - New Years, Yegua, Caney, Jackson, Rocky, Boggy, Peach, Mill, Indian, Woodward, and others. The area had changed greatly since the Mexican colonial days of Gideon's first visit. From a Mexican colony Texas had been a short-lived Republic and now was attempting to conform to its recently acquired statehood. But Washington County still retained some of the characteristics Gideon sought on a frontier, and close at hand were unmapped and almost unknown lands still inhabited by Indians where few white men dared to go. Lincecum was equally attracted by the cultural opportunities, rate on a frontier, offered in Washington County and the near-by county of Fayette. He did not, as did many others, come to Texas seeking a fortune. From Mississippi he brought adequate Page 4 of 42 ** PAGE BREAK ** Book, Gideon Lincecum 1793 – 1874: A Biography worldly goods and gold to provide comfort and meet his family’s needs. He wanted no more than that, and the pursuit of money had no place in his plans. Washington County offered him a refuge in his retirement. Here on his 1,828 acres of land, on an uncrowded frontier, were breathing space and freedom and, at the same time, intellectual companionship when he desired it. Lincecum planned to devote the remainder of his lifetime to a leisurely study of the natural sciences with the whole of Texas as his field laboratory. He made a token gesture of entering medical practice, announcing in a handbill, his availability as a botanic doctor, but that was intended primarily to introduce his doctor sons to Washington County and establish their practice. Except for experimenting and puttering, Gideon was free of farm work, which was performed by slaves brought with him from Columbus. In Washington County, as a crumbling monument there today states, a nation was born. By the time Gideon arrived the original 1836 county seat had been moved from the historic old town of Washington - on the Brazos to Brenham. Brenham is in the center of the county, surrounded by rolling and partly timbered land producing cotton, com, cattle, and hogs. Here the Giddings practiced law and operated stage and mail lines; the Shepards practiced law and ran for political offices; John Sayles taught school, practiced law, and wrote law books; the Bassetts established the first bank. From Brenham, spoke-like, roads led to all important settlements in the county. Ten miles east, is Chappell Hill, named for Robert Chappell, who settled there in 1841, and where presently were established Chappell Hill Female Institute and Soule University. Jacob Haller operated a stage coach inn there for the comfort of passengers on the Houston-Austin line. Counterclockwise from Chappell Hill, and twenty miles from Brenham, is old Washington-on-the Brazos. A ferry on the river in 1825 was the beginning of a heavy traffic in Texas cotton and other products. Visiting missionaries found it a wicked town. The magistrate held court on the Sabbath and not a single professor of religion could be found in the town when Dr. Daniel Baker, Presbyterian missionary, arrived in 1838. The Reverend Robert Alexander, a Methodist there before him, had met with little success. He found the citizens "not at all religiously inclined and some ... exceedingly wicked.” Perhaps it was the memory of the laughing corpse that ultimately brought about a religious revival. At one of the mock prayer meetings, where the "recklessly wicked" Washingtonians burlesqued the many missionaries, a pistol was discharged accidentally, so it was said, killing one of the laughing spectators. Death was so sudden that the victim died laughing, and the laugh frozen on the face of the corpse was a shocking and sobering experience to some of the mourners. Old Washington was laid out in 1835 by Dr. Asa Hoxey of Mobile, Alabama. Soon afterwards the Reverend Anderson Buffington, a Baptist preacher, arrived and started a sawmill and a newspaper called the Tarantula. It was here that the Texas Declaration of Independence and the Texas Constitution were drafted, the Texas Congress was assembled, the Texas peace treaty with Mexico was at last concluded, and annexation to the United States was worked out. The insignificant raw little town was visited by most prominent and notorious Texans of those days and by almost every foreign visitor who came for a brief glimpse of Texas. At Washington and nearby Barrington, the plantation of Anson Jones, a suicidal wanderer who drifted Page 5 of 42 ** PAGE BREAK ** Book, Gideon Lincecum 1793 – 1874: A Biography to Texas and became the last President of the Republic, the affairs of state were conducted from 1844 to 1846. South around the circle, twelve miles north of Brenham, is Independence, the Baptist stronghold, in 1824 known as Cole's Settlement. Here was the beginning of Baylor University and its female equivalent. Sam Houston lived here for a while, near his strong-minded mother-in-law, Nancy Lea, pillar of the Baptist church established in 1839. Margaret Lea, Houston's equally strong-minded wife, persuaded him to conversion, and Rufus C. Burleson, second president of Baylor, had the honor of immersing the Big Drunk in nearby Rocky Creek. Independence was the home of Dr. Harry Lea Graves, first president of Baylor, and MOSES AUSTIN BRYAN, the son of Stephen F. Austin’s sister, Emily Perry. On around the circle, eleven miles from Brenham, is Gay Hill, settled in the 1830's and named for Thomas Gay and W. C. Hill, two early settlers. Later it was the home of the Live Oak Female Seminary owned by James Weston Miller. Still leftward around the circle, eleven miles from Brenham, was Long Point, where Gideon lived on his plantation, Mount Olympus. It was on a long point of high ground projecting northward and over looking the valley of Yegua Creek. Toward the end of the point is a triangle of live-oak trees, all that remains today to indicate the location of Long Point. Farther on, a few miles from Long Point and eleven miles from Brenham, is Burton, on Indian Creek, named for John H. Burton, where the Grocher family settled in 1838. Inside and outside the periphery were other settlements: Jacksonville, three miles north of Chappell Hill, named for Terrell Jackson; Mustang, three miles east of Brenham, where Mabry (Mustang) Gray established a trading post and where William B. Travis lived and practiced law; Rock Island, on the west side of the Brazos River, named by Amos Gates, who came to Texas in 1821 with his father and four brothers, and chosen as the site for the Rock Island Academy, established in 1857; Mount Vernon Spring, six miles northwest of Brenham, laid out in 1841 by John Stamps, contractor and judge, and briefly the county seat; Glenblythe, the baronial plantation-settlement of the Scotchman Thomas Affleck which was 7.5 miles northwest of Brenham; Union Hill, three miles northwest of Brenham, originally the Kerr Settlement, where Mrs. LUCY KERR’s brother, Alexander Thomson, held the first Methodist meeting in Texas, and where an early Indian massacre occurred; Tiger Point, six miles southwest of Brenham, where the Hensleys and Swishers lived; Turkey Creek, six miles east of Brenham, home of the Guyton family; Ayers, near Long Point, named for David Ayers; Evergreen on Waco Spring, where the Tonkawa and Waco Indians once had a savage battle; Hidalgo on a Brazos River bluff, where Dr. W. T. LeGrand collected fossils and where Dr. John G. Allen lived; Montville, where a girls' boarding school was opened in 1835 by Lydia Ann McHenry in the home of Mrs. David Ayers; Cedar Hill, where lived Henry Eichholt, the first of many Germans to settle the county; Berlin, the home of Valentine Hoffman; and Hickory Point, west of Independence, where Captain Horatio Chriesman once lived and offered his acreage as site for the capital of the Republic. One need not go to Brenham to reach these various points. Travel between the outlying settlements, except in periods of high water, was across prairies, through post oak groves, and down numerous seasonally dry creek beds. Page 6 of 42 ** PAGE BREAK ** Book, Gideon Lincecum 1793 – 1874: A Biography When Gideon arrived in Washington County the population was about 4,000, of which over half were slaves. Southern planters followed the original colonists after the Texas Revolution, bringing with them their regional customs and ways. The county had more of the feeling and character of the old South than of the new West.2 Lincecum became a colorful and influential citizen of the county. His influence was quiet, steady, and daily; to some it was insidious but to others, particularly to the younger citizens who sought him out, the effect was astonishingly beneficial and stimulating. Utterly unconcerned with public opinion, he was stubbornly resistant to civilization's insistence on conformity and was more pleased than offended when he was called "that old infidel Gid Lincecum."3 The history of Texas is rich in the lives of men who once called Washington County home-men whose power and personality determined the state's political destiny; missionaries of the faith whose power of persuasion was no less potent than that of the politicians; fighting men whose valor and love for battle made their cause appear right and glorious; slaves who rose to unexpected greatness; scientists who worked in the darkness of ignorance, indifference, and mockery; ruthless and greedy men who became giants among the quiet little gnomes now forgotten; men who became part of Texas folklore; sincere men of vision. Even in this company Lincecum was an outstanding personality. His bird-watching, bug collecting and ant crawling made him a person of derision among some of the uninitiated, but his neighbors knew him to be a man of inherent honor with a deep regard for the dignity and rights of his fellow men, and scrupulously honest in his dealings with them. The absence of blacksmiths and mechanics in the neighborhood where Gideon settled suggested to him the need for a ”mechanical village," and he offered to deed half an acre to any mechanic who would settle there. The only condition imposed was prohibition of the sale of intoxicants. There were no immediate takers. The mechanics who came to investigate his offer indignantly protested and declared they would not sell their liberty for a league of the best land in Texas. Gideon, confronted with other frontiersmen as jealous of their liberty as he, chided them for calling liquor liberty. Eventually, some accepted, and at one time his acreage at Long Point had four stores and cabinet, smith, and potter shops. Lincecum found ministers more difficult to deal with than mechanics, but far less liberty-loving. He agreed to give land for a church provided he had a. hand in decorating the structure. This was acceptable to the preachers until they learned that his plan for "ornamentation" called for an arch spanning the main entrance and beating the words "Free Discussion" in letters eighteen inches high. During the twenty years Gideon lived in Long Point there was no church, a deficiency which proved somewhat of an inconvenience when all his daughters had to go to Brenham to be married. The marriages came fast.4 The first Lincecum marriage recorded in Washington County is that of Leander W. C. Lincecum, the fourth son. He was married to Miss S. J. Stone, July 20, 1847, by John P. Dupuy, justice of the peace, after having previously married a girl named Beatrice in Columbus, Mississippi. A touch of mystery in the Lincecum Papers is provided by a small account book for 1846 and 1847 expenses and purchases of the couple, paid for by Gideon The book is labeled "Beatrice's Affairs - Keep this book entirely secret on that depends much.” Following the itemized account is an un- Page 7 of 42 ** PAGE BREAK ** Book, Gideon Lincecum 1793 – 1874: A Biography addressed letter in Gideon’s handwriting dated January 31, 1847, giving instructions for the Collection of notes due and advising against the incurring of debts and any pretension to prosperity. It obviously was intended for Leander. Gideon reported to a friend in 1865 that Leander "has married his third wife and is living 15 miles on the Yegua above Long Point and has an extensive practice in a tolerable poor community. ... What is more uncommon still, has become a sober, respectable man, not having been intoxicated since some time previous to the war." Leander's third wife was E. M. McFaddin, whom he married on July 21, 1853, J. R. Nunn, magistrate, officiating. The Marriage Records (Vol. 3, p. 37) also record the marriage of Leander Lincecum to M. C. Walden, September 18, 1867, Thomas Alford, justice of the peace officiating. This, however, could have been Lymrgus' son, Leander. During the early Civil War period Leander was detailed as a physician to remain in Washington County and care for the sick in the families of absent soldiers, but in 1863, at the age of forty~one, he enlisted as a private under Captain James R. Hines.5 Mary, the oldest daughter, and James V. Matson were married on October 5, 1848, the Reverend David fisher, officiating. Matson, as Gideon once described him, was a "money-making man." He was a farmer and large slaveholder and his prosperity and property increased with the years At one time he and Gideon were partners in a grain mill. James and his brother, Richard, were sons of a Captain Matson who had brought his family to Washington County from Missouri in 1839. The Matsons settled near Burton on land purchased from Asa Mitchell, who shortly thereafter killed Captain Matson.6 After Matson's death his widow married Captain E. M. Fuller. James V. Matson bought 2,000 acres of the Long Point tract when Lincecum purchased his land. According to Lincecum, "Matson paid for his 2000 acres one fitified negro girl and the rest in Mexican ponies, at the same rate per acre that I paid." Captain and Mrs. Fuller died a few weeks apart in November, 1857. The Matson sons inherited their considerable property, and when Richard was killed in the Civil War, James inherited his brother’s share. Lincecum never wholeheartedly approved of this son-in-law and, following a serious disagreement in 1860 over a slave, his hostility grew into bitter hatred, an emotion rare with Lincecum. Matson was the only person who ever felt the full force of Lincecum's venom. Gideon once confessed; "I shall hate to die with as bad feelings as I entertain against that man.” When Lincecum divided his Long Point land among his children, Mary was left out. No deed was made to her, he explained, because of her "avaricious, plundering, trespassing, sordid-minded consort.” He accused Matson of robbing the Lincecum land of valuable timbers and withholding earnings from the mill. The result was the permanent estrangement of his daughter, Mary. Twenty-three years after Mary’s marriage Gideon wrote: "Damn Jim Matson. He robbed and withheld my just rights and made me poor now in my period of feeble old age." He was once delighted with news that Matson had trichinosis. "I hope he may be smitten with hemorrhoids and worms that shall loosen the flesh from his bones while he is yet alive." Lycurgus, the first born, was the first of numerous Lincecums to be buried in Washington County. He died on February 3, 1849. Eleven years after his death Gideon was amazed to receive a letter from J. H. H. Woodward, a Houston lawyer, inquiring about Lycurgus' death in the Mexican War and mentioning the possibility that his widow and children were eligible for a Pension. Gideon explained that his son enlisted in a Texas group, was discharged and paid 05 in Monterrey, Mexico, in August, 1847, and died two years later in Long Point. He served, Gideon recalled, with a "Captain McCullough or some such name.”7 Page 8 of 42 ** PAGE BREAK ** Book, Gideon Lincecum 1793 – 1874: A Biography Gideon wrote Woodward: I had not moved to Texas then. Col. John W. Dancy can tell all about it.8 He resides near LaGrange. My son, from the heavy service and exposure in guarding a train of wagons on their route from Laredo to Monterrey, contracted what he denominated the Mexican bowel complaint, was never well and of which complaint he finally died. Except the Pay he received at Monterrey when he was discharged I have never heard of his getting anything. He left five children who are all living. His widow married John Powell of this county9 The children are scattered about and will not be able to procure a common school education. The Mexican War records showed, according to Woodward, that Lycurgus Lincecum was on the company rolls of Captain Evans and was killed in action on December 22, 1847.10 Colonel Dancy cleared the situation, remembering that Lycurgus became ill after arriving at Monterrey with the Texas volunteers and that he hired a substitute to answer his name for the remainder of his term. The unknown substitute was killed in battle. Lycurgus' children were Cassianus, Joseph, the twins Lascassas and Leander, all born in Mississippi, and Mary Eliza, born in Washington, Texas. Lycurgus’ sons, known as Cass, Jo, Lass, and Andy, all served in the Civil War. At one time, when )0 lived with the William J. Busters in Chappell Hill, Gideon wrote him that he was "fortunate to be an inmate of so good and respected a family" and urged him to protect his good name and reputation and value them throughout his life. The second Lincecum daughter, Leonora, married George W. Campbell, a notary of Washington County, on July 5, 1851, the Reverend fisher officiating. Campbell was from Columbus, Mississippi, where he met and fell in love with Leonora. When Gideon moved his family to Texas, Campbell followed. Campbell was captain of Co. F, 5th Regiment, Texas Mounted Volunteers under Colonel Thomas Green of General Henry Hopkins Sibley’s New Mexican Brigade. Cassianus and Joseph, Lycurgus’ two oldest boys, were in his company, as were many other Washington County boys. It Was mustered September 5, 1861. At this time Campbell was thirty years old and the father of seven children. He survived the battles of New Mexico and the cruel and exhausting retreat to Texas, but was too ill and dejected to continue with Green’s regiment. Gideon recorded his death: "George Campbell, after returning from the Arizona campaign, drank himself to death. He dropped dead in a doggery in Brenham, leaving his wife and seven children poorly provided for.” Gideon was devoted to Leonora, but his fondness for her seven children was qualified, as he told a friend, because though they were "well enough looking, [they were] tipped off with a little too much Campbell.” Cassandra, the third daughter, was married to George J. Durham, an Englishman of Austin, Texas, on December 23, 1852. The Reverend fisher again officiated. This marriage pleased Gideon. He and Durham had been drawn together through a mutual interest in ornithology and grape culture and were friends before Durham met Cassandra. Durham was born in 1820 in Norwich, England, and came to Texas from New Jersey with his parents in 1837. The next year, while Houston was the capital of the Republic, he was chief clerk in the comptroller's office. In 1839 he went with the government to Austin in the same capacity. In 1842, when the Mexican Army again threatened Page 9 of 42 ** PAGE BREAK ** Book, Gideon Lincecum 1793 – 1874: A Biography Texas, and Houston ordered the Archives removed to Houston, Durham assisted in keeping them in Austin.11 Durham holds something of a record in Texas history, having held a political job during the administration of every president and governor until after the Civil War. He was mayor of Austin in 1852. It is a pity he did not keep a diary. Although he frequently defied Houston, as in the Archives War, Durham apparently was well regarded by the Governor. Houston told the 1861 extra session of the state Legislature that Durham had declined an assignment the previous November as courier to Washington to take muster rolls and vouchers of U. S. troops stationed in Texas. Documents of expenditures of the Eighth Legislative session are signed by Durham as chief Clerk and acting comptroller. There is no record that Durham made the trip to Washington.12 He was one of the signers of the petition for a people’s secession convention. When Captain B. F. Carter organized the Austin Light Brigade, April 24, 1861, Durham enlisted as orderly sergeant and with its seventy-five members left for San Antonio; but he was called back to Austin as state war tax collector for the Confederacy. Durham was considered as candidate for state treasurer on the 1866 coalition ticket headed by James Webb Throckmorton, but Lieutenant Colonel Mart H. Royston of Terry's Texas Rangers, "a strong Union man” and Mrs. Sam Houston's nephew, was the final choice.13 Throckmorton, after his election, gave Durham a job as an accountant to examine Civil War Military Board records. Durham was a talented ornithologist, an authority on Texas grapes, and an excellent marksman. In 1854 he shot and instantly killed young William H. Cleveland, son of Captain J. T. Cleveland, in front of the Metropolitan Hotel in Austin. The shooting, which followed an angry exchange of words the previous day, occurred when Durham defended himself with a quick shot from his pistol, against Cleveland’s attack with a walking cane. Justice Allen ruled it justifiable homicide.14 Among the Lincecum Papers are invitations from the Durham Austin residence on Pecan, now Sixth, and Guadalupe, to funerals of their daughters, Sarah Lincecum, at 4:00 P. M., Thursday, April 10, 1862, and Mary Leonora, at 4:00 P. M., Friday, April 11, 1862. An explanation of this long-ago tragedy is found in the diary of Amelia E. Barr, an Englishwoman who lived for a while in Texas and was well acquainted with the Durhams: April 9, 1862: In the evening to Mrs. Durham's. Poor little Sally, whom I suckled for two months when her mother had fever, just dead of diphtheria. April 10, 1862: Went to see Sally for the last time. It was Ben McCulloch's funeral also. The cemetery was crowded. When we got back from Sally's funeral her sister, Leonora, was dying. She breathed her last at five o'clock.15 Mrs. Barr’s Scotch husband, Robert, was an auditor for the state from 1856 to 1866 and shared a desk with Durham. Mrs. Barr wrote of Austin society in 1856: Its leaders were Mrs. Tom Green and Mrs. George Durham. Mrs. Durham was the wife of George Durham, an Englishman from my own north country and an attache of the comptroller's office Robert was his associate and they were excellent friends. The Durhams lived in a small log house on the road to the ferry. Everyone coming into town and every one going out of town passed Mrs. Durham's. Her sitting room was as entertaining as the local news in the weekly Paper. There was no restraint in Mrs. Durham’s company; people could be themselves without fear of criticism. She was not pretty, not stylish, not clever, not in the least fashionable, but Page 10 of 42 ** PAGE BREAK ** Book, Gideon Lincecum 1793 – 1874: A Biography she was the favorite of women who were all these things. There were no carpets on the floors and there was a bed in the room wherein her friends congregated. She did not go to entertainments and I never saw a cup of tea served in her house, yet she was the most popular woman in Austin, and not to be free of Mrs. Durham’s primitive log house, was to be without the hallmark of the inner circle.16 George and Cassandra’s son, Walter W. Durham, became a prominent Austin cotton buyer and named one of his sons for his father. Another son, Sidney J. Durham, wrote (August 6, 1895) his Aunt Sallie Damn that he was in New York with the Lillian Russell Comique Opera Company, studying voice with Madame Skinner, and had become a Christian Scientist. Gideon’s youngest daughter, Sarah Matilda, always called Sallie, was married to William P. Doran, a telegrapher and newspaper man, on December 10, 1865. The Reverend fisher was present to officiate at the marriage of the fourth and last Lincecum daughter. Again the bridegroom was one of Gideon's friends. It was Doran who was responsible for the publication of many articles and letters by Gideon in Houston and Galveston papers. Doran, known as "Sioux" because of a by-line he used for forty-one years as a writer for Texas newspapers, was born in Rochester, NEW York, May 3, 1836. His first newspaper job in Texas was with Eber Worthington Cave, publisher of the Nacogdoches, Texas, Chronicle. He was with the Houston Telegraph at the beginning of the Civil War; he enlisted as a private in John P. Austin's company of the Rio Grande in March, 1861; he was honorably discharged at Fort Brown from William Christian’s company A, 2nd Regiment, Texas Volunteers, because of defective hearing. Despite this handicap Doran became a war correspondent for the Telegraph. In a note of November 19, 1862, E. H. Cushing, publisher, directed Doran to go to Galveston and report "whatever transpires there worthy of note while it is safe to stay there. If you can purchase New Orleans or northern Papers, do so at any cost." With the rank of major, Doran reported the battles of Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Galveston. One of his published accounts is that of the Battle of Sabine Pass. Doran’s 1862 passes into Vicksburg and Jackson are among the Lincecum Papers. At other times Doran was editor of the Houston Evening Star and correspondent for the Galveston and Dallas Newt. He died on November 25, 1901, and Sallie Doran died on April 11, 1919. They had three sons - Willard Richardson, Clyde Bryan, and Frank Lincecum Doran. Sallie was the darling of Gideon's heart. When she was a girl he taught her to play the violin and the piano, and after the family concerts were broken up by marriages, Gideon and Sallie played nightly duets in the parlor of their Long Point home. The audience was usually made up of neighbors, but, if none was present, Sarah Lincecum rocked in her chair by the fireplace and listened with constant delight as she knitted for her ever - increasing grandchildren. Sallie was with her parents on their long travels through Texas and assisted Gideon in making his extensive collection of Texas botanical specimens. Sallie walked with him in the woods and from him learned about plants, rocks, birds, and wildlife. She enjoyed the companionship of her father and showed such an obvious reluctance to be married that Gideon was convinced she never would. She rejected numerous suitors. Even after meeting Doran she delayed her marriage a number of years to remain with her ailing mother, and a few months after her wedding returned to the old Long Point homestead to care for Sarah when her condition became critical. Page 11 of 42 ** PAGE BREAK ** Book, Gideon Lincecum 1793 – 1874: A Biography Gideon educated all his children, "male and female,” to be doctors, trained all of them in the botanic method. All of his sons, at times, practiced. Leonidas, or Lon, the second son, studied botanic medicine with Dr. Alva Curtis in Cincinnati in 1844. He shared Gideon’s enthusiasm for climatology and meteorology and assisted him with many projects in these fields. The Long Point Democrats, in an effort to break the power of the "old line” county politicians, named Leonidas their candidate in 1859 for the state Legislature, but he was defeated. During the Civil War he Was war tax collector for Washington County but in the last months of the war joined his brothers in the Confederate Army of the Rio Grande. Lucullus Garland, called Cu], was a practicing physician throughout his lifetime. He married Kate Lauderdale, daughter of an old family friend from Mississippi, in 1853, and practiced in Washington County until he moved to Lampasas. Lucullus was detailed in Washington County during the war to care for families of soldiers; but on January 5, 1865, he enlisted at Brenham and became a second corporal under Captain L. N. Halbert, Company G, 23rd Brigade, commanded by Brigadier General John Sayles.17 After the death of his first wife he married Fanny Rainwater, of Washington County, July 13, 1873, and later married a third time. Lucullus had two notable doctor sons. John Louis Lincecum, a graduate of the University of Kentucky, practiced in Victoria, Texas and was the father of Mrs. Lucille L. Reed, of Goliad, and the grandfather of Mrs' Willie Reed Rowe, Fort Stockton, well-known Texas artist. Lucullus’ younger son, Dr. Addison Lincecum, born in Long Point on April, 1874, seven months before Gideon died, is alive at this writing. There is much of the old Gid in him. He studied at Baylor and Texas University medical schools, working his way through medical school as an engineer on trains transporting granite blocks for Galveston jetties. He graduated in 1903, and acquired six additional medical diplomas. Dr. Addison was elected a vice president of the Texas Medical Association in 1912; he went to Cuba as a physician with Roosevelt's Rough Riders; he was commissioned a Texas Ranger in 1917; he served as captain with the 36th Division in World War I. In civilian life he served on the state board of health, investigating bubonic Plague in Texas; and he was mayor of El Campo, Texas, where he became a public institution: developing a long practice; serving as superintendent of a hospital and as postmaster; and conducting a weekly radio current