| |
To
all but his political enemies, the government of Mexico and a few soreheads, the
44-year-old Tennessee transplant stood tall both literally and figuratively as
Texas’ greatest living hero. That spring, lacking numerical superiority but not
grit, he had defeated Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna at San
Jacinto and now served as the first elected president of the fledgling nation
he had helped create.
But Sam Houston was yet a mortal with his share
of human foibles, including overindulgence in distilled spirits. And, well, he
buckled and unbuckled his belt just like any other man. When nature called, he
and other officials of the new Republic of Texas repaired to the nearest privy,
a facility more commonly known today as an outhouse.
At intervals as regular
as the president happened to be, while living in what is now West
Columbia during the fall and early winter of 1836 Houston responded to urges
that had nothing to do with nation-building. Taking a break from the affairs of
state, he sat in a small, smelly wooden enclosure built over a hole dug in the
rich Brazoria County soil and made it all the richer. Given his propensity to
drink, it is quite plausible that while so engaged, he drew one last swig on a
bottle and dropped it down the hole, an old soldier unceremoniously laying a “dead
soldier” to rest.
While the name of its former owner will never been known,
171 years later an archeologist uncovered from an old privy pit near what once
had been the seat of government of the Republic of Texas, one intact blown-glass
bottle that dates from the mid-1830s along with several pieces of glass from the
same era.
“Who knows?” laughs Austin archeologist Doug Boyd, “that bottle
could have been left there by Sam Houston.”
Boyd is vice president of
Prewitt and Associates, an archeological consulting firm that surveyed the presumed
location in West Columbia
of a structure long referred to as the first capitol of the Texas republic. In
truth, the building constituted only half of the capitol, and there’s no way to
prove scientifically that Houston discarded that bottle, but it is incontrovertible
that Houston took his oath of office on the site. |
 |
First
Capitol of Texas, West
Columbia
Postcard c1927, courtesy rootsweb.com/ %7Etxpstcrd/ |
 |
Thanks
to a developer’s donation of a 337- by 35-foot strip of land along State Highway
35, the historic spot has been transformed into Capitol of Texas Park.
Dedicated on April 17, 2009, the park features a path connecting a series of granite
monuments telling the history of the area.
That history goes back to 1824,
when Josiah Bell settled on the nearby Brazos River at a point soon known as Bell’s
Landing. A community at first called Marion and then East Columbia eventually
merged with the nearby settlement of Columbia, later renamed West
Columbia.
Since by the summer of 1836 Columbia had more buildings
than any other Texas town, not to mention two newspapers, the interim government
of the Republic of Texas decided it would be the capital city.
The nation’s
business was done in several frame structures put up a few years earlier. The
House of Representatives met in a one-and-a-half story structure built in 1833
previously occupied by a merchant named Leman Kelsey. Across the road from the
House, the Senate conducted its august proceedings in a two-story store formerly
used by the firm of White and Knight.
The First Congress convened in those
two buildings Oct. 3, 1836 and worked through December, when the government removed
itself to the new town of Houston.
The
rented government buildings reverted to private use, the structure that had accommodated
the republic’s upper house being torn down in 1888. The former lower chamber survived
beyond that, but it had deteriorated considerably.
It took more than 60
years before some Texans began to appreciate that the old House building had historic
value. A newspaper reporter from Galveston
came to town and wrote a story about Columbia’s short-lived reign as a national
capital city and boldly contributed $25 toward purchase of the property so it
could be preserved as “a historic relic.”
In 1897, a Houston photographer
named F.E. Beach took a picture of the old structure – a gaping hole in its roof
– and labeled it “First Capitol of Texas.” He sold cardboard-mounted copies for
25 cents.
The Daughters of the Republic of Texas, saviors of the Alamo,
had their collective sights on the old building when the September 1900
Galveston hurricane destroyed it. Fortunately, Beach’s image and several other
photographs survived.
In 1932, the DRT placed a granite historical marker
at the site. Seven years after that, the area was cleared and a series of businesses
went up along the street.
Those structures were razed in 2007 to make
way for a new chain drug store. When the existing pavement was ripped up, workers
discovered an old cistern and assorted artifacts. Boyd’s firm got hired to do
an archeological survey.
With help from the Brazosport Archeological Society,
Prewitt and Associates spent a week that December looking for traces of the government
structures. They excavated the brick-lined cistern, which they believe dates from
early-to-mid 1830s, along with privy remnants and numerous postholes. Boyd said
more archeological work remains to be done in the area, but that will have to
wait on funding.
Until then, any other bottles Old Sam might have stashed
– not to mention more interesting artifacts – will remain buried.
©
Mike Cox
"Texas Tales"
March 18, 2010 column
|
|
Books by Mike Cox - Order Now |
| |
