Readers' Forum
Subject: Travis Letter
Dear Texas Escapes,
I have been studying William Barrett Travis for many years, and notice,
I spell it with two t's. I have traced his genealogy in detail, paying
close connection to his Jamestown Virginia roots. Many of his lines
parallel my own and go back to the same locations and time periods.
Since his ancestral route of migration follows closely to my own,
and my grandmother was a Barrett, my grandfather a Cloyd/Cloud (Rosanna
Cato Travis later married Samuel Cloud, a distant relative) and he
and his family had so many close dealings with various members of
my family from Virginia, to South Carolina, to Alabama, and then Texas,
I feel a close kinship with the man. It was my gggrandfather James
Stephenson, an original land grantee in Austin/Washington County Texas
who called for the probate of WBT's will after he died at the Alamo.
I believe that James Stephenson and WBT were friends. I know that
Travis often attended the Methodist Camp meetings on Caney Creek where
my James lived. Travis bought land a short distance from there and
bought more land from my James on New Year's creek in Washington County.
Ironically, another of my gggrandfathers, Balthazar Hoffman, purchased
Travis'tract of land in 1840 near Buckhorn, Texas where other Texas
revolutionary patriots lived. My grandmother, Lillie Hoffman Smith,
James Stephenson's great granddaughter was born on this land.
My James Stephenson arrived with his family from Florida in 1826 where
he had been fighting the Seminole Indians, presumably with Andrew
Jackson. He had been in the Florida territory at least from 1819 when
his oldest son Thomas Bell Stephenson was born. My James Bell and
his brother Thomas Bell left Florida in 1821 to come to Texas to join
Stephen F. Austin's colony. They later donated land to form the town
of Bellville in 1848 when the county seat of Austin County was moved
from San Felipe. In my first book, From Jamestown to Texas, I tell
all these stories and many other stories about Travis and his relationship
to my own family here in Austin County, Texas.
I have seen Travis signature on many of my own family's deeds
(he was an attorney here in the 1830's), and I believe that he did
indeed use the double T at times. But as we all occasionally do when
in haste, which of course the Alamo letters would have been written,
Travis may have tended to run off the last letters quickly, making
it look like one T instead of two. There are other earlier William
Barrett Travises that I believe are his same family line. I have some
strong evidence for the middle name being Barrett as a family name,
but regardless of how he spelled it, the relationship to this family
is strong. I learned long ago not to pay attention to the particular
spelling of a name. Sound it out and that is what literate clerks
wrote down many years ago with whatever letters they thought they
heard. Remember that only a small portion of the early population
of America was literate. Many did not have the slightest idea how
to spell their names. I am not saying this of our WBT because he definitely
came from a prominant and educated lineage. Spelling changes often
happened as early as the 1500's in Scotland or Ireland or England
long before they ever made it to America.
I tackle this argument of his Barrett relationship in an upcoming
book that is a sequel to my first published history. It is entitled
From Jamestown to Texas II: Virginia the Cradle of Civilization. For
a good many years, I have been working on this and other proofs of
how American Patriot families were the ancestors of the early pioneer
families of Texas and their intricate relationship to our founding
fathers. I hope to finish this latest segment for publication no later
than September of this year.
Some of my history and also a description of the historically based
books I have written can be found at www.bettystrails.com. Thank you.
- Betty Smith Meischen, August 14, 2005 |
