|
Surveyor shoots lawyer in Austin colony feud
On this day in 1830, Seth Ingram, a surveyor and merchant, shot and
killed John G. Holtham in San Felipe de Austin, the center of Stephen F.
Austin's colony. Ira Ingram, Seth's brother and business partner, had
quarreled with Holtham, a lawyer of unsavory reputation, over the
latter's drunken intrusion into Ira's yard. Holtham demanded an apology
for being expelled from the premises. When Ira ignored him, he
circulated handbills defaming Ira as a "coward, a rogue, and a man
without honor." Seth Ingram confronted Holtham as he was posting one
such notice in the streets of San Felipe and ordered him to remove it.
When Holtham refused, pistols were drawn, and Ingram killed Holtham.
Ingram was arrested along with another business partner, Hosea H.
League, who had been a bystander during the incident, and both were
confined almost incommunicado for sixteen months, chained to the walls
of the half-completed meetinghouse of the San Felipe ayuntamiento. They
were eventually acquitted and released.
- Links to Related Handbook of Texas Online Articles
- INGRAM, SETH
- INGRAM, IRA
- AUSTIN, STEPHEN FULLER
- LEAGUE, HOSEA H.
- SAN FELIPE DE AUSTIN, TX
- AYUNTAMIENTO
- Other Texas Day by Day Articles for This Date
- Republic of Texas makes treaty with North Texas Indians (1838)
- Texan signs peace treaty with Japan (1945)
- "Wolf of the Washita" born in Tennessee (1840)
|
