LAURA.
The steamboat Laura was built in Louisville, Kentucky,
for use in the Brazos River by Thomas F. McKinney and Samuel
M. Williams.qqv The small river steamer, which arrived in June 1835, was eighty-five
feet long and 16½ feet wide. She drew 5½ feet and could
carry sixty-five tons of cargo. On September 2, 1835, just
off the mouth of the Brazos River and during a dead calm, the
Laura towed the armed schooner San Felipeqv to engage and capture the Mexican cruiser Correo, which
had been seizing United States vessels calling at Texas ports.
The Texas government chartered the Laura to deliver men
and supplies and also to tow schooners in and out of ports during
the Texas Revolution.qv On April 24, 1836, she took vice president Lorenzo de Zavalaqv and secretary of the treasury Bailey Hardemanqv to the site of the battle of San Jacinto;qv they were the first officials to arrive there from Galveston Island.
On May 10, the Laura took David G. Burnetqv (then president of the Republic of Texasqv),
the cabinet, and Antonio López de Santa Annaqv and his aides from Galveston to Velasco. The vessel remained in
government service through September, when McKinney and Williams
(see MCKINNEY, WILLIAMS AND COMPANY) resumed using her
to gather Brazos River cotton. In mid-January 1837 the little
steamer, the first vessel to ascend the river above Harrisburg,
took Augustus C. and John K. Allen,qqv founders of Houston (which at that time had recently been designated
as the new capital), and a number of other prominent men to Houston.
On February 23, 1837, the Laura left Columbia loaded with
government officials and furniture heading for the new capital
at Houston. In June 1840 she broke both shafts on a bar in the
Brazos River and was towed into port by the steamer Constitution.
This was the last known reference to the Laura.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: William Fairfax Gray, From Virginia
to Texas, 1835 (Houston: Fletcher Young, 1909, 1965). John
H. Jenkins, ed., The Papers of the Texas Revolution, 1835-1836
(10 vols., Austin: Presidial Press, 1973). Pamela A. Puryear and
Nath Winfield, Jr., Sandbars and Sternwheelers: Steam Navigation
on the Brazos (College Station: Texas A&M University Press,
1976). Marilyn M. Sibley, The Port of Houston (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1968). Telegraph and Texas Register,
January 27, 1837.
Margaret Swett Henson
