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VAN NESS, GEORGE (1822-?). George F. X. Van Ness, lawyer and member of the Texan Sante Fe expedition,qv son of Cornelius P. Van Ness, was born in Virginia in 1822. In 1838 he joined his brother Cornelius Van Nessqv at San Antonio, Texas, where he practiced law. In 1841 he was appointed by President Mirabeau B. Lamarqv as a member of the commission to represent the Texas government on the Texan Santa Fe expedition. He was captured on the expedition and held in Perote Prisonqv until February 3, 1842. He was back in San Antonio at the time of the Adrián Wollqv expedition on September 11, 1842, and was again captured by the Mexicans. Van Ness was in prison in Saltillo on January 30, 1843, when Thomas Jefferson Greenqv and other prisoners of the Mier expeditionqv arrived there. He was ordered released in November 1843, but was not finally liberated until April 1844. In 1849 he was a notary public in Bexar County, and in 1851 he was postmaster at Fort Duncan.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Ford Dixon, "Cayton Erhard's Reminiscences
of the Texan Santa Fe Expedition, 1841," Southwestern
Historical Quarterly 66 (April 1963). Thomas J. Green, Journal
of the Texian Expedition Against Mier (New York: Harper, 1845;
rpt., Austin: Steck, 1935). George Wilkins Kendall, Narrative
of the Texan Santa Fe Expedition (2 vols., New York: Harper,
1844; rpts. Austin: Steck, 1935; n.p.: Readex, 1966). Joseph Milton
Nance, trans. and ed., "Brigadier General Adrian Woll's Report
of His Expedition into Texas in 1842," Southwestern Historical
Quarterly 58 (April 1955). Texas State Gazette, August
25, 1849; March 15, 1851.
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