QUERIES AND ANSWERS.

Palestine, Texas, August 11, 1902.

In the July number of The Quarterly, page 73, the Hon. George C. Pendleton asks the following questions in relation to Ellis Bean, viz.: 1.

“Was he in sympathy with the Texas revolution?”

2.

“When did he leave Texas, and under what circumstances?”

I became acquainted with Peter E. Bean, who in Yoakum's History and other publications is called Ellis P. Bean, in the summer of 1839, at his home in what was then Nacogdoches County, but is now Cherokee, near where the town of Alto stands. I knew him well from that time until he left Texas to return to the Mexican Republic.

I make the following statement, which will give the answer to these questions:

He was the military commandant and Indian agent for the Republic of Mexico for the State of Coahuila and Texas, when the revolution which separated Texas from Mexico occurred. He raised a family of three children where he then lived. The year the war of the Revolution broke out he went to General Thomas J. Rusk and received his parole as a Mexican prisoner. He remained at his home in Texas until about 1844 or 1845 (I am not certain as to the date). His oldest two children were then grown, his third a large boy. His only daughter, a very worthy young lady, was married to a respectable citizen. He made his will, disposing of his property to these three children, making Dr. Jesse Bean the executor. He then went to New Orleans and from there via Vera Cruz to where his former wife lived near Jalapa, Mexico. Some trouble arose about his estate, and Dr. Jesse Bean went to Mexico to see him about it, going by way of New Orleans, with passport as a citizen of the United States, and found him with his former wife at Jalapa, living in comfort and ease.

While in Texas, he took out a headright certificate for a league and labor of land which was located in what is now Kaufman county, presumably as a citizen of Texas.

Soon after I became acquainted with Colonel Bean he showed me his autobiography, and we read it together—a fair sized volume in manuscript. He requested me to edit and publish it. This I was in no condition to do. Afterwards he requested me to go to Mexico for him, and take letters to the government officials, complaining of their leaving him in prison so long, and demanding the payment to him of about twenty thousand dollars, which he said was due him from the government for his services, and also to take letters to his wife at Jalapa. This I declined to do.

While I knew him he lived on terms of amity with his neighbors, apparently as much as any other Texan.

I ought probably to mention that, though a native of the United States, he had become an officer of prominence in the Mexican army, and was on duty in Coahuila and Texas when the Revolution broke out. While in Mexico, he married a sister of one of the Mexican generals. She had a fine estate near Jalapa, and it was to her he returned after leaving Texas.

The acceptance of a parole from an officer of Texas, as a Mexican prisoner, and his purpose to require Mexico to pay for his services, indicate that he was not in sympathy with the Texas Revolution. His living in Texas so long during and after the Revolution, in amity with the people, and his obtaining a headright for land as a citizen of Texas, would tend to a different conclusion.

John H. Reagan,  Palestine, Texas.

How to cite:
"QUERIES AND ANSWERS.", Volume 006, Number 2, Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, Page 166 - 167. http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v006/n2/back_8.html
[Accessed Mon Dec 1 23:51:27 CST 2008]