QUERIES AND ANSWERS.
Could any one inform me through The Quarterly how Madison County, and the town of Madisonville came to be so named? Could any one give a sketch of some man of prominence connected with the early history of Madison County?
(Mrs.) J. A. B. Walthall, Willow Hole, Texas.
The above question was referred to Judge W. D. Wood of San Marcos, who answers as follows:
Madison County was organized by act of the Texas legislature, January 27, 1853. It was named in honor of President James Madison; and the county being so named, it was considered proper and appropriate to name the county seat Madisonville, to further accentuate the honor intended this illustrious man and president.
By act of the first legislature that assembled in Texas, after annexation, on the 6th of April, 1846, the counties of Grimes and Walker were organized out of the territory of Montgomery County. Not quite seven years after this, the new county of Madison 134 was organized out of the territory of Grimes and Walker Counties, and a small portion of Leon. The writer was at the sale of the town lots in Madisonville, in the summer of 1853. The public square or court house square, of the town, was located within two hundred yards of the residence of Job Collard, who had settled there in the forties, while the territory was a part of Montgomery County. He was a useful and exemplary citizen, a man of note in his section. He belonged to a numerous and much respected family, residents of old Montgomery County, who were active and leading spirits in matters civil and military. Judge Collard, recently deceased at Austin, a member of the civil court of appeals of the Third District, was a member of this family; and, if I mistake not, a native of old Montgomery County.
James Mitchell was another settler of the forties in the territory now included in Madison County. Mitchell lived northeast of where Madisonville now is, on the old San Antonio road, not far from Robbins's Ferry on the Trinity. His house was at the parting of the ways. Here the La Bahía road diverged from the San Antonio road. The traveler or immigrant bound for Bastrop, San Antonio, and intermediate points, followed the San Antonio road; if he was bound for La Bahía, Gonzales, or Goliad, he followed, as the American settler called it, the “Labadee” road. Mr. Mitchell, located as he was, kept a hostelry which was known far and wide for the hospitality, genial disposition, and kindness of the landlord. Few men, at an early day in Texas, were better known than “Uncle Jimmy Mitchell,” and none did more towards the settlement and development of the territory now included in the bounds of Madison County than he. 135
Besides Collard and Mitchell there were George Floyd, Nathaniel Robbins, Stephen and Joseph Rogers, John and Doctor McKeever, the Mannings, the Batsons, Dr. Kittrell, father of Judge Norman G. Kittrell of Houston, the Gorees, Youngs, McGarys, and Pat Hays, all of whom settled in the territory of Madison County before it was organized, many of them sometime in the forties. They were all enterprising citizens, and took an active part in the organization of the new county. They did so on account of the great distance at which those citizens who lived in the northern portions of Walker and Grimes Counties were from the county seats of these counties, a distance of forty or fifty miles or more. This was a great inconvenience, and the legislature hearkened to their petition for relief and gave them Madison County.
Dr. Kittrell and the Gorees were from Alabama. In the legislature of 1857-58, Dr. Kittrell was floater from the counties of Madison, Grimes and Walker. The elder Goree was the father of Hon. Thomas Goree, now of Galveston. As to the States the other persons mentioned came from, the writer does not now remember, if he ever knew.
W. D. Wood.
135. Since the above was written I have found that in the act of the Congress of the Republic creating the County of Montgomery, approved Dec. 14, 1837, James Mitchell and Elijah Collard are appointed members of a commission to locate the county seat of the new county. So it seems that in 1837 Mitchell was a resident of the territory of Montgomery county, and I apprehend that he was located at the forks of the San Antonio and La Bahia Roads; for on my first visit to his home his residence and improvements, indicated quite an old settlement. This was in December, 1857. Mitchell was one of the pioneer settlers on the Old San Antonio Road, between the Trinity and Navasota Rivers. He has a number of descendants now residents of Madison County.
Elijah Collard, the commissioner, was a brother of Job Collard. There was no family in the territory of Old Montgomery County more prominent than the Collards.
How to cite:
"QUERIES AND ANSWERS.", Volume 006, Number 4, Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, Page 334 - 336. http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v006/n4/back_6.html
[Accessed Tue Dec 2 0:19:26 CST 2008]
