JONAS HARRISON,
LEGENDARY AND HISTORICAL
Jonas Harrison was born October 11, 1777, in Woodbridge
Township, New Jersey, the son of William Harrison and his
second wife, Elizabeth. He died on his own headright near
Patroon, Shelby County, Texas, August 6, 1836. At Lewiston,
New York, in 1811, Jonas Harrison, aged 34, married Betsey
Cooke, aged 17, by whom he had three children: Jonas, who
died, unmarried, March 26, 1836, at Erie, Pennsylvania; Rachel,
who married Moses Hall Fitts and reared a large family in
California; James Cooke Harrison, born in Buffalo, New York,
December 14, 1819, and died there November 21, 1882, a man
of large fortune and great influence, a leading banker in the
Great Lakes shipping business. Mrs. Betsey Cooke Harrison
died in Governeur, New York, July 25, 1872, aged 78 years. She
was born June 30, 1794. James Cooke Harrison married May
Wilson Pearce, daughter of Lieutenant (U. S. N.) George Pearce
of Virginia, at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Erie, Pennsylvania,
July 16, 1842. She died in Buffalo, June 11, 1891. Their daugh-
ter, Mary Pearce Harrison, born in Erie, Pennsylvania, Novem-
ber 12, 1849, married Griffin Stedman Williams, son of William
Williams, member of Congress and railroad president, in Trinity
Episcopal Church, Buffalo, December 20, 1871. Their son, Har-
rison Williams, Leesburg, Virginia, lawyer, historian, and gene-
alogist, has aided this research greatly with data for the New
York descendants of Jonas Harrison.
Jonas Harrison married Ellender Shannon in Georgia, June
26, 1820. She was the daughter of Owen Shannon of South
Carolina and his wife, Margaret Montgomery, of Pennsylvania,
who came from Georgia by way of Arkansas to Texas. His
headright contains the old town of Montgomery, Texas. Jacob
Shannon, Ellender's brother, was a large land owner and trader
of Montgomery County, Texas, also.
Jonas Harrison and his wife, Ellender, had eight children:
Margaret, Jonas, Jacob, John, DeWitt Clinton, Thomas Jeffer-
son, William Henry, and Almira. Margaret married William
Thomas. Their descendants lived in Rusk County, Texas, but
are now widely scattered over Texas. They have aided me very
much in this research. Jonas settled in Southwest Texas along
the Rio Grande, married and had descendants, and died in the
Confederate service at Fort Davis, Texas. Jacob married a
granddaughter of John Sevier, famous Governor of Tennessee,
with descendants around Waco and Dallas; he died in 1867.
John lived most of his short life in Arlington, Texas, and has
descendants whom I have not met. DeWitt Clinton, born Decem-
ber 5, 1827, married Nannie Cannon, had six children, and died
in Arlington, Texas, March 6, 1902. His descendants have also
aided me greatly in this genealogy. Thomas Jefferson served
four full years in the Confederate armies and died without issue
in 1868. William Henry, born September 27, 1833, married
Mary Jane Finger, February 11, 1858, and had eleven children,
most of them dying comparatively young. He lived a long life
in Arlington, Texas; his descendants have greatly aided this
research also. Almira, born posthumously, married Samuel
Daniel, and has descendants around Arlington and Bailey, Texas.
The rearing of these eight children of Jonas Harrison to highly
respected maturity reflects great credit upon his widow Eilen-
der Shannon Harrison. She died near Arlington, Texas, August
28, 1877. All Jonas Harrison's descendants were, and are, of
highest character and standing.
Jonas Harrison's known ancestors reach back to the four
Harrison brothers who came to Virginia early in the Seventeenth
Century. Two, Benjamin and Nathaniel, remained in Virginia.
Benjamin became Clerk of the Council in 1634, and acquired a
great estate. He was the ancestor of one "Signer" and two
Presidents of the United States. The other two brothers, Thomas
and Richard, went on to Connecticut. This Richard's son, Richard,
removed from Connecticut to New Jersey about 1666. This last
Richard became the ancestor of the Harrisons of New Jersey.
William Harrison, father of Jonas, was the great-grandson of
this New Jersey Richardson Harrison.
1
This account of the legendary Jonas Harrison is taken from
the magnificent manuscript of Charles D. Smith, Beaumont,
Texas. It should be published in full as written. Chas. D. Smith
is a lawyer, well known. His manuscript is as follows:
This legend, as given to me, was that Jonas Harrison made
his unobtrusive appearance in Texas early, exactly when or
whence nobody knew, married an illiterate, but strong and
comely young Texas woman, took her behind him on horseback
into the then unpeopled section in the neighborhood of the head-
waters of the Sabine in Eastern Texas (the country not given),
and there built and reared a family in a little log cabin at the
foot of a high and rocky hill, a beautiful stream circling its base.
There seemed nothing extraordinary about him; he was a
typical frontiersman and backwoodsman; if he could write his
name or even knew his alphabet, it hadn't been discovered; he
was extremely silent, taciturn, and shunned rather than courted
the society of others. He was tall of stature, spare and rangy
of frame, loosely put together, had a long scraggly beard, deepset
piercing eyes, and prominent brow. He was an inveterate to-
bacco chewer and when he spat it was like emptying a bucket;
he dressed slouchily and his language was that of any illiterate
backwoodsman. These outward characteristics were especially
noticeable, as if deliberately emphasized in the presence of
outsiders.
Major West, his nearest neighbor, lived some miles across
country from him; the seat of the nearest court was at old
Nacogdoches, then a Fort, some 75 miles or more distant.
On one occasion, as they had on many other occasions, Major
West, Harrison, and one or two others living in their "neighbor-
hood" were on their way to court at Nacogdoches, and around
the camp fire one night while en route they were discussing
the case of a young man to be tried in Nacogdoches on the
charge of horse stealing, who, it seemed, did not have a lawyer
to defend him; and Major West jocularly remarked that he
should get Jonas to defend him; at which all the circle laughed
except Harrison, who quietly removed his pipe from his mouth,
knocked the tobacco from it on his boot heel, and looking across
the fire at Major West calmly remarked: "Well, Major West,
it might be that I could do it," at which all the circle again
laughed--except Harrison himself.
After reaching Nacogdoches, Major West, still in a jocular
vein, recommended to the young man that he procure Harrison
to defend him, the suggestion again meeting rather ribald mer-
riment on the part of those hearing it; but it came about that
Harrison did accept the engagement.
The news of the employment of "old Jonas Harrison" as a
lawyer in the case, a case which had attracted some notice and
interest, and the prospect of his appearing in court as a lawyer,
quickly spread throughout the town, and when the case was
called the crude court room was filled to overflowing for the
"show."
When Harrison entered the court room with his young client
amidst the whisperings and craning of necks of the curious and
interested, there was a shade of a new and indefinable quality
and dignity in his whole bearing and appearance. He approached
the clerk and called for the papers in the case, and, receiving
them, swiftly but critically examined them, and this finished
called for paper and pen and with his own hand and in classical
language wrote the motion to quash the indictment. With this
document filed and before him, in quiet cultivated tones and
purest English, he addressed the court upon its merits. He had
now become a totally different being, as it were, his very vest-
ments and whole appearance of person taking on a new sem-
blance and character. Within a few minutes, in the dead quiet
of the room, the court, the lawyers, and the laymen knew that
a great lawyer and scholar was addressing the court. Every
sentence, was not only ornamented with the purity and dignity
of broad scholarship but was a shrewd and penetrating lance
of legal learning. With easy readiness he invoked, whenever
needed, the dead as well as the living languages. He spoke
without dramatics, but with the consummate skill and mastery
of one who spoke with authority, and in his congenial element.
The case, however, went to the jury and Mr. Harrison, a
moment ago an uncouth, unlettered and slouchy backwoodsman,
gave a new lesson in the art and function of cross-examination;
devoid of all baser craftiness and cunning, of crude brow-
beating and bulldozing, he introduced the loftier skill in cross-
examination that penetrates and searches, exposing the lie and
revealing the truth.
The evidence in, the first argument of the state's counsel
closed, Mr. Harrison arose and began his address to the jury.
With the great anonymous intellect--exhibiting high culture
and scholarship with every period, long brooding and inactive,
now blazing forth in action, grand in dignity and superiority,
he likewise established a new ethical standard in forensic debate
and in the trial of criminal causes in the raw jurisprudence
of the new republic.
Immediately upon the conclusion of the state's closing argu-
ment and the reading of the court's charge to the jury, Mr.
Harrison, unobtrusively and without a word to anybody, left
the court room and without waiting for the jury's verdict
mounted his horse and started on his journey for home, leaving
all behind in a state of mind compounded of consternation,
bewilderment and exalted fascination.
Major West sometime later discovering his departure, at once
set off in pursuit, and toward nightfall overtook Mr. Harrison
astride his nag, homeward bound, his body slumped forward in
the saddle, head bent, again taciturn, again the slouchy, uncouth
backwoodsman. Major West, still under the spell of the aston-
ishing and tremendous event, attempted a conversation on the
new basis, but Harrison with a sharp tone of challenge and
glint of eye, with a countenance cold and glacial in its frosti-
ness, interrupted him and gave the Major to understand that
he would prefer no further reference to the Nacogdoches inci-
dent, and that thereafter their relations should be on the old
basis, and no persuasions or protestations on the Major's part
could draw him into any but the old illiterate, and now morose
and monosyllabic mode of conversation.
The transcendant mind and personality that had broken the
shackles of silence and stepped forth to tower for a moment in
the affairs of civilization drew back into impenetrable reclusion.
But the withdrawal was not to be accomplished with the ease
of the coming forth. His fame at once spread throughout the
length and breadth of the populated sections of the state; his
name was on every man's lips, here and yonder and everywhere.
Even the little far-off and isolated village of Houston had heard
of the meteor-like appearance of the great man from the rude log
cabin in the wilderness of Eastern Texas.
Sometime after the trial at Nacogdoches, the young son of a
prominent and then wealthy family at Houston shot and killed
another man under circumstances aggravating the enormity of
the deed and rendering the case a desperate one. The parents
of the young man--Mr. Harrison's fame and the story of the
brilliance of mind and legal talent exhibited by him in the trial
at Nacogdoches having reached them--sent a special messenger
from Houston on horseback to Mr. Harrison's cabin door, and
sent with him a large sum of money in gold with which to
employ him to defend their son; but the messenger could not
get an interview. The messenger called on Major West to en-
gage his good offices in an effort to persuade Mr. Harrison to
accept the engagement, but Major West coldly repulsed him
when he approached the subject, and therefore no further known
attempt was ever made to draw him back into his profession
and into the public affairs and politics of the State. For Mr.
Harrison became more than ever reclusive, and was wholly,
absolutely inaccessible. Men of character and high standing
rode from distant places miles across the country to converse
with him and try to draw him into the public life of the state,
but to no avail. Each and all, one after another, were turned
away and told that he was "not at home." Presently these
efforts ceased, and the whisperings of the mystery about him
quickly became co-extensive with his fame -- which added to
his fame.
Some years later Mr. Harrison died in the hut which through
the years had been the home of himself and illiterate wife and
children. Major' West and a few other neighbors from the sur-
rounding country went to the cabin upon his death; and there
they found wedged in between the walls an instrument written
in Mr. Harrison's own classical hand. In this writing he gave
careful and minute directions as to his burial. There was a
great boulder that capped the exact summit of the steep and
high hill at the foot of which he lived. It was his desire, ex-
pressed in the writing, that he be buried beneath that boulder.
He had, already, without the knowledge of his wife, or anyone
else, blazed a circuitous trail round and round the hill to its top.
He expressed the wish not only that his body be deposited
there, but that his ashes never be moved. The writing, after a
few profound philosophical remarks, closed with a simple great
tribute to the unlettered wife who had borne his children.
Some years after his death, a then newly organized county
was given the name which he bore--Harrison--of which Mar-
shall, Texas, is the county seat. That circumstance was and is
the only recognition of a public nature that rescues his name
from total oblivion. For all that is known his ashes to this
day repose beneath the great boulder under which he was
buried, and which alone marks his grave.
1
The facts of Jonas Harrison's birth are known, but for almost
to a day his life for thirty years is still a blank to us. He then,
September 24, 1807, appears a full-fledged lawyer, a junior
counsel for Catharine Tucker in one of the most celebrated
legal cases in the history of slavery—the Dennison case, where
slaves were brought into the Northwest Territory from Canada
under the Treaty of 1796. Counsel for the slaves sought to
free them under the Ordinance of 1784 of the Continental Con-
gress, forbidding slavery forever in the Northwest Territory.
Chief Justice Woodward, whose famous and fantastic first
Constitution of Michigan later became more famous than him-
self, sat in the case and rendered a verdict for the defendant,
Catharine Tucker, Jonas Harrison's client. He seems to have qual-
ified himself for this very case, as he was admitted to the bar of
the circuit court of Huron and Detroit, and of the Supreme Court
of the Territory of Michigan, on motion of Harris H. Hickman,
his law partner, only a few days before he argued the Dennison
case before Chief Justice Woodward. We have no further record
of him in Detroit, except that his most intimate friend there
was Christian Clemens, himself famous in the annals of Michi-
gan. In the handwriting and content of Jonas Harrison's letter
to Christian Clemens in 1811, we have irrefutable proof that
Jonas Harrison of New York and Michigan was the same Jonas
Harrison of Texas. By that letter we know that he left Detroit
very shortly after the trial of the Dennison case, for Lewiston,
New York, where he opened a law office and taught school in
the rear of it. Here he met his pupil Betsey Cooke and soon
married her. He also began a law school in which Bates Cooke,
his brother-in-law, later Comptroller of New York, and then,
Congressman for the Buffalo District, received his legal train-
ing. By 1809, Jonas Harrison had become Collector of Customs
and Collector of Internal Revenue and Inspector of the District
of Niagara for the National Government, and Master of Chan-
cery of the State of New York, for the same territory. In his
own words, "these offices were considered honorable and not
without profit." He held all these offices until he left Buffalo
in 1819. He remained in Lewiston until driven out by the
British and their Indian allies in December, 1813. He fled to
Batavia with his wife and their two children, and the following
spring removed to the rebuilt village of Buffalo Creek, also
destroyed by the British in 1813. Immediately he established
himself as the leading member of the Buffalo bar. He was
chairman of the citizens committee to obtain a loan from the
State of ten thousand dollars to build a harbor for Buffalo
Creek, which they obtained and built the harbor. He was also
chairman of the committee of Buffalo citizens who petitioned
Governor DeWitt Clinton that the Erie Canal enter Lake Erie
by Buffalo Creek. They were not successful, but the successful
point was found later to have no harbor, and the canal was
taken down the coast to Buffalo, after all. Jonas Harrison was
elected three times by the Legislature of New York as one of
the Trustees of the rebuilt village of Buffalo Creek. The town
was sufficiently recovered from the war at the third election in
1816, and the Trustees qualified and served; soon after they
were elected by the people of the village. Actually, then, he
was one of the fathers of Buffalo--a founder of a great city;
as long as that great city of 600,000 souls endures his fame is
secure. Upon the organization of the Bank of Niagara soon
after the war, he was one of the directors and so continued
until he left Buffalo. He was a founder and leading member
of the vestry of Saint Paul's Episcopal church. He was also a
Mason of high degree. Finally, he built for himself the finest
house in Buffalo, which remained such for many years, and
even thirty years later, was still a show place because of its
splendid interior.
Alas for human security! The panic of 1819 ruined him. He
was compelled to sell his fine house, and later, all his other
property was sold by the Attorney General of New York and
found insufficient to pay his debts. Imprisonment for debt was
still the law in New York though not strictly enforced. In 1819
he left Buffalo openly on a prospecting trip. His arrival by
ship in Detroit with two valises was the last his family, or
Buffalo, ever heard certainly of him. There were no serious
irregularities in his official accounts. The estate was settled by
his wife, a woman of the highest character.
This Jonas Harrison research is not the only Texas mystery
where the dangling leads for further research fall all about,
and lead to inaction by their mere superfluity. We know he
entered Texas on December 24, 1820. We know a great deal more.
But first should come documentary evidence. The earliest archive
records of Jonas Harrison, December, 1827, show him in the
full practiced of law. He appears as attorney for Jared Groce
in a lawsuit over the estate of Robert Collier, who was mur-
dered by the Yoakum gang of robbers. In the same month, he
makes a report to Colonel Piedras as one of the judges in the
election for procurador,
or elector, of the District of Tenehaw
and Sabine. He signs himself "Acting Comisary of Police of
Tenehaw." During February, 1828, Jonas Harrison is found
Alcalde of Tenehaw, reporting to Colonel Piedras, commanding
officer at Nacogdoches. He has protested the illegal intrusions
of Americans, and has prohibited, "Mr.
Biddle,
an
Anabaptist,"
from holding services or preaching. A second letter during
that February to Piedras prays "that there may immediately
be an alcalde appointed for the Sabine District, and also one
for the Ayish District. Although I am not compelled to try
causes for Ayish District, yet many things come from there
for me to do, which, together with other business, engrosses
about all my time, and brings people continually to my house
who consume what provisions I have for my helpless family.
For doing business I charge the usual fees, but not enough can
be collected to pay for the paper. My family have no other
means of support but my labor on my farm, which is quite
destroyed by this office, and I am not able to hire. When I
accepted the office, I supposed it was only for this District of
Tenehaw. I trust that your Honor will see the necessity of
having alcaldes appointed immediately for those other districts;
if it is not done, it appears to me my family must starve, or
I must get clear of the whole business altogether."
But three years later Jonas Harrison was still Alcalde of
Tenehaw. On March 16, 1831, Elisha Roberts, Alcalde of Ayish,
and Harrison petitioned the Madero Commission in Spanish
against the incoming of United States Indians. In October, 1832,
he was a member of the Texas Convention of that year, and
evidently figured prominently there. He made reports as chair-
man of two committees, both on the state of land tenures in
East Texas. One was in the form of a letter or petition to the
Governor of Coahuila and Texas, praying that lands be surveyed.
Undoubtedly he could have been a member of the Convention
of 1833, but his letter to Stephen F. Austin tells of his losses
attending the first Convention. Where he didn't see five dollars
in money a year, he was put in debt fifty dollars, which would
take him a year to pay out; and he lost a valuable horse also.
The reading of his second letter to Austin inspired the writer
to learn more about him, especially these words:
There is perhaps no person more dangerous in the
formation of a new government than a mere theorist.
The principles of the State Constitution are in the
main excellent; but the thread is too fine-spun, much
is lost in detail. It resembles the works of the famous
Abbe Sieyes.
Philosophers and Speculatists may admire liberty
for its own account, but that liberty which is the mass
of mankind's understanding -- the free institutions
which they love and would die to defend--must with
its other blessings promptly afford them security of
property, character and person.
How many Texans then knew of Abbe Sieyes? How many
of us? I confess I had to look him up. And that word "Specu-
latists!" The whole quotation is Eighteenth Century; the idioms
of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of
1789; the words of Jefferson and Adams, Benjamin Franklin
and Alexander Hamilton.
The next document we have is the petition to Alcalde William
McFarland for a divorce of Sam Houston from his wife, Eliza
Allen, "by J. Harrison, his agent." And the divorce was granted;
but, of course, had no legality under Mexican canon law. The
McFarland tradition is that the alcalde took the papers to New
Orleans and obtained the divorce there. But I doubt it. The
document is intensely anti-clerical, and full of rhodomontade.
Evidently, Jonas Harrison prepared it with his tongue in his
cheek. His work in the case, however, was used five years later
when the divorce was granted by Judge Corzine.
Governor Roberts' address on "Old San Augustine" gives
many details of Jonas Harrison's character and career in East
Texas. "His first effort (as a lawyer) was at Nacogdoches
defending a man for his life. He made a speech in the case
that astonished his hearers by its logical argument and mag-
nificent eloquence, which at once established his fame as a great
lawyer and orator. Afterwards he and General Sam Houston
met on opposite sides in court at San Augustine in a suit in-
volving the right to a number of slaves. His success in that
suit increased his reputation. General Rusk, long afterwards,
was heard to say of him, that he had heard him speak in court
for an hour on a law question with more interest than any other
man he ever heard. He took an active part in, and presided
over, the meetings held in this section to protect the liberties
of the Texas people. He died in 1836, and Harrison County was
named for him. He inspired Emory Rains with the idea of
self-education, at a time he did not know his letters. And Rains,
in turn, became noted for general information and his knowl-
edge of history, and gave his name to Rains County. Harrison
was a frequent visitor to San Augustine, and seemed to take
pleasure in taking people by surprise at the extent of his infor-
mation, of which his manners and style of dress gave no pre-
monition."
His health was failing in 1835, but the Records show him
active as "Major Harrison," in recruiting for the armies of
Texas.
Finally we come to his greatest achievement in Texas, the
famous "San Augustine Resolutions," advocating in the meticu-
lously logical manner of Jonas Harrison the immediate Decla-
ration of Independence from Mexico. Really, the San Augustine
meeting asked Jonas Harrison to address them. His address
was either' written out by him, or taken down by others. It was
published as a broadside by the San Augustine committee. Per-
haps no other resolutions had so profound effect on East Texas
opinion; for Jonas Harrison was the head of the Conservatives,
and had always been friendly with the Mexican Government.
It is full of Jonas Harrison's quaint Eighteenth Century
phrases, also; the best one, that "exquisitely appropriate."
These resolutiones were honored by Kennedy in his history of
Texas by a large part reproduction.
Just a month before his death, Jonas Harrison made his last
appearance in public as chairman of the meeting to honor
General Sam Houston, July 4, 1836, on his return from New
Orleans. There is a description in Colonel John S. Ford's
Memoirs:
"It was arranged to have General Houston meet his friends
at San Augustine on the Fourth of July, 1836. It was a joyous
reunion. The gentleman chosen to welcome the general was
Col. Jonas Harrison, long and familiarly called "Old Jonas
Harrison, the hunter." Memory paints him now as he stood in
his brown home-spun clothes, slouched hat, and coarse boots,
to receive the Washington of Texas. "Old chap, what can you
say, worthy of this memorable occasion?" The mental question
was soon answered. He drew himself up to his full height, and
in a short address combined eloquence and logic so deftly and
ably that all were assured a master stood before them.
"General Houston replied in his happiest manner. The two
held the audience entranced, unconscious of aught save the
enthusiasm engendered by their burning words. At this moment,
when fifty years have been measured upon the sun dial of
time, the grand old hunter looms up as the equal, if not the
superior, of General Houston in oratory. A few months there-
after a mighty mind was eclipsed, a gifted tongue silenced by
death. Few of this day know him. However, of Col. Jonas
Harrison the genius, the lawyer, the statesman, more hereafter."
Colonel Ford did not give this "more hereafter," more's the
pity.
Jonas Harrison was one great man who just missed fame
all his life. Had he remained in Detroit or Buffalo instead of
leaving for new fields, his name would have been spread wide
on the pages of Michigan or New York history, and very likely
of the nation. Had he come to the Texas Convention of 1833,
the Austin party would not have lost control of it to the
Wharton faction. Had he lived, he would have been chosen the
first Chief Justice of the Republic of Texas. For a decade,
1809 to 1819, he dominated the public life of Lewiston and
Buffalo; for another decade, 1827 to 1836, he dominated East
Texas; and this not by ambitious forcing of himself forward
in either period. Sheer intellect, extraordinary capacity for
business, and conservative independence, gave him his undis-
puted primacy. Permit me, off the record, to wish there were
more "Jonas Harrisons of Texas" in our own present time.
College Station, Texas.
FOOTNOTES:
I have received most aid from Mr. Harrison Williams, Leesburg, Virginia;
Miss Ada Fitts, Buffalo, New York; The Buffalo Historical Society; Miss
Louise Rau, The Burton Collection, Detroit Public Library; Miss Mary
Eleanor Peters, San Mateo, California. For the Texas descendants I have
been greatly aided by Mr. Lewis C. Harrison, Pryor, Oklahoma; Mrs. Sallie
Hayter Harrison, Dallas, Texas; Mrs. W. O. Cloud, Henderson, Texas; Mrs.
Herman Wallace, Henderson, Texas; Mrs. Kate Wheeler, Arlington, Texas;
Miss Lulu Shannon, Dobbin, Texas, descendant of Jacob Shannon; and
especially Mrs. C. D. Mitchell, Arlington, Texas. For the history of Jonas
Harrison in Detroit I have been greatly aided by Miss Louise Rau, Burton
Collection, Detroit Public Library, and Professor W. W. Blume, Ann Arbor,
Michigan; and for the history of Jonas Harrison in Lewiston and Buffalo
I have been greatly aided by Mr. Harrison Williams, The Buffalo Historical
Society; Mrs. G. A. Wallace, Buffalo, New York; and Mrs. Burton A. Crane,
Erie, Pennsylvania. For the history of Jonas Harrison in Texas all his
descendants mentioned under the genealogy have given me a great deal of
information. First among others was Reverend George L. Crocket, Nacog-
doches, Texas, and Mr. J. H. Walker, Land Commissioner. Lastly, come the
officers of the University Library and State Library, particularly Mr. E. W.
Winkler, Mrs. Mattie Austin Hatcher, and Miss Winnie Allen and Miss
Harriet Smither, State Library. For particular services I am indebted to
Dr. Herbert Gambrell, Dallas, Texas, and Mr. Franklin Williams, Houston,
Texas.
This by no means exhausts the list—many others aided, but it will give
a lair idea of the sources of my information on Jonas Harrison.
How to cite:
Samuel E. Asbury, "Jonas Harrison, Legendary and Historical", Volume 45, Number 3, Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online, http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/publications/journals/shq/online/v045/n3/contrib_DIVL4249.html
[Accessed Thu Dec 4 12:52:45 CST 2008]
