Lott, Elisha Everett (1820–1864)

Elisha Everett Lott, statesman and orator, son of John Lott, was born in Mississippi on February 24, 1820. At the age of twenty he married Mary E. Lott, and the couple moved to Harrison County, Texas. In 1842 Lott was elected to replace Isaac Van Zandt as a representative in the Eighth Texas Congress (see CONGRESS OF THE REPUBLIC OF TEXAS). He fought vigorously against the Cherokee Land Bill in 1844 and moved to the disputed area at the end of his term. He is sometimes called the founder of Smith County. In 1846 he served on the official commission that laid out the boundary of the new county and selected the site of the county seat, Tyler. According to postal records, Lott was the first Tyler postmaster, a position he held from 1847 to 1850. He represented Smith County in the state House of Representatives from 1847 to 1853 and in the Senate from 1857 to 1861. He served as a delegate to the national Democratic convention at Baltimore in 1852; his constituents asked that he run for governor in 1857, but he declined. With the coming of the Civil War, Lott resigned to serve as a lieutenant colonel in the Confederate Army. His health failed from his overexertion on the battlefront, and he died on January 17, 1864, at his home in Starrville, north of Tyler, and was buried there. After the death of his first wife, he had married Anna Cook in 1856, and she and their five children survived him. He was a Mason and a Methodist.