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Post by estebans on Feb 4, 2015 22:39:57 GMT -5
Edward and Rich, to go back to an early facet of this thread, am I correct in thinking that the property where James Goodman was squatting with his blacksmith shop had been under the general umbrella of the former presidio operation, rather than a specific family/individual's house or houses? It turns out that a good friend of mine is very probably a direct descendant of a Bexar family that included one or more deserters from the presidial unit who stayed on in San Antonio and pursued very sketchy activities for a living, possibly even being some of the "Rio Grande renegades" Goodman claims to have displaced and fought with.
I got a little more on Goodman himself: he was indeed tried for murder and the claim for the court costs is dated September of 1844, confirming the time span of J. M. Rodriguez's aborted apprenticeship, but I still don't know anything about the killing itself. Beyond that, there is a trace in the Bexar probate records for 1849, where Goodman's will is entered and his estate inventoried, but his name is not marked as deceased, unlike most of the other entries. My understanding is that if convicted, he would have been imprisoned in the Bexar jail, if he was not hanged as was usual for a murder conviction. So was he jailed elsewhere, or was it just an anomaly in the recording process, and did he die in 1849? And why don't the newspapers anywhere in the republic seem to say anything about the killing or trial, or Goodman's death if he died in 1849 or earlier? Obviously I'm guilty of not having gone to look at the court records in person yet, but the whole affair seems like an oddly absent tale--how long would it have taken historians to spot it if Rodriguez hadn't put it in his memoir?
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Post by Rich Curilla on Feb 5, 2015 0:11:16 GMT -5
I must bow to Edward's knowledge of this. All I really knew before he nudged me on (with regard to the locale at the presidio) was what Corner had on his 1890 Bexar map. This is interesting, Stephen. Good sleuthing.
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Post by estebans on Feb 6, 2015 4:04:00 GMT -5
Well, getting a bit warmer on the Goodman mysteries. From the diary of Prince Carl of Solm while he visited Texas on empresario business in 1844: Sunday, July 28. Sunday Mass at 10 o'clock; sermon in Spanish; at five in the afternoon sermon by Abbe Auzier. He did quite well. The gunsmith Goodman fatally shot an Irishman and wounded a German.
It seems strange that the Irishman does not seem to be listed among the San Fernando/Campo Santo burials, but perhaps he was from Northern Ireland. I didn't see evidence of a separate trial for shooting the German, but it's possible the prosecutor figured the murder charge was a lock.
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Post by ryan1717 on Apr 2, 2015 11:53:19 GMT -5
I may have a newbie question about the siege but I haven't been able to find an answer anywhere. Why did Austin move camp to the "old mill?" During my research I figured he made camp to the South to cut off supply lines from the Gulf and Mexico. But then a few days later he moves camp back to the North. Did he have sufficient reinforcements to surround the city?
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Post by Rich Curilla on Apr 2, 2015 22:12:46 GMT -5
His point was to "surround" Cos. Bowie and Fannin's company stayed at Mission Concepcion while Austin went up 1,000 yards north of the Alamo on the east side of the river. Later, the encampment was on the west side behind the Zambrano Sugar Mill (A.K.A. Old Mill and Molino Blanco). At one point, Austin even proposed to Bowie that they each hold their respective locations but start two daily patrols, one of which would leave Bowie's camp and patrol to Austins on one side of the river while the other would leave Austin's camp and patrol to Bowie's on the opposite side, thus keeping the enemy at least nominally surrounded if not literally. The approach of Cos' reinforcements, if I remember correctly, was expected to come in on the road from Presidio de Rio Grande, which would be from the southwest to Leon Creek and then in to Bexar from due west.
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Post by edward on Apr 5, 2015 15:18:16 GMT -5
Edward and Rich, to go back to an early facet of this thread, am I correct in thinking that the property where James Goodman was squatting with his blacksmith shop had been under the general umbrella of the former presidio operation, rather than a specific family/individual's house or houses? It turns out that a good friend of mine is very probably a direct descendant of a Bexar family that included one or more deserters from the presidial unit who stayed on in San Antonio and pursued very sketchy activities for a living, possibly even being some of the "Rio Grande renegades" Goodman claims to have displaced and fought with. I got a little more on Goodman himself: he was indeed tried for murder and the claim for the court costs is dated September of 1844, confirming the time span of J. M. Rodriguez's aborted apprenticeship, but I still don't know anything about the killing itself. Beyond that, there is a trace in the Bexar probate records for 1849, where Goodman's will is entered and his estate inventoried, but his name is not marked as deceased, unlike most of the other entries. My understanding is that if convicted, he would have been imprisoned in the Bexar jail, if he was not hanged as was usual for a murder conviction. So was he jailed elsewhere, or was it just an anomaly in the recording process, and did he die in 1849? And why don't the newspapers anywhere in the republic seem to say anything about the killing or trial, or Goodman's death if he died in 1849 or earlier? Obviously I'm guilty of not having gone to look at the court records in person yet, but the whole affair seems like an oddly absent tale--how long would it have taken historians to spot it if Rodriguez hadn't put it in his memoir? Great Info 'estebans'. A possibility, Goodman may have not been convicted. IIRC there are a few deeds dated 1845 or later by Goodman.
Info from the City Council Minutes: OCTOBER 28th 1841 John N. Seguin Mayor The Council met present J. Seguin Mayor & Aldermen A. Barrera, B. Callaghan, F. Bustillos, J.S. Trueheart & J.A. Urrutia the minutes being read and approved. The Mayor informed the Council that the affair betwixt James Goodman and this Corporation had been decided in favor of said Corporation but the defendant appealed to the District Court. ----------- 16 Jul 1842 On Motion an other election was ordered when Mess. Van Ness & James Goodman were offered as Candidates the ayes and nays being called for stood thus Granado, Garza, Urrutia, & Rivas voted for Van Ness, McMlullen Dwyer & Callaghan for Goodman, Mr. Van Ness was declared elected notice being sent to him of his election, and appearing was duly sworn & proceeded to discharge the duties as Alderman -------------- 30 Mar 1844 In consequence of the disorganized state of this County during the last two years, there was no election held for officers of the Corporation until the 23rd of the present Month, when an election was held in conformity with an order from The Honble. David Morgan Chief Justice of this County, given in accordance to a Law passed by the Honble. Congress and approved by the President the 14th of Jan 1842.- when the following was the result, as shown by the returns of said Election and Certificates of the Honble Chief Justice. Viz. MAYOR Edward Dwyer. ALDERMAN Rafael Garza Ambrosio Rodriguez Juan A. Urrutia Antonio Menchaca Jose M. Flores James Goodman Robert Lindsay Thomas whitehead TREASUER William Elliot COLLECTOR Martin Delgado ----------- Saturday May 25th 1844 The Council met this day. Present E. Dwyer Mayor, Aldermen Menchaca, Urrutia, Rodriguez, Lindsay, & Goodman & whitehead. The Mayor called the meeting to order, when alderman Goodman tendered his resignation and give the following reasons Viz: That it had been proposed by Aldermen Garza to give instructions to the city Attorney, to take an Appeal from the Judgment of the District Court for the County of Gonza1es, to the supreme Court of this Republic, in the case of the City of San Antonio vs James Goodman, and to order him to prosecute the Same to final judgment. Mr. Goodman therefore thought it incumbent upon him to resign his seat at the Board has he might become interested against the Corporation as Defendant in said suit.
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Post by estebans on Apr 10, 2015 18:42:10 GMT -5
Another trace of James Goodman is in the memorials and petitions for RoT claims in 1844, where Jack Hays submitted claims to be reimbursed for work Goodman had done on the Bexar Rangers' guns, horses and gear, which Hays apparently paid for up front out of his own pocket. The last day Goodman worked is July 24, four days before the shootings, but Goodman endorsed Hays's claim on December 20 in San Antonio, about three months after the billing for the trial. Of course, if Goodman was serving a jail sentence in San Antonio in December, he would have been readily available to witness Hays's claim, and I'm not sure that being in jail would have prevented deed transactions in Goodman's name either. Goodman clearly had been useful to Hays as someone who could do the frequent repairs needed by the Rangers' early Colts, but that doesn't mean he was indispensable. Had he been acquitted, though, I would expect to see further billing to maintain the Rangers' gear into 1845, as they were definitely out in the field beating up their stuff.
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Post by Rich Curilla on Apr 11, 2015 9:30:03 GMT -5
Super sleuthing, Stephen.
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Post by estebans on Apr 12, 2015 13:16:51 GMT -5
Thanks, Rich & Edward, but you can probably tell that the curiosity is killing me where Goodman is concerned. I doubt that he was anything more than a pawn in someone else's game, but the lack of before/after for this man known to anyone familiar with 1840s Bexar is maddening. Possibly James Goodman was not his real name, and his behavior in Bexar suggests he could have done something back east that he'd run from; but the way it's mentioned that he was from Virginia or Tennessee or wherever they say suggests that he was known there to other people who wound up in Texas. Still, I haven't hit anything on ancestry.com that seems to be the same James Goodman, which is unusual because I've turned up some quite obscure Texians that way.
I just read Stephen Hardin's excellent book Texian Macabre, primarily to get a sense of how the Anglo underclass of drifters and volunteers functioned in Houston. I live about a mile south of where the hanging at the center of the book took place--the Houston Greyhound station is located very near that spot. Hardin believes there were probably a great many killings in early Houston that went unreported because the newspaper editors wanted to improve the town's image, and the business of hushing things up was probably far easier in Bexar, with no local newspaper until 1848 and all press reports being filtered through correspondents and travelers. It was a revelation to read the Catholic burial records for Bexar and see the results of affrays and attacks that I had never seen mentioned elsewhere. I can't help but think that maybe the Goodman incident exposed some sectarian tensions among the Anglos in Bexar and was an embarrassment to a town where the Anglos were usually united in pursuit of hegemony over Tejanos and Indians.
The City Council vote of July 1842 is interesting: I should think that normally McMullen, Dwyer and Callaghan detested Goodman, but the younger Van Ness brother was well known as a staunch supporter of the Bexareno community, much more assimilated than most post-revolutionary Anglo arrivals in Texas, so maybe the Irish Catholics voted for Goodman just to try to avoid an insuperable Bexareno majority in the aftermath of the Vasquez raid, with suspicions still running rampant. The odds are pretty good that one or more of the Bexarenos on the council had been seen being too accommodating to Vasquez a few weeks earlier, and voting for Goodman was a way to send a message about that.
We can't ignore that Goodman links himself to Samuel Maverick in his initial petition to the council about the property where Goodman was squatting. He doesn't say that Maverick encouraged him or advised him, just that Maverick was the guy Goodman went to when he started trying to do something official about claiming his squat. When the dust finally clears, Maverick has wound up with plenty of Juan Seguin's desirable property in town. In between, Goodman has tried to kill JNS and managed to cripple Juan's ally Matias Curbier by mistake in the process. Coincidence? Maybe. But in the events that drove JNS out of Texas--the 1841 loss of his smuggling profits, the attacks by Goodman in town and the volunteers outside town--there is evidence suggesting that someone either put the culprits up to it or at least deliberately stood aside so it could happen. Not necessarily a single sinister cabal, but a number of individuals whose interests would be served by having JNS out of the way.
Goodman may have been someone who was used and discarded when he became an embarrassment (just dandy to have Goodman shooting immigrants on a Sunday when you've got this European prospective empresario in town, isn't it?). But if that was the case, how did his story end? Btw, he is listed on the Bexar Co. tax rolls 1840-1848, and then there's that probate thing in 1849, which suggests that he died in 1848 or 1849.
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Post by rayjr on May 8, 2015 20:39:33 GMT -5
Estebans,
I thought I might add a letter I found by Samuel Maverick. It adds character to the proceedings:
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill The University Library; library.unc.edu
Collection Number: 00718-2 Title: Waddy Thompson Papers, 1823-1851 83 Items Finding aide in Folder 1. F1: Finding aide, Papers, 1823-9/1842 F2: Papers, 10-12/1842 F3: 1843 F4: 1844-1851 + undated
Open from 9am – 5pm. Manuscript Department; 4th Floor Wilson Library CB# 3926 UNC@Chapel Hill, C.H., NC. 27514; 919-962-1345
Directions: Take IH 85 to IH 40 east, exit 273C Hwy 50 to C.H., straight on Raleigh rd. (Hwy 54) 4 miles, turn into UNC Visitor lot on right at light, at top of hill South rd./Country Club rd.. Walk 3 blocks to Library on South rd. past the cemetery & student union building. Enter between library & undergrad library. Take elevator to the 4th floor.
Southern Historical Collection CB # 3926 Wilson Library The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, NC., 27514-8890
Samuel Maverick Duncan Ogden; 2/11/43 from brother Edward Ogden James Trueheart; 12/10/42 (Virginia) Thomas W. Gilmer Israel Canfield; 1/21/43 Luis conduit/Joel Poinsett D.F.Barney; 4/24/43 (Mier) brother Martin M. Barney Philadelphia Ludovic Colquhoun; Petersburg VA. Friend & wife relative G. Washington E.R. Porter; 6/22/43 C.W. Williams John Mackmullen & Samuel H. Walker; 8/16/43 R.K. Lane Thomas Smith; 8/28/43 Mier Sarah Morrison Freeman W. Douglass (Mier) B.J. Calder Cunningham; 12/15/1842 from Georgia George S. Carson
Copy (Transcription) of Letter from Samuel Maverick Saltillo, Mexico; October 31st, 1842
Saltillo, 31st Oct. 1842
Dear Sir, Having procured a bit of paper and a pen, I thought it not improper to write a few lines to you. As an individual gentleman of my acquaintance, and I protest that I do not write to you as the American Minister. Fifty eight of us Texian Prisoners are here in prison. We left San Antonio on the 15th Ulto where on the 11th we surrendered to thirty times our number, fighting them at dawn, and in a fog we mistook Wools Army for Seguin, Perez and their renegade Mexican robbers, that have long been threatening our undefended Western frontier with robbery and murder. Wools entry was at least Singular. We comprise the District Court, bar, jury and citizens of San Antonio de Bexar, who came to attend the regular term, - San Anto having been almost entirely abandoned in March last in consequence of the Segueo of Genl. Vasquez. – We have Col. Wm E Jones (formerly editor of the Augusta Chronicle, and your political friend)[.] He has been on the point of writing you, but is deterred and prevented by the difficulty of writing on his knee, such as a letter as he would wish. – Also Dr. Sam Booker (of Spartan S.C.) a gentleman of education – Judge Hutchinson formerly an able chancellor of Mippi. Ex – Judge Robinson – Capts Ogden and Johnson of New York, - Capt O Phelan of the British Legion in Spain. – John Bradley Esqr. Major F.S. Gray – Ex. Senator L. Colquhoun, and a number more of well known, men of character. – Jones and myself are members elect of the Next Congress. Most of us are Texians, some perhaps citizens of the U.S. and 4 or 5 Germans, and some English. Three of our numbers Van Ness, Fitzgerald (an English subject) and Hancock were detained at San Fernando by Reyes under an order from Mexico, to have them shot. because they had been Santa Fe prisoners – but I do not think that notwithstanding ther men are in the power of Mexico. The[y] will think twice on this matter - .Most of us are men of family, with our families on the Guadalupe and Colorado. I cannot see what use Mexico can have in Carrying us on foot 1200 miles to Mexico. They made us march through heat rain and cold. – At San Fernando General Reyes kept us closed up in prison torre 10 or 12 days and here we have been 8 days. – They keep from us all information that we can rely on. – Our officer says we will be on the road again in 3 days and about the 15th proximo we are to be at San Luis Potosi. Perhaps we have some friend in Mexico, who will at your kind suggestion, be pleased to direct to me or the Texian Prisoners (at San Luis Potosi) Some late N. Orls. Papers, with news from Texas Sir I cannot and I do not ask you to use any efforts to help us, your public and important duties, are all absorbing. – But dear sir forgive me if I thought it a duty I owed to you as the able representative of a powerful and friendly nation, as a gentleman and a lover of liberty, and justice, and a well known hater of oppression – a duty also which I owed the worthy men at my side, whom Mexico may plague and oppress, as the[y] will, but can never subdue, to proclaim to you our situation. It may somehow be of service to us that it be known, where we are. We hear of some change in the Mexican government perhaps the new Govt. on examining the despatches of Reyes and Wool, Would release us, Genl Wool pledged his honor and that he believed that our number was to disproportionate to his Army and that he would recommend our return and every man in San Anto (natives) waited on him in a body asking for my release in particular. dear Sir I remain your Servant
Regards,
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