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A s suggested by the actions of Debard, Blair, and their crew of legal representatives (including his old friend Tom Rusk), Bean was hardly out of town before litigation against him began to crowd the Nacogdoches court docket. These cases lasted for years, almost as long as he or his children held property in Texas. In the fall 1844 term of court, one James Bracken tried to gain control of Bean’s slave Dory, “of great value, to wit of the value of seven hundred dollars.” Bean, it appears, had earlier been the legal guardian of Nathaniel Collier, “a person non compus mentis,” who had perhaps thought that Dory belonged to him. He did, at least in September 1826 when Robert Collier was murdered and an inventory of his estate was prepared by Alcalde Hines. As noted, item 6 read “Dory, a field hand aged about 21, property of Nath. Collier.”1 It is unknown if Bean legally acquired this field hand from Collier’s widow Harriet or the estate. But Dory, “a slave for life aged about forty years,” must have been a prime specimen because Bracken—now calling himself Collier’s guardian—wanted him badly. So badly that Bracken was still pursuing the case five years later, after Nathaniel Collier was deceased.2 On November 16, 1849, Bracken filed an “Amended Petition” as follows: Your petitioner would respectfully represent that on or about the first day of January, A. D. 1845, the said Peter E. Bean departed this life in Mexico; that at the time of his death he was legal and equitable owner of fifteen slaves worth about five thousand dollars which slaves he left in the County of Nacogdoches; that said Bean left at the time of his death two sons, to wit Isaac Bean and Ellis M. Bean, who were his only heirs at law, now both of mature years. That there has been no administration upon said Peter E. Bean’s Estate & that he died intestate. That shortly after his death the said Isaac Bean & Chapter 20 The Legal Whirlwind Ellis M. Bean took possession as heirs at law of said Peter E. of all his estate [and] made an equal division of the same between them and have ever since enjoyed the same and still do enjoy it to the exclusion of the petitioner. That among the negroes thus taken . . . is the slave Dora [sic], for the recovery of whom this suit was originally brought, which negro they have also appropriated to their own use.3 Isaac Bean was then residing in Walker County (formed in 1846 with Huntsville as the county seat) and Ellis Bean in Cherokee County (which had been formed out of Nacogdoches County in 1846, Rusk its county seat). Bracken wanted the brothers to deliver up the slave Dory and pay him a substantial amount of money for the “serveses and detention” he had missed while the colonel and his heirs were enjoying Dory’s labor.4 Now that he was approaching adult status, Ellis began to reckon with his inheritance. On December 21, 1846, for the price of four hundred dollars he sold to James H. Durst the one thousand acres known as “Bean’s Prairie place” with all its improvements. The exact limits were better described in John Durst’s sale of his nine-league tract to Ira Lewis, from which the one thousand acres had been withheld. The deed was signed first by “Candis Hicks” (she made her mark “X”), followed by Isaac T. and Ellis M. Bean.5 They were literate, even if their mother was not. Mrs. Sophia Peevey later told people of the region that she visited the family often. She said that “this second Mrs. Bean was a case.” Besides being illiterate, “she was little and as ugly as can be.” Because so many of Mrs. Peevey’s other yarns about Colonel Bean and his family are factually wrong or made up, perhaps this one was as well.6 Strangely, on October 23, 1849, Ellis Bean again sold James H. Durst the same one thousand acres given him in Bean’s will—this time for two thousand dollars. As three years before, the tract was described as four miles west of the Angelina adjoining the Old San Antonio Road on its south side “known as my father, Peter E. Bean’s prairie place and the same on which he used to reside, now occupied by James Selman.”7 The Selman clan had moved...

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