Indian Agent: Peter Ellis Bean in Mexican Texas

Notes

Acknowledgments 1. The three books mentioned are Maurine T. Wilson and Jack Jackson, Philip Nolan and Texas: Expeditions to the Unknown Land, 1791–1801; Jack Jackson, ed., and John Wheat, trans., Texas by Terán: The Diary Kept by General Manuel de Mier y Terán on His 1828 Inspection of Texas; Jack Jackson, ed., and John Wheat, trans., Almonte’s Texas: Juan N. Almonte’s 1834 Inspection, Secret Report & Role in the 1836 Campaign. 2. Bennett Lay, The Lives of Ellis P. Bean. It is hereafter cited as Lay, Lives, in an effort to dispense with the given name that Bean used in his early years as opposed to “Peter Ellis ,” which he adopted in the mid-1820s and used while he was an Indian agent in Texas. 3. Bean’s military service record is in the Cancelados section of the Archivo Histórico , Secretaría de la Defensa Nacional (AHSDN), Mexico City, with the number C46. XI/111/4-701, under the name Pedro Elías Bean, Colonel of Cavalry. Starting in chapter 3 it is given as “Bean MSR” by folio number of the document cited therein. These records are in bound books. 4. I should here note the recently published two-volume reference work that Galen D. Greaser has compiled and written for the Texas General Land Office (TGLO): Catalogue of the Spanish Collection of the Texas General Land Office. Part 1 is subtitledTitles, Unfinished Titles, Character Certificates, Applications for Admission, Registers & Field Notes; Part 2: Correspondence, Empresario Contracts, Decrees, Appointments, Reports, Notices & Proceedings . This monumental work will serve researchers at the TGLO greatly for generations to come. 5. See Ron Tyler et al., eds., The New Handbook of Texas (hereafter NHOT), 4:924, for a brief entry on the Nacogdoches Archives collection (hereafter NA Transcripts). I used the set at the Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin (hereafter CAH), but the Archives Division of the Texas State Library (hereafter TSL) has a set, as well as the original documents. For microfilm of the originals, one must walk down the hall and use the machines in Genealogy. Of the Buquor/Debray Translations at TSL, I mostly used the “2d series” translated in 1856 by X. B. Debray; he called them “Historical Documents found in the Archives of Bexar County.” They consist of forty-four packets , written on legal-sized, ruled paper in a very legible hand, filed in box 2004/046. A chronological guide to the collection is available. 6. Tyler et al., NHOT, 1:579–80, has an entry on Robert Bruce Blake and how he assembled the ninety-three volumes of this “research collection,” seventy-five volumes of Notes which are bound in red and eighteen as a “supplement” series in green. They are hereafter cited as Blake Transcripts (R) and (G). At the beginning of each volume is a description of Blake’s tremendous contribution to students of Texas history written by Jesse J. Lee of Houston. See also the Blake (Robert Bruce) Papers at CAH. 7. James L. Haley, Sam Houston; Thomas Ricks Lindley, Alamo Traces: New Evidence and New Conclusions. Lindley also shared with me numerous documents about Bean found during the course of his own research, and a few concerning Houston. How the relationship between Bean and Houston changed after 1835 is important to my book and is traced as fully as the documentation permits. Chapter 1 1. Bean family Bible entries, Blake Transcripts (R), 52:225, 262. 2. Internet post: http://www.larkcom.com/ancestry/bean (see p. 4 of 12). Also at www.larkcom.net/org/ancestry/bean/history.htm (copyright 1999 by LaRK Communications ). The watercolor of him that I reproduced in my Nolan book is seen on www. larkcom.net without credit to the source for it. 3. Lay, Lives, 4 –7, gives a bit of family history as it was available to him in 1960. For a better and more recent treatment see Martha L. Crabb, Over the Mountain: A Narrative History of the Bean, Selman, and Germany Families, chapter 3, “The Bean Clan.” See also Jamie Ault Grady, William Bean, Pioneer of Tennessee and His Descendants, 30 –31, 35, 38– 41. This is a Bean genealogy by generation; my thanks to Carolyn Reeves Ericson for providing a copy of Grady’s information entered on standard family group sheets. There is also a William Bean Internet post that seems to follow Grady’s work: www.pearland.com. Yet another...