Mary Morton Huff
History of Fort Bend County by Clarence R. Wharton. Mr. Wharton on page page 124 says; George Huff was one of the Three Hundred and his League, as we have seen, was on the Bernard. He died prior to 1850 and his son, W. P. Huff married the daughter of William Morton.
In 1850 Mary Huff, who gave her age as sixty, and and Ellen, fifteen; George, ten; Mary, thirteen; Lucinda, nine; William, five; Martha Ann, one; {all these children born in Texas}, were living together in Richmond, in reduced circumstances. [If these children survived they would be joined by Laura Ann Perry as decedents of the Morton family.]
William P. Huff was then in California. In 1846 the gold rush was on and a party had beem organized from Fort Bend. It included Andrew Jackson Roark, Gilbert R. Brush, Wyly Martin, Jones and others, and Huff, who had never accomplished anything for himself or his family, wanted to try his fortune in California. James Knight was on the point of going, but the approaching marriage of his daughter interfered and he decided to grubsteak Huff. On the 29th of March, 1849 they made a solum contract which they placed of record, in which is was recited that: "Huff being desirous of visiting California and not having the money or means to do so and having a large and helpless family to support during his absence, James Knight has agreed and binds himself and his heirs, administrators and execuors that he will support Huffs's family in a decent manor with provisions and clothing and pay for the schooling of Ellen, Mary Louisa and George, Jr. during the absence of Huff in California. He is to furnish Huff $600 to purchase an outfit for the trip. In return for all these ample considerations Huff agrees that Knight shall have one-half of all the lands, gold and silver that he acquires on his trip to California."
The next year Knight and his colored boy, Bill Moore, went on a trip to california. Wheather he went to check up on Huff we do not know, but we do Huff was soon back in Fort Bend as impecunious as ever. At the close of the war in 1865 he was one of the very few white men in the County who had no war record to prevent his holding office under the Carpet Bag regime, and he was for a long time District Clerk.
[pg128] Nancy Morton, mother of Mary, is listed as sixty nine in 1850. Reasoning tells me Mary is not sixty in 1850 as stated on page 125, or nine years younger than her mother with 15 year old daughter and a one year old child.
By early 1836, the estate of William Morton had been partitioned, and the family was living on the Morton League east of the river. During the Texas Revolution, on February 21, 1836, Mrs Nancy Morton, the widow of William Morton, sold the Morton Labor on the west bank of the Brazos River to Robert Eden Handy and William Lusk. On November 8, 1837, the earliest sales of lots in the City of Richmond were made. The first purchaser was Mrs Mary Huff, a daughter of William and Nancy Morton; her purchase was Lot #12, Block #96 for the purchase price 'unknown' and deed record 'C-64'. She purchased the first lot sold in the City of Richmond on land that once belonged to her dad. Research has not revealed why she selected lot #12 for her home. If she wanted to, she could have watched the river traffic from her front porch. This location was on a high bluff of the river, she did not have to concern herself with flooding. Lot #12 remained in the Huff family until 1876 when the heirs sold it for $65.00 to Poebe Newell "together with the her eitaments and appurtenances". After sixty years the old house must have been in bad shape because Phoebe borrowed $125.00 from Alex Kerr for the purpose of putting up a new dwelling. Phoebe Newell was a former slave and was referred to as a "freed woman of color".
The new dwelling listed above may have been on what became Front Street in Richmond, Texas. Front Street washed into the Brazos River in the flood of 1899.
There was nothing in the early life of William P. Huff to suggest that he was going to be different. There was no hint that he would incur the wrath of his contemporaries by never quite finding his niche. At first blush, he appeared to be a typical young lad from a typical frontier family. A closer look, however, would have revealed an uncommonness lying just below the surface; an uncommonness which would manifest itself during this adult life and puzzle his peers.
William was born in 1811 in Georgia to George and May Pruitt Huff. Sometime after that, the Huff family moved to
In 1824, the elder Huff joined
As he grew to manhood, William sought out the political leaders of
He was an eye witness to the convention of 1835 which named Henry Smith as
the first provisional governor of
When the battle of
In the 1840’s, William married Mary Morton, a daughter of another of the
“Old Three Hundred.” In the latter part of that decade, Huff moved his young
family from San Felipe to
William P. Huff returned from
This, the Gold Rush Diary of William P. Huff became his only legacy, for he
died penniless in 1886 at the home of a daughter, Martha Huff Ewing. When
William was laid to rest in
Not only was 1986 the centenary of the death of William P. Huff, it was also
the sesquicentenary of Texas Independence. Celebrations of this 150th birthday
proliferated. Almost every county had one, and
Stewart retrieved the two old ledger books which his great-great grandfather
has written and he had inherited. Stewart shared the Huff journal with the
A reading of the journal revealed that after Huff and his three companions
left
As Huff waited, he persuaded twelve more Argonauts to join his outfit,
making his company twenty-two men strong. Growing weary of waiting for the
military escort of General Worth, and fearing the cholera epidemic that was
raging in
The company headed out in a northwesterly direction, crossing the Llano, The
san Saba, and the
Together this combined group followed the trail from Cornudas del Alamo
(Thorn’s Well), Cottonwood Springs, Cerro Alto, and into Hueco Tanks. Here the
assembled companies suffered the loss of scores of horses and mules to the
night time stealth of Indians. Huff’s losses were severe. He was left
completely stranded and was forced to hire his wagon hauled to Socorro, a tiny
hamlet on the
After an eight month hiatus in Socorro, Huff resumed his journey on February
28, 1850. This time his company was somewhat larger and included the first and
second provisional governors of
The historical value of Huff’s account is obvious. First it is a southern
trail diary; this fact alone makes it rare. As Patricia A. Etter points out, in
her book, An American Odyssey, hundreds of diaries detailing travel on the
In addition, the Huff journal connects all the important southern trails:
the Upper Emigrant Trail (Major Robert Neighbors’ return route from El Paso del
Norte to San Antonio in 1849), Graham’s route, Cooke’s wagon road, and
Finally, in the Huff journal we find some of the most exciting exploits ever told by a ‘49er. Huff records finding human bones in the desert and reburying them. He told of comrades dying of thirst. Indian attacks and a murder at a fandango in Socorro are likewise recorded. He tells of an Apache prisoner held by the Mexicans in the silver mines of Janos. Indeed, what has surfaced in the Huff diary is perhaps the single most significant overland account ever to come from the southern trails in 1849.
After that 1986 meeting between Stewart and Bill Coate, the
The teachers collaborated on developing lesson plans and brought copies of
the diary into the classroom. The goal was to have young students of history
researching and validating the Huff diary. Hence, a division of labor ensued,
and history classes in
The first step was to turn to the professional historian. Dr. Thomas
Andrews, Executive Director of the Historical Society of Southern California,
provided a beginning bibliography and samples of the literature on the southern
trails. Among the numerous volumes given to the students was The Road to
It was through Dr. Hague that the Huff Historians were led to a work by Patricia
Etter, Manuscripts Librarian at the
Then came the blockbuster! Dr. Hague, who was editing the unpublished
diaries of R. Beeching and David D. Demarest, provided the students with copies
of transcriptions of those works. The comparisons were breathtaking. Beeching
and Demarest traveled with the Persifor F. Smith Company and left
Beginning with their July 8, 1849 entries, Huff, Beeching and Demarest all parallel each other, for the Huff company had caught up with the Persifor F. Smith company on the west side of the Pecos River. Each man recorded the loss of horses and mules at Hueco Tanks, and all recorded the attempt to recover that loss.
In addition, much of the same local news of that area was preserved by Huff,
Beeching and Demarest. For instance, an Indian attack on
Further, the sale of
By mid-June 1987, the students’ work was done and a celebration of this
unprecedented collaboration was planned. Representatives of each participating
class prepared to bring their research results to
On June 19, 1987 the
At the conclusion of the presentation, it was the unanimous verdict of the jury that the students had acquitted themselves admirably. They had established the authenticity of the Huff journal as well as its significance to the historiography of the gold rush. The jury recommended that the diary be published with all deliberate speed.
In the case of the Gold Rush Diary of William P. Huff, “all deliberate speed” was relative. Although the students and teachers had established a firm foundation for the authenticity of the diary, there was more work yet to be done. What about Huff the man? To what extent could his life’s story be documented? To a large extent, the answer to these questions came from Mrs. Deborah Stewart, wife of David Ewing 'Bud' Stewart.
During the 1986-87 school year, while the students in
Mrs. Stewart’s sleuthing was so successful that it became apparent that publishing the diary of 1987 would have been premature. She showed that more historical spadework was possible; therefore, the Huff project was continued into the next year, and the next, and the next. Each archival discovery led to new documents and a postponement of the publication date.
Then in the 1992-93 school year, a new twist in the Huff diary research
presented itself. The genesis for the idea came from Todd Beherns, a high
school teacher in
This it was that in 1992, Bill Coate, who was teaching a 6th grade class at
Coate obtained two wagons from fellow teacher, Ed Gwartney, and David Ewing
Stewart agreed to supply the mules and outriders. On the 2nd of January, the
On their journey, the students carefully compared Huff’s journal with their
own observations. Life Huff, they followed the
Much was learned from this wagon train experience. Reading the Huff diary
and then actually following his wagon ruts allowed tests of authenticity that
went beyond archival research. A time/distance relationship test was performed,
and Huff met the muster every time. Numerous landmarks and their distance from
each other authenticated Huff’s description of them. At the end of the trail,
the
More than a decade passed since that 1993 wagon train trek, and still the
Huff diary had not been published, although Coate’s classes from year to year
continued to work on the 300,000 word document. Finally, in 2002, the decision
was made to bring the Huff diary out of the darkness and into the light; the
In addition to the proclamation,
the student historians will unveil this volume, the first in the Gold Rush
Diary of William P. Huff series. Subsequent volumes will include Huff’s sojourn
in Socorro, his journey across Northern Mexico and
Here is a link to William P. Huff's grave in Houston, Texas.
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=19502776