The Munsons of Texas — an American Saga

Chapter One

A MUNSON OVERVIEW

The Years in Texas

The date was a November day in 1828. The place was a raw, untamed frontier region of the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas. A barge carrying a party of twenty-four persons landed on the south bank of the lazy and very muddy Brazos River about six miles upstream from its mouth on the Gulf of Mexico. It was near a small stream known as Jones Creek, made famous by a fierce battle in 1824 between a band of settlers under the leadership of Randall Jones and a group of Karankawa Indian braves. The present town of Jones Creek got its name from that stream.

Aboard the barge were Henry William Munson (aged 35), his wife, Ann Binum Pearce Munson (aged 28), their two young sons, William Benjamin (aged 4) and Mordello Stephen (aged 3), and twenty slaves. This was the arrival of the Munsons of Texas to the land that would become Brazoria County. They had come to settle on the 554 acres of rich gulf-prairie land that Henry William Munson had recently purchased from Stephen F. Austin for the price of one dollar per American acre [see Inset 1].

Henry and Ann Munson had married in 1817 near Cheneyville, Louisiana, and had resided there until 1824. Three sons were born to them between 1817 and 1822, but each of them died before reaching the age of two. A fourth son, William Benjamin, was born on February 24, 1824, and lived to accompany his parents on their move to the Atascosita District of Mexico (now Liberty County, Texas) later in the same year. Under the liberal land-grant laws of the new Republic of Mexico, they claimed one league (4,428 acres) of free land on the west bank of the Trinity River near the present town of Liberty. Here, on April 25, 1825, Stephen Mordella Munson (later known as Mordello Stephen) was born, reportedly the first white child to be born at the nearby Coushatta Indian village on the Trinity.

Spring floods, disease, and lack of progress in obtaining title to their land from inactive Mexican authorities convinced the Munsons to look for a better home. Henry William Munson had become acquainted with Stephen F. Austin and some of his colonists, and he had been urged to join them. In 1828 he purchased land from Austin, and the family abandoned their home of four years to join the Austin Colony. The family departed with three children, but the only daughter they were to have, Amanda Caroline, aged one, died en route and was buried at sea.

Their barge trip took them down the Trinity River to its mouth, along the nearby bays and inlets, out into the Gulf of Mexico to the mouth of the Brazos River, and up the Brazos to a landing near Jones Creek. Their new land was about one mile southwest of the Brazos River near an area that abounded in wild peach trees and to this day is known as Peach Point. They named their new home Oakland Plantation, and it developed into one of the most prosperous cotton, cattle, and sugar plantations in the new territory.

At Oakland Plantation they had two additional sons: Gerard Brandon born in 1829, and George Poindexter born in 1832. These sons were named for two men who between them had been lawyers, governors, senators, plantation owners, and leaders in early Mississippi; and were probably admired acquaintances of Henry William Munson in earlier years. This is one of the several indications of Henry William’s appreciation of higher education and the professions. Henry William spoke of this appreciation on his deathbed—"Educate my children" were his last words—and the tradition has survived through many later generations.

With Henry William Munson’s untimely death from yellow fever or cholera in 1833, at the age of 40, his widow was left with Oakland Plantation, several dozen slaves, and four small sons: William Benjamin (aged 9), Mordello Stephen (aged 8), Gerard Brandon (aged 4), and George Poindexter (aged 1). About eighteen months later she married the 42-year-old widower, Major James P. Caldwell. James Caldwell had been a friend of Henry William Munson; they had fought together in the Battle of Velasco in 1832, and when Caldwell was injured there, Munson took him home and Ann Munson nursed him back to health.

After the marriage, James Caldwell became a "father" to the four Munson boys, and James and Ann had two additional children: Robert Milam and Mary Jane Caldwell. Because these Munson and Caldwell children were raised together and remained as family and friends for life, the Munsons and the Caldwells long considered themselves to be one family. An illustration of the admiration they felt for each other is that in later years the Munson families often named sons Caldwell and Milam, and the Caldwell families named daughters Mordella and Sarah (for Mordello’s wife). Mary Jane Caldwell died at the age of 16. Robert Milam grew to adulthood and married Mary Elizabeth House, and they raised six children. From these came the Caldwell branch of the family. (See Chart 1.)

Of Henry William and Ann’s four sons, William Benjamin left no children, and Gerard Brandon, who had four children, had but two granddaughters, whose families have strayed from the Munson fold.

George Poindexter left a son, George II, and two daughters, Maud and Sarah. At this point a most unusual occurrence took place—George Poindexter Munson’s two daughters married two sons of his half-brother, Robert Milam Caldwell. The sons were Thomas William Caldwell and Robert Milam Caldwell II. Each husband and wife pair were half-first cousins and all had Ann Munson Caldwell as a grandmother. Among them they raised ten children, each of whom had Ann Munson Caldwell as a great-grandmother through both parents. This produced the Caldwell-Munson branch of the Munsons of Texas.

George Poindexter Munson’s only son was George P. Munson II. He married Louise Underwood, and their seven children created the George P. branch of the Munsons of Texas.

Mordello Stephen Munson married Sarah Kimbrough Armour in 1850, and they lived all of their lives at Ridgely Plantation at Bailey’s Prairie. On the plantation they raised six sons and two daughters, as well as seven nieces and nephews from deceased brothers Gerard and George—fifteen in all. All of their own children grew to adulthood, married, and had a total of thirty-six "grand-children." These families account for the large Mordello Stephen branch of the Munsons of Texas.

Thus the Munsons of Texas today encompass four different branches: the Mordello Stephen branch, the George P. branch, the Munson–Caldwell branch, and the Caldwell branch (See Chart 1.) Each year, on the second Saturday of June, nearly two hundred descendants of these families gather under the giant live oak trees of Ridgely Plantation at Bailey’s Prairie, Texas, to celebrate the Annual Munson Family Reunion.


The Munson's Earlier Origins

Henry William Munson’s father was Jesse Munson. Little is known of Jesse and his forebears. The first known date for Jesse Munson is October 2, 1787. This is the date of a Spanish land grant awarded to Jesse Munson by the Spanish Government of the Natchez District of New Spain for 500 arpents of land in the District of Feliciana (now West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana). Jesse's grant was for Section 75 "located in the District of Feliciana upon the tributaries of Bayou Feliciana just below the District of Natchez" [1]. His brother, Robert, was granted the adjacent Section 76, which contained 1,000 arpents. These grants appear as the original surveys on the parish maps at the courthouse in St. Francisville, Louisiana. Today the land, easily identifiable, is attractive rolling cattle country just two miles south of the Mississippi border and about midway between St. Francisville, Louisiana, and Woodville, Mississippi. The village of Laurel Hill, Louisiana, is situated on Jesse Munson’s original grant.

The next known date involving Jesse Munson was the birth of his son, Micajah, in South Carolina in 1788 or 1789. Evidence indicates that Jesse and his brother Robert (and other relatives) lived in South Carolina for some years and probably came there from North Carolina and Virginia. Family records relate that in about 1790 they migrated from South Carolina to Kentucky for a brief stay, and in the spring of 1792 they were in Holston, Virginia, near the Cumberland Gap. There, under the leadership of Colonel Henry Hunter, they built flatboats and floated down the Holston, Tennessee, Ohio, and Mississippi Rivers, arriving at the frontier settlement of Natchez-Under-the-Hill in the Natchez District of New Spain on April 17, 1792. This was the most common route for a large migration of emigrants from South Carolina to the Natchez District after the American Revolution.

The 1792 Spanish census of the Natchez District [2] lists "Jesse Monson" and "Roberto Monson" as residents of Villa Gayoso. Villa Gayoso, the second largest town of the District, was situated on a high bluff overlooking the Mississippi River some ten miles north of Natchez. Jesse’s second son, Henry William, was probably born there, in January of 1793. Evidence suggests that sometime thereafter the Munson brothers, together with their leader Henry Hunter, moved with their three families to the Munson land grants in the remote and unsettled District of Feliciana, about seventy miles to the south. There are numerous court records in the archives section of the Wilkinson County Courthouse in Woodville, Mississippi, pertaining to Jesse and Robert Munson. These date from about 1800 until their deaths in 1815 or 1816, and include probate proceedings.

Jesse Munson had three sons: Micajah, Henry William, and Jesse P The 1826 census of the Atascosita District of Mexico (now Liberty County, Texas, and surrounding counties), signed by three men including Henry William Munson, listed Micajah Munson as having been born in South Carolina in 1788 or 1789 and Henry William in Mississippi in l793. Jesse P., a half-brother, was born in Mississippi or Louisiana in 1800. The names of Jesse’s wives are not known.

In summary, available data relate that Jesse Munson received a land grant in the Natchez District of New Spain in 1787, that a son was born to him in South Carolina in 1788 or 1789, that he was not listed in the 1790 U. S. census for South Carolina (nor elsewhere so far as is known), that he arrived in the Natchez District by flatboat in April of 1792, and that a son was born to him in what is now Mississippi in January of 1793. A statement most surely written years later by Mordello Stephen Munson and contained under the heading "Lost Tribes" in Volume II of The Munson Record states: "At an early day, Jesse Munson removed from South Carolina or Virginia to Kentucky, and again removed to Mississippi" [3].



Recently discovered records indicate that a Robert Munson, thought to probably be "our" Robert Munson, lived in South Carolina in the 1770s and 1780s. He appears to have come there from Virginia by way of North Carolina with his associate, Henry Hunter. This Robert Munson applied for a grant of 200 acres of land in the Camden District of South Carolina (today’s Fairfield County) in 1769, but no record of his ownership of land there has been found. Henry Hunter owned numerous large acreages of land in that district. He also owned numerous slaves and was a community leader, so it seems possible that Robert Munson and his brother, Jesse, may have lived as employees of Henry Hunter on his land. As previously reported, Jesse Munson’s oldest known child, Micajah, was born in South Carolina in 1788 or 1789. It is therefore thought that Jesse and Robert Munson, with their wives and children, lived in this South Carolina area in the 1770s and 1780s.

There is also a tantalizing sprinkling of minor records referring to other Munsons in South Carolina, Kentucky, and the Mississippi-Louisiana area, but very few in Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia, during this and later periods [4]. This leads one to believe that there probably were other members of our Munson family in South Carolina, in Kentucky, and in Louisiana and Mississippi between l785 and l820, but proof of relationships is lacking.



Even though genealogical research has failed to identify the ancestors of Jesse and Robert Munson, it is interesting to postulate theories on their earlier origins. Long consideration brings two leading theories to mind. One is that they or their parents were recent immigrants from England to one of the popular ports in Virginia (or to Charleston or Savannah). The other, and in past years the more accepted, is that they were descended from an unaccounted-for member of one of the two earlier Munson families of New England— a "lost tribe." Following this latter theory, one or several young Munson men would have migrated south from New England in the early to mid-1700s. One group would have spent time in Virginia and North and South Carolina while another group settled in Kentucky. One member, a William Munson, apparently explored the Spanish territory of Natchez in about 1785, and Jesse, Robert, and several other Munsons migrated to that area between 1792 and 1800.

Two books describe these early Munsons of New England (the family name is often interchangeably spelled Munson, Monson, or Manson. The Munson Record, previously mentioned, describes the descendants of a Captain Thomas Munson, first recorded in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1637. Myron Munson, the author, reasons that this Thomas Munson was a recent arrival from England, most probably from Lincolnshire, where many Monsons had resided for centuries. The Munson Record details the descendants of this Thomas Munson through nine generations, with most of the early generations living in Connecticut. There are, however, a few members of some family groups whose lives and whereabouts are not fully accounted for. Further, in reconstructing the history of such an extensive family group over so many generations, there might always have been some roving members who were overlooked. It is entirely possible that one or several of these Munsons migrated south in the early 1700s and gradually adopted the ways of the southern agricultural society. Such immigrants could conveniently account for the origins of the Munsons of Texas and of Louisiana.

In 1887 in New Haven, Connecticut, hundreds of descendants of Captain Thomas Munson held a 250th anniversary reunion of his first recorded date in America. At some later date they organized the very active Thomas Munson Foundation. In August of 1987 at Yale University in New Haven, members of the Thomas Munson Foundation held a massive reunion in celebration of the 350th anniversary. The size of the gathering is indicated by the fact that the organizers reserved 1,000 rooms for the first to place deposits for them, while all others had to arrange their own accommodations!

Similarly, in a small book entitled Monson, Munson, Manson published in 1910, Myron Munson further describes a smaller family of Munsons who originated from a Richard Monson first located in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1663. It appears quite clear that this Richard Monson was not a descendant of Captain Thomas Munson. This Richard Monson was most surely a separate immigrant from the Monson clan of Old England. The descendants of this Richard Monson are less numerous and more fully accounted for in Maine and New Hampshire, so the possibility of a descendant migrating to the South and becoming the sire of the Munsons of Texas and of Louisiana appears to be unlikely.

Thus it has been assumed in the past, but never confirmed, that the Munsons of Texas and of Louisiana are most likely direct descendants of the Thomas Munson family of New England. In any case they are most surely direct descendants of the Monsons of England as described in more detail in the next chapter.

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