The Munsons of Texas — an American Saga

Chapter Seven

THE EARLY YEARS OF HENRY WILLIAM MUNSON — 1793-1817

SUMMARY
Henry William Munson was born in the Natchez District of New Spain, now southwestern Mississippi, in 1793. He spent his early years in Spanish territory and probably later in the Mississippi Territory of the United States, always in the border area of today's Mississippi and Louisiana. In 1810, at the age of 17, he may have been present with members of his family and friends in the West Florida Revolt against Spanish rule. In 1813, at the age of 20, he participated against the Royal Army of Spain in the Battle of Medina near San Antonio, was injured, and escaped back to Louisiana with the aid of a revolutionary Spanish officer named Mordella. In 1817, at the age of 24, he married Ann Binum Pearce in Louisiana.


Henry William Munson, the second known child of Jesse Munson, was born in the Natchez District of New Spain, probably at or near the village of Villa Gayoso, on January 15, 1793. His older brother, Micajah, had been born in South Carolina in 1788 or 1789. His younger half-brother, Jesse P. Munson, was born in 1800.

It is not known for whom Henry William Munson was named. Early sons were often named for a father, an uncle, or a grandfather, and early records show several William Munsons (see Inset 10). It is interesting to note that Henry William Munson named his first four sons Samuel, Henry, Robert, and William; and his first cousin, Telfair, the son of Robert Munson, named his first three sons Robert, William, and Henry. This lends some support to the thought that the William Munson recorded in the Natchez District in 1785 may have been the father or a brother of Jesse and Robert, and in any event there must have been a William and a Henry somewhere in the family's recent past. Recent research suggests the possibility that Henry William Munson may have also been named for Henry Hunter, the leader of the Munson migration from South Carolina to the Natchez District just nine months before the birth of Henry William Munson.

While there are no definite records of the location of his home or the extent of his education at any time during his youth, it has long been assumed that Henry William Munson spent his early years on the family farm near Bayou Sara in what is now West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana. His mother must have died before 1799, and he apparently had a stepmother for some time thereafter. There are no known records of Jesse's marriages or wives. Jesse appears to have been poor and unsuccessful for all of these years, and he sold his 561-acre land grant in 1801 for a price of one peso per acre. Henry William would have been eight years old at that time. Wherever they lived thereafter, Henry William received good schooling, for in later years he appeared to have had a good elementary education in reading, writing, and arithmetic [see Chapter 5].

Family tradition relates that Henry William Munson was a boyhood friend of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America from 1861 until 1865. Jefferson Davis was born in Kentucky in 1808, and while he was still a baby his family moved to a small plantation in Wilkinson County, Mississippi Territory. He was a graduate of West Point in 1828, a participant in the Mexican War of 1846-48, United States Secretary of War from 1853 to 1857, and an influential United States Senator from Mississippi prior to the secession of the Confederate States. His boyhood home near Woodville is now an historic showplace open to visitors. Since he was about fifteen years younger than Henry William Munson, it is not possible that they were true boyhood friends. More likely, their families may have been neighborhood friends, and family tradition twisted this into "boyhood friends".

Henry William Munson lived his entire life on the Spanish-American and Mexican-American frontier, and the entire twenty years of his adult life were involved in the convulsive political evolution of this area. His earliest years were spent in an area under Spanish administration, and as his father had done before him, he chose to move to Spanish (by then Mexican) territory soon after his homeland became a state in the United States. He spent the remainder of his life as a resident of Mexican territory.

His first taste of Anglo revolt against Spanish rule came at the age of 17, at the time of the West Florida Revolt of 1810. Close members of his family, and possibly he himself, were involved in this rebellion, and it occurred within a few miles of his probable home [See Chapter 6].

In 1813, at the age of 20, he was again involved in revolution against Spanish rule in the famous Battle of Medina. This battle was the termination of the Magee-Gutierrez Expedition, the first major effort to free Texas from Spanish control. This expedition has been described as "the first Anglo-American thrust by arms into the Spanish border lands, a quest that once launched would not end until their manifest destiny had planted their flag on the shores of the Pacific" [1]. Family tradition relates that Henry William Munson participated in the Battle of Medina, was injured, and escaped when a Spanish officer named Mordella saved his life. In fond memory and appreciation of this lifesaving act, Henry William Munson named his fifth son Mordella (later changed to Mordello ), and that name has remained one of the most popular and often-used names for both boys and girls in the Munson and the Caldwell families. No less than seven Munsons, four Caldwells, and at least five descendants of other admiring relatives and friends have borne that name.

The Magee-Gutierrez Expedition of 1812-1813 [2]

The Magee-Gutierrez Expedition is an example of the numerous and almost continuous wild and bizarre military and political events that occurred during the years of the westward expansion of the United States.

The most northeasterly Spanish Province of Tejas, though inhabited by settlers of Spanish descent for over a century, was nonetheless thinly populated and far from the sites of authority. Spanish rule was distant and loyalties were fragile. In 1806 a treaty was made between Spanish General Simon de Herrera and U. S. General James Wilkinson attempting to resolve the border dispute between the newly acquired Louisiana Territory and Spanish Texas. Unable to reach agreement on a border, they declared the territory between the Sabine River and tiny Arroyo Hondo, near Natchitoches, to be neutral ground with no governmental authority.

On September 16, 1810, at the Mission of Dolores in the State of Chihuahua, Father Miguel Hidalgo challenged his local subjects and the people of Mexico to assert independence from their Spanish rulers. The initial revolution that he led spread over Mexico, including the short-lived Casas revolt in San Antonio de Bexar in the Province of Tejas, but it soon collapsed. Hidalgo was captured by the forces of Ygnacio Elizondo and sent to Chihuahua for execution, but this September 16 is still celebrated today as Mexican Independence Day. Many of the revolutionaries fled to safety in the Neutral Ground or across the border into Louisiana. By 1812 the Neutral Ground had acquired a population including many thieves and desperados. It was necessary for traders and mule trains passing through this territory to travel with a guard, and U. S. General Overton kept a force at Natchitoches for this purpose.

Also in Natchitoches in the spring of 1812 was William Shaler, a special United States agent, but more apparently a personal representative of U. S. Secretary of State James Monroe. Since l8l0 he had served in Cuba, where he had acquired the acquaintance and admiration of the Cuban-Spanish revolutionary leader Jose Alvarez de Toledo. In 1812 Shaler had been instructed by Monroe to proceed from Havana to Mexico to obtain information concerning the various revolutionary efforts there. Unable to enter Mexico through the port of Vera Cruz, he proceeded to New Orleans and Natchitoches, from where he planned to enter Mexico. In New Orleans, and later in Natchitoches, Shaler met Jose Bernardo Gutierrez de Lara, a Mexican of Spanish descent, a native of Revilla on the Rio Grande, and an ardent Mexican revolutionary. Gutierrez had been active in the abortive Mexican revolutionary efforts of 1810 and had fled to Louisiana for safety.

Jose Gutierrez had traveled to Washington and Philadelphia and met with the highest U. S. officials, including Secretary of State James Monroe and President James Madison, to discuss Mexican independence from Spain. There he had met and consulted extensively with Jose Toledo. He had marveled at the U. S. sights, the large booming towns and factories, the diligent and loyal workers, and the good fortune they enjoyed. His conclusion was that good government by good people produced these wonders, and his spirit burned to bring this to his countrymen in Mexico.

Evidence indicates that European intrigue in America was still alive and that Britain and France also had an interest in these outlying Mexican territories. This only added to the desire of some parties in the United States to acquire the territory of Texas. In Natchitoches, in the Spring of 1812, Gutierrez and Shaler were quietly at the heart of the frenzy of rumors anticipating an invasion of Texas. They were awaiting only the anticipated declaration of war between the United States and Britain as the excuse for their invasion.

Thereupon entered the needed leader, 24-year-old Augustus William Magee. Just out of West Point where he had graduated third in his class, he had served under General James Wilkinson, who considered him a young man of promise. In 1811 Wilkinson had requested the Secretary of War to promote Magee to the rank of first lieutenant, but the promotion was not awarded. This was a stab at Magee's youthful ambition and pride from which he never recovered. In the first months of 1812, Magee was with Overton's forces at Natchitoches engaged in clearing the Neutral Ground of bandits. Here Magee came in contact with the westward-gazing adventurers, listened to the fabulous descriptions of Texas, and acquired a knowledge of the distracted conditions in Mexico. On June 22, 1812, he resigned his position in the United States Army because he felt "dissatisfied with the service and personally slighted."

Magee immediately became the organizing leader of the revolutionary army, visiting New Orleans to acquire needed supplies, and attracting young men from Louisiana and Mississippi to the cause, while Gutierrez was the nominal leader to attract the support of the exiled Mexicans. The stated goal of the expedition was to free Mexico from the yoke of Spain, but the different participating leaders may have had differing goals. Each volunteer was promised forty dollars a month and a league of land to be assigned in the future Mexican Republic. It was not an army of only rough-shod adventurers — there were three Virginians of respectable standing, Reuben Ross, Henry Perry, and a Mr. Lockett; Joseph Carr of Mississippi; and Samuel Kemper of Louisiana. Samuel Kemper, a resident of West Florida since 1801, had figured in the West Florida Revolt in 1810 and was very possibly an acquaintance of the Munsons.

There can be little doubt that Henry William Munson was aware of these events and was a friend or an acquaintance of many of the volunteers. It is not known at what point he joined the expedition. Munson family tradition does not tell of his having been a member of the Expedition, but only of his participation in the Battle of Medina and his escape from the resulting massacre. It is possible that he succumbed to the early frenzy and joined the expedition at its inception, or that he was a member of one of the many groups of reinforcements that joined the expedition during the following twelve months. However, as will be discussed later, it appears most likely that he joined the expedition in its last month, with the fateful arrival of Colonel Henry Bullard and Commanding General Toledo.

In June of 1812 the U. S. Congress declared war with Great Britain, and in August, with Gutierrez in nominal charge but Magee in actual control, the army of conquest easily took undisputed possession of Nacogdoches. They remained until September, when, with about 400 men — Americans, Mexicans, and Indians — they departed for Bexar. Receiving word that the Spanish forces were preparing an ambush, they turned south to La Bahia (Goliad). Arriving there on November 7 and finding the fort vacated, the invaders hoisted a green flag, the first flag of Texas independence.

Several days later they found themselves surrounded by Spanish troops under the command of Generals Manuel Maria de Salcedo and Simon de Herrera. Supposing that Magee would take the old Bexar road from Nacogdoches, the Spanish troops had left La Bahia intending to intercept the invaders at San Marcos. Discovering their miscalculations, they had returned to La Bahia. On November 23 a severe engagement occurred with the Spanish troops retreating after suffering heavy losses.

The Spanish forces then decided to starve the garrison into submission, surrounding the place and maintaining a state of siege. Magee's men found an abundance of corn in the fort, and as beeves were plentiful in the surrounding country and could be brought in by night, they could have held out for a long time. During this time the health of Magee rapidly declined and he died in early February of l813. It is reported that he suffered from tuberculosis. Colonel Samuel Kemper then took command with Gutierrez de Lara still the nominal Mexican leader.

At daybreak on February 10, 1813, a fierce general engagement occurred. Three times the Spanish forces approached the fort and were repulsed. Finally being driven to the opposite side of the river, they raised the siege and retreated to Bexar. Major Reuben Ross soon returned from an expedition to Louisiana with a party of twenty-five Americans and thirty Coushatta Indians. Thus victorious and reinforced, Kemper set out to pursue the enemy to Bexar with about 600 men.

General Herrera took a position below the Salado River on the road from Bexar to La Bahia. Herrera had received reinforcements and had about 1,200 men in this battle, known as the Battle of Rosillo (also the first Battle of Salado.) The American leaders planned for a simultaneous attack, but the Indians, not understanding the arrangements, charged too soon. They suffered severely in the hand-to-hand fighting, but in their desperation they killed a great number of the enemy, including officers. The Americans and Mexicans then entered the battle and in twenty minutes the enemy was routed. The Spanish lost heavily in dead, injured, and prisoners, as well as arms, ammunition, artillery, baggage, horses, and mules.

With the Royal Spanish Army having retreated to Bexar, the rebels proceeded on April 1, 1813, to contest the town. Anti-Spanish propaganda distributed in the town by agents of Gutierrez, Shaler, and the American press, plus the successes and promises of the invading army, had left many inhabitants in a state of uncertain loyalties. Throughout this period of history, the Texas natives of Spanish descent (called Tejanos by Schwarz) appear to have had vacillating loyalties.

On April 4 Manuel de Salcedo sent a flag of truce and requested a parley. Colonel Samuel Kemper refused all terms except the surrender of the army and the delivery of the city into his possession. These terms were finally accepted, and the Americans marched into the city as the Royalists marched out, leaving their arms stacked. The red and gold flag of Spain was hauled down and replaced by the green flag of Texas. Every vestige of Spanish power, for the moment, had been removed from the Province of Texas.

Gutierrez de Lara, having achieved his dream, just as quickly destroyed it. On April 3, 1813 (some say April 4), there occurred an atrocious butchery of fourteen Spanish officers, including Salcedo, Herrera, and Manuel Antonio Cordero by order of Gutierrez de Lara. They were delivered up to Juan Antonio Delgado and taken to the battleground of Salado where their throats were cut and their bodies left on the prairie.

On April 6, 1813, a declaration of independence was issued, and the province was given the name of the State of Texas. Local Tejanos from the leading families of Delgado, Arocha, and Leal had joined with Gutierrez to form the leadership group. The declaration provided for the formation of a provisional government. Gutierrez was named president of the government, and was empowered to appoint a ruling junta of seven, which was invested with the power to write a constitution and to form a government. Local leader Tomas de Arocha was named president of the ruling junta. The only two non-Mexican members were the Frenchman Massicott and the American Hale. Kemper and the other leading Americans were excluded.

The task of writing a constitution faced Gutierrez and the junta, but untrained in democratic statecraft, they could not cross the frontier of freedom. The dictatorial and corrupt political system of the Spanish regime, after some remodeling, became the political machine of the Mexican State of Texas.

Gutierrez did, however, fulfill one of his promises. Within the month American volunteers were notified that each was to receive a grant of one league of land (4,428 acres) for each six months of service. A land office was opened in which volunteers filed their claims. Titles to land grants made to these men can be found in the archives of the Texas State Library in Austin. There is no record of such a grant to Henry William Munson.

Shocked by Spanish brutality and excluded from the ruling junta, a number of American officers, including the able Samuel Kemper, soon left the endeavor and returned to Louisiana. In Nachitoches, Kemper made his personal report to William Shaler, while his place as leader of the Americans in Bexar was taken first by Colonel Reuben Ross and then by Major Henry Perry.

On June 18, 1813, Spanish Lt. Col. Ygnacio Elizondo, with about a thousand troops, appeared on Alazan Creek, a mile west of Bexar. He had marched from the State of Chihuahua in the west on orders from his superior, General Joaquin de Arredondo, to await Arredondo's arrival at Bexar, but not to engage in battle. Unable to resist the urge to be a hero, he sent a demand to the leaders in Bexar to surrender. Perry returned a blunt refusal, and during the night he moved his men out to such close proximity to the Spaniards that, at dawn on the twentieth, while they were engaged in their morning devotions, he burst upon them with complete surprise.

The contest lasted for about four hours, when in much disorder the Spaniards fled from the field with Elizondo barely escaping capture. His loss was estimated at 350 men killed, 130 taken prisoner, and an enormous amount of munitions and stores abandoned. Perry, incredible as it may seem, lost, by one report, only twenty killed and forty-four wounded [3]. This result was partly due to the unity of leadership and the spirit of the rebels, and also to the superiority of the American rifles to the muskets then in use by the Spanish troops. This is known as the Battle of Alazan. The blundering Elizondo lost no time in recrossing the Nueces River and retreating to the Rio Grande; his withdrawal again left not an armed Royalist in Texas.

It is ironic that in the face of such an overwhelming victory, multiple disasters were brewing. There is no doubt that Kemper's reports to Shaler did not bear well for Gutierrez. Shaler apparently decided that Gutierrez was not the man to govern the State of Texas and to lead the movement for the eventual total conquest of Mexico For these endeavors he selected his old friend, Jose Alvarez de Toledo, who was then, less than accidentally, residing in Nachitoches.

Shaler sent 24-year-old Colonel Henry Adams Bullard to Bexar as his special representative. His purpose was to effect the replacement of Gutierrez by Toledo. Bullard was accompanied by Colonel Samuel Kemper, by James Biddle Wilkinson, the son of General James Wilkinson, and some six or seven other Americans [4]. Twenty-year-old Henry William Munson was very possibly one of these men. Several of these men had grown up in the Natchez District together and may have been together at the West Florida Revolt. Colonel Bullard did arrive in Bexar in June of l813, was appointed Secretary of State of the State of Texas by Gutierrez, and from that position maneuvered to have Gutierrez removed from office and replaced by Toledo.

General Toledo arrived in Bexar on August l, l813, and the junta was immediately assembled to invest him with leadership. Gutierrez and his followers begged to be allowed to remain in command until after the impending conflict with the Royalists, as it was then known that Generals Arredondo and Elizondo were on the march toward Bexar with several thousand soldiers. Gutierrez argued that such a major change at such a critical time would be disastrous — and he was correct. The junta was paralyzed in its indecision. On the third day the army demanded a decision. Gutierrez was removed from command and exiled to the United States. On August 4 Toledo took command. On the night of August 6, when few could view the tragedy of lost dreams, Jose Bernardo Gutierrez de Lara moved slowly out of the city with his family.

The Mexicans' hero was gone. In his place was a foreigner, a Spaniard, and a stranger to all. Achievements of three years of Gutierrez's heroic efforts were to be annihilated in fourteen days of animosity and confusion. The Mexican troops in Bexar were disconsolate. The leader of this disaffection was Miguel Menchaca, a hero of Alazan but a bitter enemy of Toledo. Toledo's strategy was to reorganize the army into two distinct divisions, the Tejanos and Mexicans with their Indian allies under Menchaca and Miguel Musquiz, and the Americans under Perry and Kemper. Various reports indicate that he had about 300 or 400 American volunteers, 800 to 900 Mexicans and Tejanos, and about 100 Indians. Toledo tried, but unity was missing and time was short.

The Battle of Medina - August 18, 1813 [5]


The Battle of Medina is the bloodiest ever fought
on Texas soil. More men died for Texas than at
the Alamo, Goliad & San Jacinto combined.

The numerous early reports of the Battle of Medina were written over a period of half-a-century by participants and from hearsay. All are incomplete, some appear to be biased, and most contain numerous contradictions. These stories were repeated in history books for over a century to build an incomplete and inaccurate story of the battle. Ted Schwarz spent much of his lifetime researching the facts, and his resulting manuscript was edited and published posthumously by his colleague, Robert H. Thonhoff, in 1985. This book is the newest and best source of information on this battle, but dates and events will vary in every version.

Before Schwarz's book appeared in 1985, the often-told story of the Battle of Medina was a thrilling, if chilling, episode. Generally accurate in many respects, it was told as follows. Receiving word of the advancing enemy, Arredondo took a position in an oak grove about ten miles west of the Medina River and about thirty miles from Bexar. There he threw up breastworks in the form of a V with the open space toward Bexar. Elizondo was sent to meet the Americans, to engage them in battle, to feign a retreat, and to lure them into the ambush. The plan worked perfectly.

It was a hot August day and the sun beat down mercilessly. After crossing the Medina, the rebels encountered Elizondo's advanced men. The Americans rushed to the attack, with the Mexicans reluctantly following. After a brief encounter, Elizondo gave ground and retreated in good order, until, such was the fierceness of the pursuit, his men turned and fled pell-mell into the lines of the ambush.

Toledo, discovering the intended ambush and seeing that the Americans were entering it, ordered a retreat. Confusion followed. The left wing obeyed, but Kemper, Perry, and Menchaca swore there should be no retreat and were soon reeling under a destructive fire from front, right, and left. During the battle Menchaca was killed and the Mexicans fell into disorderly retreat, but the Americans and Indians did not flinch. The battle lasted for several hours. The Americans, on the verge of success, suddenly broke and fled. They were beaten by heat, fatigue, and the sight of a thousand comrades dead.

Another version reports that Arredondo's cavalry was at the point of retreat when Musquiz, in a sudden change of allegiance, deserted from Toledo's ranks and carried his Mexican company over to the enemy. He reported that the Americans had been abandoned by their Mexican allies and were fainting from heat, thirst, and fatigue. Arredondo accordingly made a last furious assault upon the Americans, who were checked, thrown into confusion, and compelled to yield.



Schwarz's extensive research confirms and expands much of this account, but it also corrects important parts of it, and throws a very different light on the happenings during the crucial battle. It shows Toledo to have been an able general, but lacking the necessary discipline and unity among his officers and men.

Schwarz reports that after Toledo took command on August 4, 1813, he attempted to lead his army out of Bexar to meet the approaching Spanish army on August 5, but several groups refused to follow, and Toledo returned to the city. Unity was never achieved, but because of the impending threat to all, the entire army left Bexar on August 15, with about 1,200 to 1,400 men. Best estimates place the Spanish forces at around 2,000, but accounts vary enormously.

The rebel army left Bexar on August 15 in the hottest weather imaginable, crossed the Medina riverbed on the next day, and camped for two nights at a good watering spot a few miles beyond the Medina. A water supply for men and animals was essential. Through continuous, detailed reconnaissance, Toledo's scouts kept close watch on Arredondo's forces. For two days Toledo personally scouted the area and selected a site and a plan for the impending battle. In the early morning of August 18 he moved his troops into battle formation among oak trees situated between two hills on the edge of the deep sandy area known as the encinal de Medina. The two armies were about six miles apart on opposite sides of the encinal. Toledo had full information on the Spanish position, and he felt that his position was unknown to Arredondo. He planned to ambush the advancing Spanish forces in the sandy area on that day

An unforeseen incident and the lack of discipline among Toledo's officers apparently foiled his plan. One lone Spanish horseman, separated from his patrol and innocently riding alone, became aware of the rebel's presence, was fired upon by them, and quickly wheeled his horse and returned to the main army. Arredondo therewith sent Elizondo with a patrol to scout the enemy's position but with instructions not to engage them. As the patrol approached the rebels' ambush position, firing commenced, the Spanish troops retreated, and the confident rebels pursued them into the sandy encinal. As the vigorous pursuit continued, Elizondo received reinforcements, and another engagement occurred with the Spanish again retreating.

Toledo, sensing that his troops had left their water supply, were personally dragging their artillery through the deep sand (their draught animals not having been prepared for the advance), and were abandoning their position of strength, ordered a retreat. His main officers, Menchaca, Perry, and Kemper, remembering their earlier overwhelming successes and flushed with the sense of another victory, refused to obey the order, and the vigorous attack continued. When Elizondo's forces reached Arredondo's main army, the latter had hastily taken up concealed battle positions in an oak grove, and a vicious four-hour battle ensued. Schwarz's findings do not support the story that Arredondo had planned an ambush or that breastworks in the form of a V had existed. It is now thought that this was reported by the defeated Americans on their return to Louisiana as an excuse for their defeat.

Details of the actual battle are incomplete and conflicting, but all agree that casualties were severe. It appears that both sides may have essentially exhausted themselves at about the same time. One source reports the strange sight of the remains of both armies simultaneously preparing to retreat in assumed defeat. When Miguel Menchaca was shot and severely injured (he died later in the day), the Mexicans whom he had led apparently retired from the battle. Another report tells that at the height of the battle, Miguel Musquiz successfully led his men around the flank of the Spanish forces, where he either defected or was captured. He reported to Arredondo that the Americans were exhausted and beaten, whereupon Arredondo, who had reportedly mounted a fresh horse in preparation for his retreat, ordered a new attack which won the day. A 19-year-old junior officer cited for bravery in Arredondo's forces was Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. It is evident from history that in this battle he learned vital lessons that served him well for the rest of his career.

Upon his return to Louisiana, Captain Wilkinson reported that the rebels had silenced all of the Spanish artillery by killing the operators, had occupied the ground which the Spanish had first occupied, and just fifteen minutes more would have given them a complete victory; but that their men — hot, thirsty, exhausted, and having suffered severe casualties — gave up the fight, broke, and ran. Immediately after the battle Arredondo recorded that an estimated 600 enemy lay dead on the field and that his 100 prisoners were then being executed. In a later report he raised the total number of enemy dead to 1,000, and he reported that half of the survivors of the battle were captured and killed during their retreat toward Bexar.

All of the known American leaders escaped back to Louisiana. It is reported that when they saw the retreat begin, they turned their horses and fled in haste. It seems very probable that Henry William Munson was a member of this group. The Munson legend relates that Henry William was injured and that Mordella saved his life. It is not known if this lifesaving act was on the field of battle or during the retreat.

Arredondo had won and Spanish vengeance began. Wounded rebels on the battlefield as well as those who tried to flee were sabered. The first fugitives to arrive at Bexar shouted that all were fleeing before Arredondo. Many local rebel families quickly packed a few belongings and by the late afternoon of August 18 a group of about three hundred persons were fleeing toward Nacogdoches and Louisiana. Toledo, Bullard, Perry, Kemper, Wilkinson, and Henry William Munson were somewhere among them. Another survivor of interest was William Orr, who appears again later in the Munson story.

On their arrival, Arredondo and Elizondo paraded victoriously in the streets of Bexar. Elizondo, with 500 cavalrymen, was ordered to pursue the fugitives, to sweep all of Texas free of rebels, and to seize Nacogdoches. In Bexar and La Bahia hundreds of Tejano and Mexican rebel families were imprisoned — the men were shot and the women put to hard labor. It was reported that on September 3, 1813, 327 insurgents were executed in Bexar. For fifty-four days the retribution continued.

Meanwhile, Elizondo was sweeping eastward. Reports of the events on his campaign vary greatly, and many may be embellished. Some examples are repeated here. Every day Elizondo overtook and captured some fleeing rebels. Tejanos and Mexicans were shot or held prisoner — Americans, by strange agreement, were released to return to Louisiana. A reason given was the desire to create good relations with the American government. It seems possible that the American party may have been overtaken and that Mordella may have negotiated their release.

Near the Trinity River, Elizondo captured a band of Republican families including the prominent Bexar names of Delgado, Arocha, and Leal. Juan Antonio Delgado, who had been responsible for the execution of Salcedo and Herrera, was shot instantly and left on the prairie. The most prominent rebels, including Tomas de Arocha, who had been chairman of the Bexar junta, were bound and marched before Elizondo. Elizondo condemned the men to death whereupon they were led before their weeping families, shot, and denied a burial. One report relates that near the Trinity he overtook and captured a group of rebels and marched them to a grove. A deep ditch was dug for a grave, across which a piece of timber was laid. After tying the men together, ten at a time, he had them placed on the beam and shot, their bodies falling into the trench.

On September 7, l813, having executed seventy-one insurgents and holding over 200 prisoners, Elizondo began the return march to Bexar. While they camped beside the Brazos River, a captain from Spain, made insane by the days of brutal tension, killed the cousin of Elizondo and wounded Elizondo while he was resting in his tent. Word was sent to Bexar for medical help and the march was resumed, but, upon reaching the San Marcos River, Ygnacio Elizondo's turbulent existence ended. He was buried on the bank of the river.

Ted Schwarz reports that ninety-odd Americans are thought to have crossed the Sabine, though the names of only about twenty are known. General Toledo declared that with 2,000 such troops as the Americans under Perry he could plant the Republican flag in the City of Mexico. Henry Perry escaped to participate in the Battle of New Orleans on January 5, 1815. He soon thereafter joined another invasion expedition into Texas, where he lost his life. Henry William Munson and Colonel Henry Bullard escaped to continue the Munson story in Louisiana.

Munson family records tell that a lost article from a Texas newspaper published at the time Mordello Stephen Munson was being urged to run for governor in l888, related that Henry William Munson was injured in the Battle of Medina and that he escaped with the help of a Spanish officer named Mordella. This Mordella was a nephew of the Spanish General Felix Trespalacios, who soon thereafter became the Governor of the Spanish Province of Tejas. History further records that late in the year 1819, Dr. James Long, also from the Natchez area, was undertaking yet another attempt to free Texas from Spanish rule. His party again included the names of Bernardo Gutierrez de Lara, General Felix Trespalacios, and his nephew Mordella. While stationed at the fort at Bolivar Point, just to the north of Galveston Island, this Mordella attempted to organize a conspiracy against the expedition and was exposed, tried, convicted, and hanged for treason on the northeast end of Galveston Island.

Henry William Munson's Return to Louisiana

Little is known of Henry William Munson's activities between late l813 and his marriage to Ann Binum Pearce in l817. On his return to Louisiana he was approaching his 21st birthday. Noting his high regard for education, his later success in business, and his leadership in his community in later years, it seems possible that he may have spent these years advancing his education, possibly in the field of law, and possibly under the guidance of Henry Adams Bullard. This Judge Bullard, a Harvard graduate, advanced to become a district judge, a member of the Louisiana Legislature, the U. S. Congress, and the Louisiana Supreme Court. Munson tradition tells that he became president of the New Orleans Law School, where he taught Henry William's son, Mordello Stephen Munson, in 1847. Recent research reveals that he was the first dean of the law school of the new University of Louisiana (now Tulane University) in 1847.

When Henry William Munson's father, Jesse, died in Mississippi in 1815 or 18l6, the court in Woodville appointed Nausworthy Hunter, Joseph Hunter, and Samuel Munson as appraisers of the estate. However, on December 20, 1816, Henry William Munson filed with the court the inventory of the estate of Jesse Munson — "the appointed persons having refused to render an inventory" — and signed as administrator. The estate consisted of one sorrel horse, three beeves, and three promissory notes. Why had the court-appointed appraisers, two Hunters and a Munson, refused to render an inventory? Possibly they found no inventory. It is also of interest to note that the name Jesse never again appeared in this Munson family. One's imagination can run wild when trying to guess the circumstances of Jesse Munson.

On May 12, l817, Henry William Munson and Ann Binum Pearce of Rapides Parish, Louisiana, were married. He was 24 years old, and she was one month past her 17th birthday.

Ann Pearce was usually known as Nancy by her family. She was descended from a very old and distinguished southern American family dating back to their arrival in Jamestown, Virginia, in about 1609. She was born in Screven County, Georgia, on April 17, 1800, the seventh and last child of William Pearce and Sarah Bray. Her mother died about one year after her birth, and her father moved the family to Rapides Parish, Louisiana, in 1803. He obviously had considerable wealth because he established a plantation on Bayou Boeuf near the present town of Cheneyville. The plantation was named Lunenburg, and it had a large colonial brick plantation home. One would assume that this was where the wedding took place.

Henry William Munson may have met Ann Pearce through friends on his travels to and from Texas in l813; he may have met her during his travels around Louisiana between l813 and 1817; or he may have known the family through Joshua Pearce, Ann's uncle, who had moved his family from Screven County, Georgia, to the Natchez area in 1807. In any event, thus began the union which led directly to the large family of the Munsons of Texas.

____________________



Top of Page