Arrival in Texas, 1838, and Initial Years There

Alexander began his deposition stating the following (a digital image of this section of his deposition is in the posting I’ve just linked):

My name is Alexander M. Brooks. I will be 87 years of age on the 8^th day of next month (i.e., this month). I reside in Houston, Harris County, Texas. I came to Texas in the fall of 1838 and have lived here ever since. I was not permanently located in the first seven or eight years after I came to the state. My first permanent location was at Bastrop in 1846. I was in Houston, Texas, in 1841 and lived there for about three years at that time. I married in Houston in 1849 and moved back to Bastrop in that year and lived there until I again moved to Houston in 1868 [sic] and I have lived in Houston ever since.

As the previous posting notes, this deposition is transcribed in a collection of material compiled by George W. Glass entitled “Hope Family Notes [and] Notes on Aletha Sorrels Hope,” which consists of handwritten and typewritten notes of Glass about the Brazos County case. The original typescript and collection of documents that comprise “Hope Family Notes [and] Notes on Aletha Sorrels Hope” are held by Clayton Library Center for Genealogical Research in Houston. The collection has been filmed and digitized by the Family History Library of Salt Lake City and is available digitally through the FamilySearch site. The parenthetical notes in the preceding transcript — the i.e. and sic — are Glass’s annotations as he transcribed the original.

From Alexander M. Brook’s 1895 affidavit, we know, then, that he left Alabama for Texas in the fall of 1838 and did not settle permanently at a particular location in Texas until he settled at Bastrop in 1846. As the last posting also notes, when Alexander left Lawrence County, Alabama, he left behind debts for which his business partner, William Burke Lindsey, assumed responsibility, and he also left behind his wife Carolina Puckett Brooks and their three-year-old son Thomas Jefferson Brooks. Burke Lindsey then married Carolina in 1840 and she and Burke raised her son Thomas.

Alexander’s Headright Grant(s)

Alexander began seeking to acquire land in Texas by 6 December 1839, when he was issued a certificate for a third-class headright grant of 320 acres in Johnson County, Texas.^[2] According to a note by E.M. Heath, a notary of Travis County, filed in the headright grant file, the certificate was issued to Alexander in Jefferson County, with the land being located in Johnson County. This notarized statement was not filed until 10 December 1867 in Ellis County, as Alexander was seeking to have another headright grant issued to him in that county as a replacement for the original grant he had been given in Johnson County in 1867. In the period in which Alexander M. Brooks filed his claim for a headright grant, third-class grants of 320 acres were being given to single men who had arrived in Texas between 1 October 1837 and 1 January 1840.^[3]The tract granted to Alexander M. Brooks was in the Robertson Colony south of Dallas in north-central Texas.^[4]

Alexander M. Brooks received a patent for this tract of land on 7 February 1842. Then on 11 November 1842, as he was living in Harris County, he transferred the land to Charles Bigelow, also of Harris County. Alexander’s deed of transfer is in the file for this headright grant. The transfer of this piece of land to Charles Bigelow was no doubt part of Alexander’s payment to Bigelow for four lots he bought in Houston the day before he made his transder of his land patent to Bigelow. On10 November 1842, Charles Bigelow of Harris County sold to A.M. Brooks, no residence specified, for $500 4 blocks in city of Houston, blocks 129, 130, 131, 292 (Harris County, Texas, Deed Bk. H, p. 283). Isaac Applewhite witnessed this deed, and Bigelow acknowledged it on 24 November, when it was recorded.

Alexander then sold the four lots on 29 November 1843 to Isaac Applewhite for $200 blocks (Harris County, Texas, Deed Bk. I, p. 271, A.M. Brooks signed this deed with witnesses Charles Bigelow and S.E. Lillie. Lillie proved the deed in Harris County 24 February 1844, and it was recorded on that day. The deed gives no residence for Alexander.

Documents in this headright claim file and a subsequent one show that after he relinquished his initial 320 acres in Johnson County, Alexander then tried to claim another headright grant of 320 acres in Ellis County, which is contiguous to Johnson on the east.^[5] The two files show the 320 acres in Johnson County being surveyed in A.M. Brooks’s name on 10 January 1851, with surveyor James E. Patton filing the survey on 8 October 1851, and with it being recorded 23 December 1861. 

Another certificate was apparently issued to A.M. Brooks on 10 October 1852, with Patton then noting in the grant files on 16 October 1857 that this land now needed to be surveyed. On 15 March 1859, Patton surveyed the second tract of 320 acres, locating them in Ellis County, and on 13 August 1861 in Houston, Alexander issued a power of attorney found in the second of the two headright files authorizing Patton to act on his behalf in transferring the claim to Ellis County. It was after this that E.M. Heath wrote the December 1867 note mentioned previously, which states that Alexander’s original certificate issued to him on 6 December 1839 in Jefferson County had been lost, mislaid, or cancelled. This note was filed in Ellis County on 10 December 1867.  

The grant file for the 320 acres in Ellis County states that this grant was cancelled. My reading of these documents is that the 320 acres in Johnson County were surveyed in the name of A.M. Brooks, but he had transferred the grant to Charles Bigelow, and Alexander ended up receiving no headright land in Ellis County.

Though when Alexander transferred his initial 320-acre headright claim to Charles Bigelow on 11 November 1842, he was living in Harris County (probably in Houston), two years earlier, the tax list of Jefferson County, Texas, shows him taxed in that county in 1840 for one white poll.^[6] Jefferson is a Gulf Coast county in southeast Texas on the Louisiana border some 75 miles due east of Harris County. As we’ve seen, it was in Jefferson County in December 1839 that Jefferson got his headright grant, so it seems he initially spent time in that county when he arrived in Texas. 

As noted above, Alexander’s 1895 deposition in the Brazos County lawsuit cited previously states that he then lived in Houston from 1841-4 before he settled at Bastrop in 1846. The deposition states that he lived at Bastrop from then until 1868, marrying in Houston in 1849, and moving to Houston in 1868. (Though the deposition gives 1868 as the year in which Alexander and Aletha moved from Bastrop to Houston, the correct year is 1860 — hence Glass’s sic next to the year 1868 as he transcribes Alexander’s affidavit.)

Correcting 1842 Dating of House Alexander Built in Bastrop

In a previous posting that now needs to be corrected, I had told readers of this blog that Alexander M. Brooks built a house in Bastrop, Bastrop County, Texas, in 1842. The house was acquired by James Harvey Wilbarger in 1865 and is now known as the Wilbarger House; it is on the National Register of Historic Places. I’ll discuss this property further below.

I’m mentioning it at this point because it appears that those claiming the house dates from 1842 were incorrect, and that the house was built in or by 1851, after Alexander married his second wife Aletha Sorrells (Pierce). Nomination forms for the house’s inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places compiled in 1969 and 1976 state that the house was built in 1842.^[7]

But as the Texas Historical Markers website indicates, a previous marker for the Wilbarger house stating that it was built in 1842 by Major A.M. Brooks and bought in the 1850s by James H. Wilbarger has now been replaced by a marker stating that the house was built “by 1851” by Alexander M. and Althea Brooks and then acquired in 1865 by James H. and Olive Wilbarger.^[8] This site helpfully provides the text of the former and the current markers, with a photograph of the current one.

In another set of notes and documents he compiled as he chronicled the life of his ancestor Aletha Sorrells, genealogist George W. Glass provides lists of deeds he compiled regarding land transactions of Alexander M. Brooks during his years of residence in Houston from 1841-4.^[9] These include the conveyance to Alexander from Charles Bigelow on 10 November 1842 of lots in Houston, and Alexander’s sale of those lots to Isaac Applewhite on 29 November 1843 of lot 129, as discussed above.^[10]  

Charles Bigelow (1805-1885) was a contemporary of Alexander M. Brooks who was a Houston businessman and mayor of the city in 1840-1.^[11] A Massachusetts native, he arrived in Houston by November 1838, the same period in which Alexander M. Brooks came to Texas.

At some point between 1838 and 1846 when he settled in Bastrop, Alexander M. Brooks seems to have done military service, evidently the service for which he later had the title Major. I have not found a service record, but according to D.W.C. Baker in his A Texas Scrap-Book, at some point after arriving in Texas in 1838, Alexander M. Brooks served three months in an “Indian campaign.”^[12] Glass’s notes state that Alexander served in the Mexican-American War, but provide no details.^[13] I think it’s likely that whatever military service Alexander gave during these years was in the Army of the Republic of Texas or the Texas Rangers, both of whose records are archived at the Texas State Library. It’s possible, I think, that he served under Charles Bigelow, who is said to have been a colonel commanding a unit of Texas Rangers in the battle of Palo Alto in May 1846.

Move to Bastrop and Years There

Alexander M. Brooks’s statement in his 1895 Brazos County deposition that he settled in Bastrop in 1846 is confirmed by the county’s tax list, which shows him first appearing there in 1846, taxed in that year for one poll.^[14] By the following year, 1847, Alexander had begun acquiring taxable property in Bastrop County, and was taxed for one horse, five cattle, and a wagon.^[15] In 1848, Alexander was taxed in Bastrop County for 9 horses and a wagon.^[16]

Marriage to Aletha Sorrells (Pierce)

As a previous posting indicates, on 1 January 1849 Alexander M. Brooks married Aletha Sorrells. This date of marriage appears in Alexander’s 1895 affidavit in the Brazos County case cited previously. The deposition also states that Alexander had met Aletha in his years of living in Houston after her fourth husband Joel Pierce had abandoned her. When Alexander and Aletha married in 1849, Aletha had filed for divorce, but the divorce seems never to have been formally granted to her, since, as Glass proposes, it was assumed Joel Pierce, who disappeared after abandoning Aletha, had remarried, nullifying his marriage to Aletha.

In testimony she gave on 22 July 1896 in Bell County, Texas, in the Brazos County lawsuit, Jane Elizabeth Hogan Fuller deposed that she was present at the marriage of Alexander and Aletha, which took place at her parents’ house in Houston, where Aletha had lived as a widow for a number of years.^[17] George W. Glass’s “Hope Family Notes [and] Notes on Aletha Sorrels Hope” contains notes Glass made as he transcribed material from the  lawsuit, in which he states that Jane Elizabeth Hogan Fuller (1831-1917) was the daughter of James Butler Hogan and Martha Jane Reynolds, who had moved to Harris County, Texas, in 1839, and who owned a boarding house in Houston called Round Top House. It was in this boarding house that Aletha was living when she and Alexander met, and it was there that the couple married on 1 January 1849. Glass also states that Aletha’s daughter Jane Hope, by her first husband James Hope, married Ferdinand C. Booker at Round Top House on 21 September 1843. Round Top House was in the 5^th ward of Houston, to which Alexander and Aletha eventually moved after they relocated from Bastrop to Houston in 1860.^[18]

As has also been previously noted, the officiant at the marriage of Alexander M. Brooks and Aletha Sorrells was Reverend Rufus Burleson, pastor of Houston’s First Baptist Church who later became president of Baylor University. As has also been previously discussed, after a first cousin of Alexander M. Brooks, his cousin Charles Wesley Brooks (son of James Brooks and Nancy Isbell), moved in 1854 from Lawrence County, Alabama, to Bastrop County, Texas, he married Elizabeth Christian Burleson, a daughter of James Burleson and Mary Randolph Buchanan. James Burleson was an uncle of Reverend Rufus Burleson. Rufus Burleson was born in 1823 in Morgan County, Alabama, the county in which Alexander Brooks’s parents spent the latter years of their life and died, and Rufus’s uncle James had lived for a period of time in Lawrence County, Alabama, before coming to Bastrop County, Texas, in 1831.^[19] Rufus Burleson’s return of the marriage of A.M. Brooks and Aletha Pierce in Harris County, Texas, Marriage Bk. B, p. 129, confirms that he officiated at the couple’s marriage on 1 January 1849, though he absentmindely wrote the date of the preceding year, 1848, as he made the marriage return.

Aletha Joins Alexander in Bastrop after Their Marriage — And Alexander’s First Wife Carolina, Son Thomas, and Carolina’s Wife Burke Lindsey Move to Bastrop

George W. Glass’s notes in “Hope Family Notes [and] Notes on Aletha Sorrels Hope” state that when Alexander M. Brooks married Aletha Sorrells (Pierce) in 1849, he had established himself at Bastrop as a successful sawmill operator, and he would later become a wealthy lumber merchant and outstanding citizen in Houston. C.R. Leonard corroborates Glass’s testimony that by 1850 A.M. Brooks had a sawmill in Bastrop County near Sayers.^[20] According to Glass’s notes about Alexander Brooks’s Harris County real estate transactions in the 1840s, on 2 October 1849, Alexander also sold property in Harris County to C. Habermacher — likely Casper Habermacher, an Alsatian immigrant to Texas.^[21]

Soon after he and Aletha married, Alexander began acquiring property in Bastrop County. On 21 May 1849, Samuel B. Morris of Bastrop County sold Alexander M. Brooks, no county given, for $325 a 12-acre lot, lot 2, in the town of Bastrop (Bastrop County, Texas, Deed Bk. F, p. 311). James M. Gillespie and Mark W. Rogers witnessed the deed, with Morris acknowledging it the day it was made, and with it being recorded the next day.

As a previous posting notes and as Alexander’s 1895 deposition states, following their 1849 marriage, he and Aletha settled in Bastrop and lived there until 1860 (as noted previously, the deposition erroneously gives the year as 1868). And as the posting I’ve just linked also states, at some point between 1850, when this family is found on the federal census in Tishomingo County, Mississippi, and 1860, Alexander’s first wife Carolina and her husband William Burke Lindsey, Alexander’s business partner back in Lawrence County, Alabama, also moved to Bastrop County, Texas. Burke and Carolina they appear on the 1860 federal census in the town of Bastrop with Alexander’s son by Carolina, Thomas Jefferson Brooks, and his wife and children living two households from Burke and Carolina, Thomas’s occupation being listed as a miller.^[22]

Thomas J. Brooks was definitely in Bastrop prior to 9 October 1857, when he married Martha Elizabeth Hill, daughter of Middleton Milledge Hill and Julia Foster Walker, in Bastrop on that date — and it seems to me likely that his mother Carolina and step-father Burke Lindsey had come to Bastrop along with him, given their listing near him on the 1860 census. It also seems to me likely that Burke, Carolina, and Thomas had actually been in Bastrop for a period of time prior to 1857, in order for Thomas to have met Martha Elizabeth prior to their marriage. It’s tempting to wonder if some rapprochement of Alexander M. Brooks and his first wife Carolina and their son Thomas had taken place before 1860. More on this later when I discuss what I know of Thomas Jefferson Brooks and his family…. 

Alexander Builds His Historic House in Bastrop and Prospers

George W. Glass’s information that Alexander M. Brooks had begun to establish himself as a businessman by the time of his marriage to Aletha Sorrells (Pierce) in 1849 and that his prosperity continued to increase after the marriage is borne out by Bastrop County tax records from 1850 to 1860, which Glass has helpfully transcribed in his collection entitled “Aletha Sorrels Hope Freel Patterson Pierce Brooks.” For instance, in 1849, the year in which he married Aletha, Alexander was taxed in Bastrop County for three horses and eighteen cattle, for a total value of $285; and in the following year, 1850, he was taxed for a farm lot valued at $350, and had five horses valued at $242.^[23] The 1850 federal census for Bastrop County shows A.M. Brooks, a teamster aged 40 and born in Kentucky, with wife A. Brooks, aged 41 and born in Georgia, and a farmhand, V. Sorrels, 21, born in Arkansas.^[24] Alexander’s real worth is valued at $325 here. Glass identifies V. Sorrells as Victor Moreau Sorrels, a relative of Aletha Sorrells Brooks. For now, I’m not able easily to track records showing how Alexander acquired or disposed of land in Bastrop County because digital copies of deed records of that county are under lock and key at FamilySearch.

The Bastrop lot for which Alexander was taxed in 1850, and on which he built his house, is evidently lot #2 in the town of Bastrop, which he had purchased from Samuel B. Morris in May 1849. On 8 December 1851, he bought from Jeremiah Allen, both men living in Bastrop County, for $500 half of the northeast corner of farm lot 5 in Bastrop, with half of the fixtures, horses, gin, press, and mill on this one acre of land (Bastrop County, Texas, Deed Bk. H, p. 233).

The 1851 tax list shows Alexander’s farm lot as a town lot now valued at $1,000.^[25] This confirms, I think, the deduction of historians who propose that it was in 1851 that Alexander built the Wilbarger house now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Alexander’s lot had increased significantly in value because it now had a house standing on it.

The house Alexander built in or by 1851 in Bastrop now known as the historic Wilbarger house is, as a previous posting states, a two-story wood-frame house in the federal revival style with a central hallway, Doric columns, and an upper and lower porch, constructed of hand-hewn cedar and pine milled at Alexander’s sawmill. It still stands today at 1403 Main Street in Bastrop and is, as has been noted, on the National Register of Historic Places.^[26] The house was restored in the late 1970s.

As two preceding postings state (here and here), a final account of the estate of Alexander’s father Thomas Brooks of Morgan County, Alabama, compiled by David Dinsmore Lindsey on 20 January 1851 lists the legatees and heirs of Thomas Brooks, showing their whereabouts in January 1851. The list includes Alex^r M. Brooks, Texas.^[27] A digital copy of this account is at the second link above.

From 1852 through 1860, the year in which Alexander and Aletha left Bastrop for Houston, Alexander’s property continued to increase. In 1852, the Bastrop County tax list shows him with two lots, the 12-acre one he had acquired by 1850 and on which he evidently built his house, valued at $1,200, and another lot on Main Street where his first lot was also located, valued at $700. The lots are identified as lots 2 and 4. He also has five horses valued at $250, for a total value of $2,050.^[28]

On 19 March 1852, Alexander sold Gordon W. Shankland, both of Bastrop County, for $900 one acre on the northeast corner of farm lot 5 in Bastrop (Bastrop County, Texas, Deed Bk. H, p. 329). Alexander signed with witnesses James A. Poage and James P. Wallace. He acknowledged the deed on 25 March and it was recorded 12 May. This land was evidently the portion of lot #5 that Alexander had bought from Jeremiah Allen in December 1851.

On 8 December 1852, Elijah L. Webb sold Alexander, both men living in Bastrop County, for $160 a portion of the 12-acre lot number 38 in Bastrop east of Main and Water Streets, about 3½ acres (Bastrop County. Texas, Deed Bk. H, p. 539). Webb acknowledged the deed on 12 January 1853 and it was recorded on19 January.

The 1853 tax list shows the 12-acre lot valued at $1,500 and states that the second lot contains 3 acres and is valued at $150, and that Alexander had acquired both from the corporation of Bastrop. In 1853 Alexander was also taxed for five cattle and five hogs, each group valued at $30, with a total tax value of $1,710.^[29]  

On 29 June 1853, Ezekiel Owens mortgaged to Alexander M. Brooks, both of Bastrop County, an enslaved boy Cyrus, five years old (Bastrop County Deed Bk. I, p. 56). Written across the deed is a statement that the mortgage had been fully satisfied 6 December 1853.

In 1854, Alexander was taxed in Bastrop County for 247 acres that had originally been granted to Malinda Black, along with his 12-acre lot, as well as for one enslaved person, four horses, and twelve cattle, and for “miscellaneous” property, for a total value of $2,390. By 1855, Alexander begins to be taxed in Bastrop County for 492 acres originally granted to Albert Black, along with his original 12-acre lot, as well as for an enslaved person, two horses, twelve cattle, and a buggy and watch, for a total value of $2,451.^[30]Alexander continues to be on the tax list in Bastrop County taxed for these two properties, the 492-acre tract and the town lot of twelve acres, up to 1859, when he was also taxed for four enslaved persons and had a total worth of $9,003.^[31] In 1860, he drops from the Bastrop County tax list. From 1849 to 1859, Alexander’s taxable property in Bastrop County increased in value from $259 to $9,003.

From 1854-1860 (and after he moved to Houston, as well), Alexander continues to appear frequently in Bastrop County’s deed records buying and selling property. On 6 June 1854, he sold David Mennicke, both of Bastrop County, for $160 a portion of the 12-acre farm lot # 38 in Bastrop, 3½ acres (Bastrop County, Texas, Deed Bk. I, p. 303). Alexander acknowledged the deed the same day and it was recorded 8 July 1854.

On 29 December 1856, Alexander acknowledged receipt of an enslaved woman Mary and her girl child 10 or 11 months old, from Thomas Eborn for $1125 (Bastrop County, Texas, Deed Bk. K, p. 384). William T. Gamble witnessed the deed, and Alexander acknowledged it on 10 January 1857, when it was recorded.

On 5 October 1857, John Hearn sold Alexander, both of Bastrop County, for $225 160 acres granted to John Herring near the head of Sandy Creek, an eastern tributary of the Colorado River, 14½ miles northeast of Bastrop (Bastrop County, Texas, Deed Bk. K, p. 605). The deed states that this tract had been surveyed by virtue of bounty warrant #1123 issued by the Adjutant General on 2 July 1852 and transferred to John Hearn.

On 9 January 1858, Alexander sold Thomas Bryce, B. Lyman, and W.M. Bryce for $300 the tract he had acquired from John Hearn in October 1857 (Bastrop County, Texas, Deed Bk. K, p. 676). Alexander acknowledged the deed on 11 January and it was recorded the next day.

On 25 June 1858, Mary F. Colver, by her agent Calvin B. Garwood, of Bastrop County sold Alexander M. Brooks of sthe ame county an enslaved boy named Alf, 18 years old (Bastrop County, Texas, Deed Bk. L, pp. 49-50). Garwood acknowledged the deed the same day and it was recorded the following day.

On 18 October 1860, a copy of a judgment in the case of James M. Smith vs. A.M. Brooks and John Fawcett was recorded in Bastrop County, Texas, Deed Bk. L, p. 651. The defendants had asked court for a continuance and were overruled, with leave granted them to amend. They then announced they were ready for trial. Judgment was given to Smith to recover from Brooks and Fawcett $776.69 with interest and court costs. The case was in Bastrop district court at its fall term. The judgment was recorded 2 November 1860.

Following their move from Bastrop to Houston in 1860, Alexander and Aletha continue to appear a number of time in Bastrop County deed records. On 1 January 1861, A.M. and Aletha Brooks of Harris County sold William F. Allen of Bastrop County for $1,800 farm lot 2 in Bastrop east of Main, less the parcel of the said lot conveyed to John B. Lubbock (Bastrop County, Texas, Deed Bk. M, p. 441). A.M. Brooks and Aletha signed and acknowledgde the deed in Harris County on 12 December 1860 (sic?) and it was recorded on 22 January 1863. If, as I propose above, lot 2 was the site of the house Alexander built in Bastrop by or in 1851, then this deed perhaps represents the couple’s sale of their Bastrop reswidence.

On 24 May 1867, A.M. Brooks of county of (blank) sold G. Sayers of Bastrop County for $600 492 acres in Bastrop County on the waters of Sandy Creek, east side of the Colorado River (Bastrop County, Texas, Deed Bk. N, 513). In Harris County on the day the deed was made, Alexander acknowledged it, and it was recorded 13 August 1867.

A 17 August 1870 Bastrop County deed states that in 1856 for $500, Leander C. Cunningham had sold Alexander M. Brooks 500 acres in Bastrop County, the northeast corner of the Joseph Martin headright (Bastrop County Deed Bk. P, pp. 455-6). On 17 August 1870, Alexander produced satisfactory evidence that the deed was lost, and Cunningham confirmed the deed. On 24 August for $500, Alexander conveyed the land to his cousin Charles Wesley Brooks, signing in Houston on that day and acknowledging the deed on 10 September 1870 in Houston. It was recorded 23 September 1870.

Aletha Sorrells Brooks (and perhaps her husband Alexander?) apparently belonged to the Methodist church in Bastrop, though a Baptist minister married them, since testimony provided by Cornelia Chriesman Nelms in the Brazos County lawsuit, 1895-7, states that Aletha belonged to that church when William Gaston Nelms, Cornelia’s husband, pastored it in 1857. Cornelia was a daughter of Augusta Hope Chriesman, a step-daughter to Aletha Sorrells; she was a daughter of Aletha’s first husband James Hope by his first wife.^[32]

---

^[1] Brazos County, Texas, District Court case #2809, 15 March 1895-15 October 1897, Mary J. Harriman et al. vs. D.C. Giddings et al.The deposition of Alexander M. Brooks and other documents from the Harriman vs. Giddings case appear in a manuscripts and documents gathered in a collection by George W. Glass entitled “Hope Family Notes [and] Notes on Aletha Sorrels Hope.” This collection is undated. The original typescript and collection of documents that comprise “Hope Family Notes [and] Notes on Aletha Sorrels Hope” are held by Clayton Library Center for Genealogical Research in Houston. The collection has been filmed and digitized by the Family History Library of Salt Lake City and is available digitally through the FamilySearch site.

^[2] Texas General Land Office, Johnson County file 1026, certificate 75, Robertson 3d class headright grant, available digitally at the Texas GLO website.

^[3] See Aldon S. Lang and Christopher Long, “Land Grants,” Handbook of Texas, online at the website of Texas State Historical Association; and “Categories of Land Grants,” at the website of Texas GLO.

^[4] See Malcolm D. McLean, “Robertson’s Colony,” Handbook of Texas, online at the website of Texas State Historical Association.

^[5] Texas General Land Office, Ellis County file 4884, certificate 59, Robertson 3d class headright grant, available digitally at the Texas GLO website.

^[6] Gifford White, “Texas Tax Rolls of 1840 for the Counties of Harris, Jasper, Jefferson, Liberty, Montgomery,” unpaginated typescript (Austin, Texas, January 1964).

^[7] See Nell Herndon’s 1969 form about the Wilbarger House at Texas Historical Commission’s Texas Historical Sites Atlas; and the 1976 application for the house’s inclusion along with multiple historic structures in Bastrop at the National Parks Service’s list of sites on the National Register — both dating the house to 1842. According to Gordon Echols, Early Texas Architecture (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 2000), p. 85, the house was built in 1852.

^[8] “Brooks-Wilbarger House,” Texas Historical Markers site maintained by Marion and Steve of Round Rock, Texas.

^[9] George W. Glass, “Aletha Sorrels Hope Freel Patterson Pierce Brooks,” an undated collection of notes and documents compiled by George W. Glass, focusing largely on Brazos County, Texas, lawsuit, District Court case #2809, 15 March 1895-15 October 1897, Mary J. Harriman et al. vs. D.C. Giddings et al. Glass transcribed the trial documents, and the transcripts are accompanied in this collection by his genealogical notes about Aletha Sorrells and her five husbands. The original typescript and collection of documents that comprise this collection are held by Clayton Library Center for Genealogical Research in Houston. The collection has been filmed and digitized by the Family History Library of Salt Lake City and is available digitally through the FamilySearch site.

^[10] Harris County, Texas, Deed Bk. H, p. 283; and Bk. I, p. 271.

^[11] See Jo Collier, “Bigelow, Charles Grafton,” Handbook of Texas, at Texas State Historical Association website; and “Charles Bigelow (politician),” Wikipedia.

^[12] D.W.C. Baker, A Texas Scrap-Book: Made Up of the History, Biography, and Miscellany of Texas and Its People (New York, Chicago, and New Orleans: A.S. Barnes, 1875), p. 622.

^[13] Glass, “Hope Family Notes [and] Notes on Aletha Sorrels Hope.”

^[14] Bastrop County, Texas, Tax Roll 1846, p. 1.

^[15] Ibid., 1847, unpaginated.

^[16] Ibid., 1848, unpaginated.

^[17] Brazos County, Texas, District Court case #2809, 15 March 1895-15 October 1897, Mary J. Harriman et al. vs. D.C. Giddings et al.; see the transcribed depositions in Glass, “Hope Family Notes [and] Notes on Aletha Sorrels Hope,” and “Aletha Sorrels Hope Freel Patterson Pierce Brooks.”

^[18] See Glass, “Hope Family Notes [and] Notes on Aletha Sorrels Hope,” and Brazos County, Texas, District Court case #2809, 15 March 1895-15 October 1897, Mary J. Harriman et al. vs. D.C. Giddings et al.

^[19] See Frank W. Johnson, A History of Texas and Texans, vol. 3 (Chicago and New York: American Historical Society, 1916), pp. 1471-2; “Rufus Columbus Burleson,” Wikipedia; and J.A. Reynolds, “Burleson, Rufus Columbus,” Handbook of Texas at website of Texas State Historical Association.

^[20] C.R. Leonard, “Lumber: An Old Time Local Industry,” Bastrop Advertiser and County News (31 July 1980), p. 29, col. 2.

^[21] Harris County, Texas, Deed Bk. P, p. 65. On Glass’s notes about Alexander M. Brooks’s Harris County real estate transactions of the 1840s, see supra, n. 9.

^[22] 1860 federal census, Bastrop County, Texas, precinct 8, Bastrop post office (p. 271, dwelling 527/family 486 and dwelling 529/family 489, 13 August).

^[23] See Bastrop County, Texas, Tax Rolls 1849-1850, as abstracted by George W. Glass, “Aletha Sorrels Hope Freel Patterson Pierce Brooks.”

^[24] 1850 federal census, Bastrop County, Texas, p. 155A (dwelling 82/family 88; 29 August).

^[25] See Bastrop County, Texas, Tax Roll 1851, as abstracted by George W. Glass, “Aletha Sorrels Hope Freel Patterson Pierce Brooks.”

^[26] In addition to sources cited supra, n. 7, see the information provided about the Wilbarger house at the Historic American Buildings Survey site maintained by Library of Congress, with photos of the house from Survey HABS TX-33-C-6 made on 12 March 1934 by, L.C. Page Jr.; the photos are also online at “Historic American Buildings Survey of Wilbarger House” at Wikimedia Commons. See also Drury Blakeley Alexander, Texas Homes of the Nineteenth Century (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1966), photo 95, for a later photograph of the house.

^[27] The original account is in the loose-papers estate file of Thomas Brooks held by Morgan County, Alabama, Archives.

^[28] See Bastrop County, Texas, Tax Roll 1852, as abstracted by George W. Glass, “Aletha Sorrels Hope Freel Patterson Pierce Brooks.”

^[29] See Bastrop County, Texas, Tax Roll 1853, as abstracted by George W. Glass, “Aletha Sorrels Hope Freel Patterson Pierce Brooks.”

^[30] See Bastrop County, Texas, Tax Roll 1854-5, as abstracted by George W. Glass, “Aletha Sorrels Hope Freel Patterson Pierce Brooks.”

^[31] See Bastrop County, Texas, Tax Roll 1855-9, as abstracted by George W. Glass, “Aletha Sorrels Hope Freel Patterson Pierce Brooks.”

^[32] See Glass, “Hope Family Notes [and] Notes on Aletha Sorrels Hope” and “Aletha Sorrels Hope Freel Patterson Pierce Brooks,” abstracting and commenting on Brazos County, Texas, District Court case #2809, 15 March 1895-15 October 1897, Mary J. Harriman et al. vs. D.C. Giddings et al.