The Liberator (published in Boston, MA)

August 4, 1837

News Around the County

From the New Orleans Picayune, July 13:

Late from Texas:

By the schooner Texas, Capt. PARKER arrived at the Balize on Sunday, and bound for Pensacola, we have still later intelligence from the Republic of Texas. Mr. L.D. WINNEMORE informs us that a fatal duel was fought at Houston, on the 25th of June between L.L. LAURENS and Dr. Chauncy GOODRICH, an assistant surgeon in the Army of Texas. The parties met near the town of Houston on the 25th inst. They fought with rifles at the distance of sixty-five yards; the first fire LAURENS fell, the ball of his antagonist having entered his right thigh and passed through his left. Dr. GOODRICH escaped unhurt. The wound of LAURENS was not considered mortal by his physicians, but he died next day from mortification and distress of mind.

In addition to the above event, we are informed that POWELL, more generally known as "'the Spy of Texas," and one of Deaf SMITH's men, was killed in the town of Columbia on the 27th ult. A dispute arose in the street between him and Dr. HUMPHRIES, when the Doctor drew a pistol and shot him; the ball lodged in his breast and he died instantly.

From Mr. VINNEMORE we learn that about 1290 of the Texian Army had been furloughed. The present army numbers 500. The country was comparatively quiet. Provisions were very scarce — flour selling at $30 per-barrel.

From the Louisiana Advertiser:

We learn from an individual who came passenger from Velasco, arrived yesterday at the Balize, that on the 7th inst., a boat from the brig Belvedera of New York, in attempting to land was swamped and five persons drowned, viz: Mrs. WARD and child, Mrs. ROWLEY and child, and Mr. Lewis CURTIS, all of Onondaga County, New York. The remaining persons in the boat, supposed to amount to 5 or 6, were saved.

Capt. THOMPSON, of the Mexican Navy, with the other persons who had escaped at the same time, had arrived at Velasco previous to the sailing of the T. His reception was extremely cold. It is said that to him Capt. WHEELWRIGHT is indebted for liberty.

Gen. J. Pinckney HENDERSON, minister from Texas, to the court of St. James, arrived yesterday by the steamer Orleans from Galveston. It was stated that Gen. HOUSTON, had proceeded to Nacogdoches to meet the Indians in friendly treaty.

Fort Worth Star-Telegram (published in Fort Worth, TX)

May 31, 1921

W. J. RICH, Cattleman of Hereford, Killed.

Amarillo, May 31. -- W. J. RICH, cattleman of Hereford, is dead and P. BURNS, also a cattleman, is under arrest following a shooting yesterday on the Hummer ranch hear Wildorado. It is alleged that both men were armed and had been quarreling just before the shooting occurred. According to the reports several witnesses were present. This was the second duel between the two men. Several weeks ago RICH wounded BURNS in one shoulder and was acquitted by the district court on a charge of assault. The trouble originated over the sale of cattle, it is said.

June 5, 1902 -- Page 1, Column 3

Hereford, Tex., May 26, 1902.

February 26, 1903 -- Page 1, Column 5

From Texas
Feb. 3rd 1903

The Monitor: -- Because distance lends enchantment to view, or for the sake of old associations, or from some other cause I have been accorded a place in your excellent paper, I feel under obligations to pen you a few lines with regard to this far off land of the west, for I am about as far off as I can well get and still be in Texas, as I am in a border county and only 40 miles from New Mexico.

Well, I am glad I can report progress for this part of my beloved adopted state, for we are having an inflow of emigrants to this beautiful land of ours of the very highest type of citizenship, as it takes men who have succeeded elsewhere to get out here and remain, for the more unfortunate who have failed elsewhere through bad management or oppression, and the chicanery and trickiness of others are kept away through poverty, not being able in the main to take up their lands and support themselves out of their possessions until the lands could be brought into a state of cultivation and begin to produce something on which they could depend, for while these lands produce well and that the first year, yet it takes a great deal of money for a man to get here, stock his farm with plow stock, and farming utensils, build him a house, sink a well and put up a wind mill, but the man with means who is able to do all this is here and coming fast, and so this country is rapidly filling up with that class of people.

Our little town, Hereford, which has more than double its population in the last 12 months, had a fire some days ago which consumed a row of shanties of about a dozen buildings. Phoenix like has today men at work on seven brick buildings, to take the places of those burned, and there is talk of about five more going up in the near future. Now while the town has increased in population, at the same rate I think the country has increased in its population, and this fine alluvial soil is destined to be the stock farming center of the great west.

As to the progress along lines of Christian civilization, I can safely say that we are keeping pace with the balance of the world, having three beautiful church houses, the Methodist, the Baptist and the Christian Cambelites, with two other church organizations, to wit, the Cumberland Presbyterian, and the Old School Presbyterian. Then we have a nice public school building, with over three hundred pupils and a college of some 40 pupils, this being the first year of its existence and the buildings are not complete yet.

Now, some of your patrons have written me with regard to moving to this country, and I will say for their benefit that if they can meet the above requirements they can find no better place to make a home than in or around Hereford, but when a man comes here and spends all his money for land, to use a familiar expression, “his name is Dennis” for he needs to keep back some to live on until he can make some more.

Well, I had thought of writing some reminiscences, but this article is already too long and so will have to defer that matter to another time.

Well, I reckon enough people abuse you to keep you from taking the big head and so I will venture to say you are giving the people the best paper Pittsboro ever had.

Ben H. Bounds.

The Calhoun Monitor (published in: Pittsboro, MS)

September 10, 1903 -- Page 1, Column 6

B. H. BOUNDS

Rev. Ben H. Bounds, of Hereford, Texas whose war reminiscences we produce occasionally through the Monitor, was borned and raised in the territory of what is now Calhoun County. Ben was rather a wild boy while in his teens, for “Hell’s half acre” and the country surrounding where he was brought up was wild. Along about 1838-40, there were few school houses or churches in that section but there were plenty of grog shops and almost every settler kept his whiskey. His religious training was not of the best, but during the civil war when he was on starvation rations at Ft. Delaware for several months as a Federal prisoner, he professed religion and turned completely about. In giving his experience to his fellow prisoners, he said that fur once “these old prison walls looked bright and cheery.” He was county Surveyor here for several years after the war, also a circuit rider. He served with Sumner and E. R. Enoch in Co. F 4th Miss. Inft., and made an excellent soldier. He fired the last gun at Blackley, Ala. on April 15th 1865; was incarcerated at Ship Island prison till the latter part of May. We will continue semi-monthly to reproduce his articles for they are read by hundreds of boys and girls in old Calhoun, whose fathers were right along with Mr. Bounds when the events he describes were being enacted. Aye and occasionally there is an old hump shouldered Vet with wrinkled brow and furrowed cheek that reviews with him the scenes of the past.

Mr. Bound’s picture will soon appear in the MONITOR.

The Calhoun Monitor (published in: Pittsboro, MS)

October 1, 1903 -- Page 1, Columns 4 & 5

BEN H. BOUNDS
WAR STORIES
Hereford, Tex., Sept. 25, 1903

Dear Comrade: -- In accordance with your request and my promise, I will again attempt to give your readers a few items from memories page, of the many incidents, of the late war. As my last article closed with our return from the battle of Chickasaw Bayou, I will endeavor to give you a few items that impressed themselves on my mind, connected with camp life in and about Vicksburg. And first in point of importance, was the passage of Gen. Grant’s Fleet by our fortifications on the bluffs at Vicksburg, the exact date has slipped my memory. The Fleet had been lying at Milican’s Bend, some six miles almost directly west of the city, probably twice that distance by the river since their defeat up the Yazoo, over which they were evidently sore, and it was plainly to be seen, that they were spoiling for a fight. The evidences of anger put our commander on the alert, so we were prepared for them. We had stationed as near the fleet as safety would allow, three pickets with orders, if the fleet should move down the river at night for the pickets were not there in the daytime, as we could observe the movements of the boats then, they were on the approach of the fleet to fire a signal gun or throw up skyrockets, until answered by our boys, further down, and opposite the city which signal was to be repeated by the camp guards throughout the entire army, which was a signal for all the forces to assemble on the bluff, where we would be in full view of the river for at least twenty miles up and down. So on the fatal night, a beautiful, clear, still, star-light night, the alarm was given throughout the camps, and soon we were on a dead run for the heights, overlooking the entire scene. Before we reached the point of observation the fleet was rounding the bend of the river, and our batteries had open fire on them, and the fleet I think fired five shots only, which did no damage. Our boys across the river set on fire a large building in the little deserted village of Desota, and the enemy was compelled to pass between our batteries and the burning buildings, for another had been fired later on either by our guns or by our pickets, over there. So when we arrived the work of destruction had already begun, our guns were knocking fire from those iron-clad gunboats at almost every shot, long before they came in range with the burning buildings on the other side, after which, one gun especially a ten inch Columbiad, carrying a two hundred and 28 lb. shot pierced a boat at almost every shot, while one hundred and sixty four siege pieces were engaged in the destruction of the fleet if my memory serve me right. Boat after boat went down before our terrific fire of shot and shells, pierced through and through with a plunging shot from some our guns, the shot passing out below the water line, making an opening that would usually sink her in a very few minutes, one or two, I especially remember The Henry Clay, a transport said to have had on board fifty thousand rations. A shell form a ten inch gun, near where I was standing, struck her just behind the wheel house and passed out on the other side just in front of the wheel house and below the water line, the steam shot out on both sides, and blowing her distress whistle, she went down in about twice her length. About the last shot fired was a shell by that same big gun at an iron-clad gun-boat that had escaped by hugging the bluff, and was far down the river, the shell must have entered a port hole, and set fire to the boat which burned until it had the appearance of being a big red-hot ball of fire. And now after forty years have come and gone, I can truly say that that night, presented the grandest and most sublime scenery I have every witnessed or ever expect to until the judgment is set, and the nation of earth are assembled by the trump of God. The darkness of the night, the stillness, the scream of the distress whistle of the sinking boats, the air just a little crisp, the stars all out in their glory, nothing to detract the attention, the enemy too busy giving attention to the carnage of death and destruction going on in their midst to return the fire; giving to us a feeling of perfect safety, afforded a full opportunity to take in its grandeur and sublimity, which presented a picture to the mind so awful, so grand, so sublime, as never to be forgotten. But to stop here would leave the picture incomplete, fro after our dogs of war had completed their work of death and destruction, and three fourths of the proud fleet of an hour before with their crews lay silent in death beneath the howling waves of the grand old river, nature took up her requiem, and in the solitude of the night, rehearsed the tragic panorama in mid Heaven, when it seemed that Heaven had called into play all her artillery, in an effort to surpass the tragedy just enacted; It seemed that she would gather together the boom of a thousand cannons and fling them up and down the river 1st they would roll up the river almost out of hearing, then again they would be rolling over our heads, and then away down the river, far out in the dense bottom in Louisiana, thus is continued for at least ten minutes before the last echo died away. Awful, sublime, reminding one of, the seven last thunders which shall sound the doom of eternity. God grant that we may be so prepared for that awful day that we may feel as secure as we did on the eventful night. And with the shouts of victory on that great day may we enter the portals of glory, no more to raise the rebel yell, but to join our happy voices with the redeemed of all ages who have conquered through His name.

The Calhoun Monitor (published in: Pittsboro, MS)

October 15, 1903 -- Page 1, Column 3

BEN H. BOUNDS
WAR STORES
Hereford, Tex., Sept. 29, 03.

Dear Comrade: -- When my mind reverts back to the old 4th Mississippi thoughts of other days come trooping home and I am made sad, to think of the boys of those bloody days of yore, unpleasant indeed, yet safely reposited in memories sacred vault. I seldom sit down and think those days over; hence many things of minor importance have passed so far away that memory fails to call them back. The only things kept fresh in our memories are the things that are frequently recalled, and as these things are only called up when comrades, of other days, meet, and as I so seldom meet with any of the old 4th, many things of importance have slipped my memory. Many incidents of camp life in and around Vicksburg I still retain, some pleasant, some otherwise; some would do to tell in a select crowd of a few, and some may be told to the world and should be.

You well remember the time when Sam -----, a conscript to our Co., who was a very feeble man at best, was called out one cold morning before day with the company for some purpose, I do not know for what, and George and martin, two brothers were separated, one called out and the other left of camp duty, and Sam said to George: “George if you want to go long with Martin and the boys I’ll stay in your place,” and George said “Humph, I’m not takin’ on about being with Martin and the boys,” and you remember that same Sam got into a row with a woman, from whom he had bought a dozen biscuits because she would not give him sixteen for a dozen.

Another episode which occurred while our company was on guard duty, at the round-house, guarding and consuming the rations belonging to the government. On one occasion a carload of flour was unloaded late in the evening and in so doing a barrel of flour was bursted and some ten or fifteen pounds wasted which was noticed by the Captain of the commissary department and next morning the barrel was empty and he called on Capt. Enochs for settlement, and Enochs, in order to quiet the matter, just paid him forty dollars for the flour, and in order to secure himself, called on the various messes at dinner to know why they had no biscuit when there was so much flour lying around loose, and several of the boys took the Captain into their confidence and made him a present of a biscuit or two, and when he got them all implicated he told them how he had paid for the flour and asked them to help him out. They had to ante up but looked very sheepish. Now Tom, I don’t know whether you were into that scrape or not and if I did would not give you away. And you well remember another good soldier in camps or on the field of battle, who was always wanting some “Bef liver.” If alive he must be getting old—too old to work at his trade—you remember he as saving up material, such as he could use in his trade.

I would like very much if you could publish, at least once a year, the names and post office address of all the boys of Co. F. There may be some of them out on the plains of Texas. If so I would be glad to know their whereabouts. Mitch Bounds is living some sixty miles from me out in New Mexico, but I have not seen him since I saw him in Mississippi. I learn he is doing well out there. I know he is in a fine country. In concluding this article I wish to say that I enjoy your paper since it has got to coming more regular.

BEN H. BOUNDS.

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