The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 68, July 1964 - April, 1965 Page: 361

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ANDREW FOREST MUIR
HUMPHREY JACKSON WAS ONE OF THE MANY EARLY SETTLERS
of Texas about whom little is known except their public
services. The son of a flour and linen mills operator and
member of the Irish parliament, he was born in Belfast, Ireland,
on November 24, 1784, and immigrated to Louisiana in 181o
with his brothers Henry and Alexander.' He settled near Berwick
Bay and is said to have fought in Andrew Jackson's army at the
battle of New Orleans on January 8, 1815. Near Berwick Bay,
on October 13, 1814, he was married to Sarah Merriman, a native
Louisianan of Scotch and English descent. Four children were
born to this union, all probably in Louisiana: Letitia, Hugh,
John, and James, the last in Vermilion Parish on February 15,
1822.
With his family Humphrey Jackson moved to Texas in Sep-
tember, 1823, and settled near the San Jacinto River a half mile
west of the present town of Crosby.2 There in July, 1824, his
wife died at the age of twenty-eight.8 In the following month
Jackson obtained land from Mexico and began his public service.
On August 16, Baron de Bastrop issued him title to a league and
a labor, including the land on which he had previously settled.4
1Walter Prescott Webb and H. Bailey Carroll (eds.), The Handbook of Texas
(2 vols.; Austin, 1952), I, 9oo-go901. A recent book by one of Jackson's descendents
refers to Jackson, at times in error. Ralph Semmes Jackson, Home on the Double
Bayou: Memories of an East Texas Ranch (Austin, 1961).
2John Henry Brown, Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas (Austin, n.d.), 420.
8Tombstone of Jackson and his wife in Crosby. This bronze monument appar-
ently was erected toward the end of the nineteenth century by their son James,
then living in Chambers County.
'Title issued Humphrey Jackson, August 16, 1824 (MS., Deed Records of Harris
County, County Clerk's Office, Houston), B, 25-28; Lester G. Bugbee, "The Old
Three Hundred, a List of Settlers in Austin's First Colony," Quarterly of the
Texas State Historical Association, I, 11g.