The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 88, July 1984 - April, 1985 Page: 245
476 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Colonel Eduard Harkort
months in Texas that came into the hands of his sole heir, his daugh-
ter Henriette, were subsequently lost.49 Harkort's son-in-law, who in
1858 edited and published the prison journal, Aus Mejicanischen
Gefiingnissen, had examined a number of sketches, papers, drawings,
and other notebooks that at the time were in his wife's possession.
Most of these records were made, no doubt, during Harkort's years in
Mexico, but unfortunately only the prison journal has been pre-
served. Almost a year after Harkort's death, a lithographic chart of the
Galveston Bay area was printed in New Orleans, bearing the name of
Edward Harcourt. In a brief review published in the Telegraph and
Texas Register, the editor dismissed the map as the work of another,
adding: "This gentleman died before he had completed the survey of
Galveston Bay. Had he lived, we feel confident his name would never
have been attached to a sketch so very rude and inaccurate as the one
above mentioned." 5o
Harkort did not die a hero of the Texas Revolution. Unlike his
compatriot, Herman Ehrenberg, he did not even fight in any of the
49The loss of these records was confirmed by written responses to inquiries to the
Stadtarchiv Leipzig, the Deutsche Staatsbibliothek in East Berlin, and to Harkort's great-
granddaughter, now deceased, in East Berlin. Gertrud Herrmann-Kilhne to L. E. B.,
June 8, 1980. The complete probate records of the Edward Harcourt estate, including
the correspondence of Dr. C. Hermann Jaeger, the first administrator of the estate, can
be found in File 243, Brazoria County Probate Records (Brazoria County Courthouse,
Angleton). Other pertinent records in the Brazoria County Courthouse include Bond
Record Book A, p. 127; Land Certificates, Book B, p. 3o, no. 181; Transcribed Minutes
of Brazoria County Probate Court, Book B, p. 26, Book C, p. 77, Book D, pp. 81, 93.
Notices of Jaeger's administration appeared in the Telegraph and Texas Register (Hous-
ton), June 16 and July 21, 1838.
Harcourt's heirs received land patents for one-third league headrights and for 1,920
acres bounty lands. (General Land Office, Stephen F. Austin Bldg., Austin); File Bexar
First Class 984, and File Bexar County 127o; Thomas Lloyd Miller (comp.), Bounty and
Donation Land Grants of Texas, 1835-1888 (Austin, 1967), 323.
50Harkort, Mejicanischen Gefiingnissen, ix, lo5; Telegraph and Texas Register (Hous-
ton), July 22, 1837. The biographical entry on Harcourt in Webb, Carroll, and Branda
(eds.), Handbook of Texas, I, 766, contains a reference to this map, but the source ref-
erences to the Telegraph and Texas Register are completely inaccurate. The present lo-
cation of the map, if it still exists at all, is unknown. The French diarist Eugene Maissin,
who visited Texas in 1839, also knew the chart of Galveston Bay ascribed to Harcourt
and cited it in locating the city of Galveston for his readers. Eugene Maissin, The
French in Mexico and Texas (1838-1839), trans. and ed. James L. Shepherd (Salado, Tex.,
1961), 182. The preliminary draft for a chart of the Galveston Bay area was probably
assigned by Colonel Harkort in May, 1836, to two of his subordinates, using his own
and their surveys for the chart. On May 31, Harkort wrote to Colonel Morgan that First
Lieutenant William S. Stilwell was "occupied for a few days with the drawings of his and
Mr. [illegible] surveys of Bolivar point...." Jenkins (ed.), Papers of the Texas Revolu-
tion, VI, 480 (footnote quotation), V, 42. Efforts to determine the identity of the second
individual mentioned have been fruitless. Harkort's letter to Morgan of May 31, 1836, is
not included in the Morgan Papers. Robert Stevens, Assistant Archivist, Rosenberg Li-
brary, to L. E. B., June 17, 1980.245
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 88, July 1984 - April, 1985, periodical, 1984/1985; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101210/m1/293/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.