Bosque County: Land and People (A History of Bosque County, Texas) Page: 6
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box compass and peep sight, chain, and ax-
measured the unoccupied lands for the
grantees.
A county surveyor was elected by Congress
for every county, but he was not really to
practice in the field. He was the recorder of
field notes, keeper of maps, reporter of what
was done, but . . . was not expected to
survey except in the smaller interior counties
. . . Deputies did the field work; they
were appointed by him but were independent
of him; they were distinct officers, giving
bond and security to the president and after
annexation to the governor. Application for
surveys could be made directly to the deputy,
and if the applicant pointed out the land
himself, or through his agent, it had prefer-
ence over the application made to the county
surveyor . . . .
A large number of chain carriers and other
help was required for operating in the
frontier districts. Unless such persons had
lands of their own to locate, or were interest-
ed in locating land for others on shares, or
received extra pay in money, it was almost
impossible to secure such assistants. The
surveyor himself was precluded by heavy
penalties from taking any interest in land he
surveyed or receiving extra pay.
The old survey books for the Milam Land
District reveal that Thomas A. Graves and
Jim Howlett, a "very good scholar" recently
arrived from Virginia, served as county
surveyors during the late 1830's. The list of
deputy surveyors includes George B. Erath,
James Shaw, and James Howlett; an exten-
sive list of chain carriers includes George B.
Erath, James Sahw, and James Howlett; an
extensive list of chain carriers includes Lem'l
Moore, Jesse Bryant, Thomas Butler, George
Burnett, R.H. Hunter, Henry Kattenhorn,
L.L. Childs, and A.W. Sullivan. Also listed as
either chain bearers or blazers during this
same period were M.B. Shackleford, G.
Jackson, James Robinett, W.W. Bell, Tilford
Edwards, C.M. Dixon, John Newton, E.
Robertson, John Burleson, W.P. Reese,
James Little, Isaac Thompson, George Lee,
Joseph Livey, Daniel Robertson, Neil
McLennan, Thomas Teel, William H. King,
John M. McLennan, and Lowery Scrutch-
field.
In the early winter of 1839 Captain George
B. Erath led a small ranger detachment to the
headwaters of the Bosque River to scout for
Indian signs. Having completed a rather
uneventful mission, the men of the scouting
party turned their faces wouthward toward
the settlements and began their return
journey. According to the account written by
Jacob De Cordova, "when they reached that
noble stream the Bosque, (the) soldiers being
struck with the beauty of the country, soon
forgot their military character and in right
good earnest turned in to take up lands.
These were the first locations made on theBosque; and so valuable were these lands that
the party did not leave off surveying until
they were forced to do so by famine." The
records in the General Land Office of Texas
give proof to the de Cordova story. The field
notes for the surveys in the Bosque River
valley between present Clifton and Valley
Mills reveals the following names and dates:
Claiborne Neill, November 20, 1839; John C.
Pool, November 20, 1839; John McLennan,
November 22, 1839; Anson Darniel, Novem-
ber 19, 1839; and James Hughes, November
19, 1839. The task of surveying was done by
6Erath, assisted by Neil McLennan, Daniel
Robertson, John McKay, Pr. Standifer, and
John McLennan. It can be said, therefore,
that (1) local military activity (known as
ranging), and (2) the aggressive work of the
land surveyors led directly to the first
locations in the Bosque River valley.
Torrey's Trading Post
The muster rolls of the adventurous Tex-
ans who enlisted for service in the Santa Fe
Expedition included the names of Thomas,
David, and John Torrey and George Barnard.
The interesting story of Barnard and the
Torrey brothers has its beginnings in the
state of Connecticut. It was there, at Ashford
and Hartford, that John, David, and Thomas
Torrey and George Barnard attended school
together and grew to manhood. The rich
promise of the frontier Republic of Texas
drew the attention of these four young New
Englanders to the Gulf Coast area around
Galveston and Houston. John F. Torrey came
to Texas in 1838 and located at the new town
of Houston. David K. Torrey arrived in
Houston the following year to join his brother
in a merchandising establishment known as
John F. Torrey and Company. In 1840
Thomas Torrey joined his two brothers in
their frontier enterprise. In the meanwhile
George Barnard had arrived in Texas as an
associate of the Torrey brothers.
As a result of their energy and business
enterprise, these men built one of the most
remarkable mercantile institutions on the
Texas frontier. Their store at Houston was
the supply center and distribution point for
goods bought in New York and Boston; it also
served as the receiving center of the varied
produce coming in from the far-flung Indian
trading posts that were an integral part of
John Torrey and Company. Building on their
Houston base, the Torreys established their
famous line of trading posts along the Indian
built a door, sash, and blind factory on his
New Braunfels property. A flood destroyed
the original building, but he erected a rock
building in 1860 and converted his enterprise
into what was said to be the first cotton and
woolen factory in Texas. Torrey's second
trading post, authorized by a law of the
Republic of Texas in January 1843 was
located on a small tributary (Trading House
Creek) to Tehuacana Creek about eight miles
below present Waco. Branch store were
operated on the Navasota River and at the
falls of the Brazos. Other trading houses were
established at Austin and San Antonio.
McLennan County and Waco
Neil McLennan "did enough pioneering for
three men" before finally establishing his log-
cabin home in the valley of the South Bosque
River to become the first settler west of theBrazos in present McLennan County. This
rugged old pioneer, born in Scotland in 1788,
came a long way to play a leading role in the
history of Central Texas. He came to the
United States with his family in 1803-04 and
settled, as did many other Scot immigrants,
in the backwoods of North Carolina. After
farming their Piedmont farms from 1804
until 1816, the McLennans moved to the
territory of Florida; here they bought land
from the Indians of the region and lived
eighteen years. In the early 1830's they heard
of the generous land policies of the Mexicangovernment in the province of Coahuila and
Texas. Under the leadership of Neil McLen-
nan, the senior member of the clan, they
liquidated their Florida holdings, purchased
a schooner, and set out for the Texas coast
in the autumn of 1834.
They arrived at the mouth of the Brazos
River after a difficult voyage and sailed up
the stream to Fort Bend County, where they
disembarked and sold their trusty schooner.
The frontier residents of the Fort Bend area
told the new arrivals that the best lands then
available in Texas were located in the
Robertson colony further up the river. After
purchasing oxen and other essential equip-
ment, the McLennans began their overland
trek to Nashville-on-the-Brazos; they arrived
at their destination early in the year of 1835.
At this frontier town the McLennans took the
oath of loyalty to the government of Coahuila
and Texas and secured patents to their land.
They chose their land in the bottom of Pond
Creek near its junction with the Brazos in
present Falls County. Although the McLen-
nan farms were far beyond the protection of
the blockhouse fortifications at Nashville,
Neil, John, and Laughlin McLennan cleared
separate farms along Pond Creek, built log
cabins from the trees of the forest, and
planted corn crops in the clearings. It was a
raw and rugged frontier on which these
pioneers found themselves-a wilderness
land where a man depended primarily on his
axe, his rifle, and his walking plow.
As fate would have it, the rifle could not
help Laughlin and John McLennan as both
fell victims to the arrows and knives of the
western Indians. Neil McLennan survived,
however, and his journeys to the northwest
with George B. Erath acquainted him with
the lands along the three Bosque rivers. In
May of 1845 Neil McLennan and his two sons
went to Torrey's Trading House with George
Erath on another surveying expedition. In
July of the same year they were again with
Erath for a surveying trip into the interior.
This time, however, McLennan brought
along a wagon and some hired laborers. He
and his workers left the surveying party on
the South Bosque and went to work construc-
ting a log cabin on the McLennan survey. The
house was finished by October of the same
year; and the McLennan family, with their
livestock, were "permanently located on the
South Bosque River." It is of interest to note
that Lowery H. Scrutchfield was living with
the McLennan family when they moved into
their new home.
The land between the McLennan home-
stead on the South Bosque and the junction
of the Bosque and Brazos Rivers had been
granted to Thomas Jefferson Chambers by
the government of Coahuila and Texas in
1833-1834. This large tract, only a small part
of Chambers's total landholdings in Texas,
retarded the advance of settlers into theregion adjacent to the Brazos and Bosque
rivers. Shortly after the annexation of Texas
to the United States in the winter of 1845-
1846 Shapley P. Ross, then a resident of
Austin, agreed to recruit fifty volunteer
rangers for service under the United States
government. Ross was appointed captain of
this frontier defense unit and was assigned
the task of patrolling the territory between
the San Gabriel and Little Rivers. Several
months later all of the ranger companies were
consolidated into a regiment headed by Peter
Hansborough Bell; Bell ordered the Ross
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Bosque County History Book Committee. Bosque County: Land and People (A History of Bosque County, Texas), book, 1985; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth91038/m1/22/?q=campbell&rotate=270: accessed March 29, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Denton Public Library.