Joseph Perkins Pulsifer

Happy birthday Joseph Pulsifer, July 8, 1805!

As mentioned in my blog back on Dec 26, 2013, I have an interesting quote of a story about Joseph P. Pulsifer, (1805-1861)  I remember hearing how my grandmother did go to Beaumont for a court case having to do with the city of Beaumont Texas, and her relationship to the Pulsifer brothers.  (Her great-grandmother Lucy Pulsifer Granger was sister to Joseph and Ebenezer Pulsifer, surveyors and founders of Beaumont, TX)  She was listed on the court documents as being a living descendent of them.

First Courthouse in Beaumont, TX, completed in 1854. Built by John A. Beaumont

PULSIFER, JOSEPH PERKINS (1805–1861). Joseph P. Pulsifer, early Texas apothecary and a founder of Beaumont, the son of Ebenezer and Elizabeth (Dwelbee) Pulsifer, was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, on July 8, 1805. Little is known about Pulsifer's education, except that his letters show him to have been an extremely literate man. Probably through apprenticeship, he became an apothecary, and sometime after 1827 he opened a drugstore in partnership with his brother Eben in nearby Charlestown, now a suburb of Boston. There Pulsifer became a member of the Mechanics' Society and served as its secretary in 1831. Sometime during 1832 or 1833 he returned to Newburyport to work in the drug firm of Thomas Davis and Company. In the fall of 1833 Pulsifer moved to New Orleans in search of economic opportunity and found employment in the store of druggist and retail merchant Henry W. Millard . By 1835, however, the firm developed financial troubles. Pulsifer and Millard then entered into a partnership, J. P. Pulsifer and Company, with Texas merchant Thomas B. Huling . The men moved to Texas in July of that year. In a small settlement named Santa Anna, on the Neches River, they opened a store under Pulsifer's management. In the fall of 1835 the firm purchased fifty acres on the Neches River and laid out the boundaries of a new town, which they called Beaumont.

From Beaumont, Pulsifer took an active, if nonmilitary, part in the Texas Revolution . Citizens of the Neches River Settlement, as that area was called, appointed him chairman of the Committee of Correspondence, secretary of the Committee of Safety, and a member of a local committee to draft ideas for a constitution and bylaws for Texas. He also served as Beaumont's first postmaster and as a trustee of the first school. After the revolution Pulsifer, Huling, and Millard added fifty acres to the original Beaumont townsite. By entering into partnership with Nancy Tevis and Joseph Grigsby , each of whom donated an additional fifty acres, they increased the original area of the town to a total of 200 acres. Beaumont ultimately incorporated both Santa Anna and Tevis Bluff, an older settlement about a mile upriver from Santa Anna. Pulsifer, who never married, remained a citizen of Beaumont for the rest of his life. In addition to practicing his professions of storekeeper and apothecary, he served in various public offices: collector of revenue for the port of Sabine, county clerk, county commissioner, and clerk of the Jefferson County Board of Land Commissioners. Before the first Jefferson County Courthouse was built in 1854, the county commissioners periodically held court on the second floor of his combination home and store in Beaumont. He also served as an agent in Jefferson County for the Austin State Gazette . Pulsifer died in Beaumont in 1861. The one extant volume of his correspondence remains unpublished. It covers the period from 1833 to 1836 and describes his immigration to Texas and his ordeal during the Texas Revolution.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Judith Walker Linsley and Ellen Walker Rienstra, Beaumont: A Chronicle of Promise (Woodland Hills, California: Windsor, 1982).

This exact publication is copied into Texas History Online HERE. 

It also gives me the details of where Grigsby Bluff and Tevis Bluff are...which were sites of letters from my grandmother's great grandfather, George Granger, and her grandmother, Mary Granger Phillips.  I've transcribed some of those letters
letters,
grigsby-bluff-letter-dec-9-1861
before-war-started-1856-texas
old-letters-transcribed

 More on Beaumont TX history will be coming soon.

Another Clack connection

Besides the obvious problem with documents frequently confusing the name Clack with Clark, I found this gentleman in early Texas history a few days ago, named Sterling Clack Robertson.
Since the area that Texas History online was talking about was where my Booth ancestors settled, (Hill Country, Texas) I was interested in learning more about its early history.

So I started a new tree over at Ancestry, for the Robertsons.  I just had 2 individuals, Sterling and his son, Elijah Sterling Clack Robertson, and their approximate ages.  So I made up a bunch of things, and punched them in, waiting for Ancestry to provide me source documents as to their real birth dates as well as places they lived.

And they were some kind of cousins of my ancestor Catherine Clack Rogers, who I've spoken about a bit HERE.

I know how unlikely it is that you want to chase various links all over the place, so here's one that I found:

From Handbook of Texas Online:

ROBERTSON, STERLING CLACK (1785-1842). Sterling Clack Robertson, the empresario of Robertson's colony in Texas, was born on October 2, 1785, in Nashville, Tennessee, a son of Elijah and Sarah (Maclin) Robertson. He was given a liberal education under the direction of Judge John McNairy. From November 13, 1814, to May 13, 1815, he served as deputy quartermaster general under Maj. Gen. William Carroll, who went down to fight the British in the battle of New Orleans. After the battle Robertson purchased supplies and equipment for the sick and wounded on their return to Nashville over the Natchez Trace. By 1816 he was living in Giles County, Tennessee, where he owned a plantation. He had two sons: James Maclin Robertson with Rachael Smith, and Elijah Sterling Clack Robertson with Frances King. On March 2, 1822, he was one of the seventy stockholders of the Texas Association who signed a memorial to the Mexican government, asking for permission to settle in Texas. On November 21, 1825, he was one of thirty-two members of Dr. Felix Robertson's party that set out from Nashville, Tennessee, bound for Texas, to explore and survey Robert Leftwich's grant. Robertson remained in Texas until August 1826, when he returned to Tennessee, filled with enthusiasm for the colonization of Texas. He toured Tennessee and Kentucky in an attempt to recruit settlers. In the spring of 1830 he signed a subcontract with the Texas Association to introduce 200 families, and on May 9, 1830, he took in Alexander Thomson as his partner. They brought families to Texas, but they were prevented from settling in the colony because of the Law of April 6, 1830. In 1831 that area was transferred to Stephen F. Austin and Samuel May Williams, but Robertson obtained a contract in his own name in 1834 and served as empresario of Robertson's colony in 1834 and 1835. On January 17, 1836, he became captain of a company of Texas Rangers. Then he was elected as a delegate from the Municipality of Milam to the convention at Washington-on-the-Brazos (March 1-17, 1836), where he signed the Texas Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the Republic of Texas. He was stationed at Harrisburg to guard army equipment during the battle of San Jacinto. Robertson served as senator from the District of Milam in the First and Second congresses of the Republic of Texas (October 3, 1836-May 24, 1838), after which he retired to his home in Robertson County, where he became the earliest known breeder of Arabian horses in Texas. He died there on March 4, 1842. His remains were removed to Austin and reinterred in the State Cemetery on December 29, 1935. Robertson was responsible for settling more than 600 families in Texas.

The history of the Robertson colony (or settlement if you will) is pretty long, and here I will give you the link to Texas History Online.

Connection?  Sterling Clack Robertson's mother was Sarah Maclin Robertson, Birth 1758 in Brunswick, Virginia Death 3 Oct 1846 in Nashville, Davidson, TN, and it was noted that she provided the funds for his Texas adventures.

And Sarah Maclin's mother was: Sarah Sally Sary Clack  Birth 1731 in Gloucester, Gloucester, Virginia, Death 9 Mar 1803 in Nashville, TN

And Sally Clack's brother was Col. John Clack,  Birth 9 Jan 1721 in Gloucester, Gloucester, Virginia, Death 1784 in Gloucester, Gloucester, Virginia, who was married to: Mary Kennon Birth 29 JAN 1728 in Gloucester, Virginia, Death 1794 in Brunswick, Virginia

and they were parents of:

Lt Spencer Clack Birth 28 Mar 1746 in Fairfax now, Loudoun, Virginia, Death 09 JUL 1832 in Sevierville, Sevier, Tennessee, who was the father of Catherine Clack Rogers. So does that make them second cousins?  Parents: John & Mary Kennon Clack Children: Lt. Spencer Clack and Sally Clack Maclin  next generation: Catherine Clack Rogers and Sally Maclin Robertson Oh so Sterling Clack Roberson would have been third cousin to Micajah Clack Rogers, the son of Rev. Elijah and Catherine Clack Rogers.  Micajah actually also trooped to Texas with his family...but settled in East Texas rather than the Robertson area in Hill country.

Oh my, all this research into the Robertsons does have a glitch. Mrs. Sarah Robertson has an obit, so she was obviously the wife of father.  But her parents aren't clearly the Maclins in the other sources.  So when I was trying to link Rogers through the Clack connection, there is no Sarah Maclin who married a Robertson.  Shoot. 

But if Texas History Online has the Robertson's connection, and there is obviously the Clack family names in the Robertson explorers, I do believe that connection must exist.  Hi ya cousins, whoever you may be.