Charles H. Richards in Texas Revolution

A New Map of Texas, With The Contiguous American & Mexican States by J. H. Young, 1836

My 3^rd great-grandfather was Charles Harrison Richards. He is listed by The Daughters of the Republic of Texas as having been born February 29, 1780 in Blount Springs, Alabama, and died April 4, 1839 in San Augustine, Texas.

When Charles was 32 years old he married the very young Polly Sapp, daughter of John Sapp and Elizabeth King. Polly was born in Georgia and after she and Charles married they must have traveled back to his home state of Alabama since several of their children were born there.

I don’t know when they made their way to the wilderness that was then the Mexican state of Coahuila Texas, but they were there when the sparks of resistance to the tyranny and control that the Mexican usurper, Santa Anna, exerted over the citizens of the country were first fanned. Before that time, the Congress of the Mexican republic, in 1823, “...invited citizens of the U. S. of the North to settle on this frontier, and, as an inducement, offered a liberal donation of land to each family.”

In the Autobiography of Phillip Wade Hampton Richards, Mr. Richards states, “My father’s father was Charles Richards, was raised in Alabama, but came to Texas May 1833; was in the Mexican War, with Sam Houston; was killed by a horse on the streets of old San Augustine in 1838.”

March the 27^th 1837

This is to certify that

Charles Richards joined my

company on the 4 of July last

for the term of three months.

William Scurlock, Capt

Thos Rusk

(In 1836 Thomas J. Rusk was serving as secretary of war for Texas.)

William Scurlock was with Colonel J. W. Fannin and his command when the slaughter took place that was called “Fannin’s Massacre” in Goliad. “Of the whole number who were marched out for slaughter on that memorable Sunday, fifty-five only escaped.” Scurlock was one of that number. In Baker’s A Texas Scrapbook of 1875 a letter of Samuel T. Brown, a nephew of Colonel William Ward, first appeared in the Voice of Sumpter (an Alabama newspaper) on November 28, 1839. The letter gave a summary of the various companies and showed the numbers detained, escaped, and killed. The numbers were 35 detained, 55 escaped, and 385 killed.

According to Notes from an Unfinished Study of Fannin and His Men by Harbert Davenport, 1936, Scurlock “made his escape and returned home [San Augustine] to secure a company [of volunteers] and joined the command of Col. Thos. J. Rusk, under whom he served until the 4^th October, 1836.” It was this company and during this time that my 3^rd great-grandfather joined the fight as indicated in the above document on file at the Texas State Archives in Austin.

Sources:

Baker, D. W. C. A Texas Scrapbook, Made up of the History, Biography, and Miscellany of Texas and Its People. Reprint. Originally published: New York: A. S. Barnes, 1875. Texas State Historical Association, Austin, Texas, 1991.

Daughters of the Republic of Texas, s.v. “Ancestor Surnames” http://www.drt-inc.org/ancestors/anc-r.htm (accessed March 13, 2009).

TSHA Online, s.v. “Notes from an Unfinished Study of Fannin and His Men” http://www.tshaonline.org/supsites/fannin/ (accessed March 13, 2009).

Richards, Charles. Certification of Service, 1837. Copy. Texas State Archives, Austin, Texas.

Richards, Phillip Wade Hampton. Autobiography of Phillip Wade Hampton Richards.

The David Rumsey Map Collection, s.v. “A New Map of Texas, With The Contiguous American & Mexican States” http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~216~20055:A-New-Map-Of-Texas,-With-The-Contig (accessed March 13, 2009).

1850 U. S. Census, Shelby County, Texas, microfiche. (accessed January 2007).