Cass County TXGenWeb

Cass County
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Hughes Springs: The Untold Story

Hughes Springs: The Untold Story
By Jeff Echt, Tyler, TX

Introduction

It is generally accepted by historians and genealogists in the northeast Texas County of Cass that Reece Hughes was the driving force behind Anglo settlement near the present-day town of Hughes Springs. In 1929 Reece’s son, H.R., detailed his father’s life and accomplishments in a series of articles entitled Life of an East Texas Pioneer. The first article appears to give the most comprehensive extant account of how Reece Hughes emigrated to the Republic of Texas, successfully encouraged family members and acquaintances to do the same, and founded the first town of Hughes Springs. While H. R. touches on his father’s acquisition of land in the proximity of the town, he does not mention a years-long land dispute between his father and another prominent Texan, Joseph Burleson.

In all fairness, the dispute might have seemed minor at the time. In fact, had it not been for the involvement of a third famous East Texan, Allen Urquhart, Burleson’s dealings with the elder Hughes would rate little more than a historical footnote. What eventually transpired, however, affected everybody who owned land (or thought they owned land) in Texas, and continues to affect millions of Texans to this day.

Reece Hughes

According to his son, Reece Hughes was born in Bedford County Tennessee in 1811 and, as a child, moved with his family to Franklin County in Northwest Alabama. At the age of 18, he joined up with a few “adventurers” and struck out on what would become the defining adventure of his life--a bison hunt in the Mexican territory of Texas. While there, Reece heard a story about Nicholas Trammel, the famous scout and trailblazer.

In 1813, Trammel opened an old Indian foot path to horse traffic between Fulton, Arkansas (just NE of Texarkana) and Nacogdoches, Texas. By 1824, he and others had managed to cut it wide enough to accommodate horse-drawn wagons. Because it permitted relatively easy travel into Texas from America’s Western Frontier, “Trammel’s Trace” became a major immigration route. According to legend, Trammel had buried a fortune in gold at an old Indian village along his Trace. This story made a big impression on the young Reece Hughes and, after being driven out of Texas by hostile Indians, he determined to return once conditions were more conducive to settlement.

Those conditions finally presented themselves in 1838. At the age of 26, Reece again headed for Texas. This time he was accompanied by his younger brother, Robert, and one of his father’s slaves. They stopped in the settlement of Blossom Prairie (now the town Blossom in Lamar County), rented farmland, and planted a crop. However, it didn’t take long before the siren song of Trammel’s gold pulled them away.

In the early spring of 1839, the Hughes brothers left Blossom Prairie and headed east to pick up Trammel’s Trace. They followed it south until they came upon a deserted Choctaw Indian village. Here they built a log cabin, cleared land for farming and, one would assume, dug for Trammel’s treasure.

So pleased were the Hughes brothers with the Fall harvest that Reece returned to Alabama and brought members of his immediate family back to Texas with him. Many other friends and relatives soon followed. It appeared that Reece Hughes’ emigration to the Republic of Texas was a success in virtually every respect. The fact that no gold was found in the vicinity of the Old Choctaw Village must have seemed of small consequence.

Within a couple of years, however, the harsh realities of frontier life set it. First, there was the high price the Hughes family paid during the Regulator-Moderator War. Later, an initially less obvious problem became evident; the land on which Reece Hughes and his neighbors were living did not belong to any of them.

Joseph Burleson

Joseph Burleson was born in White County, Tennessee on March 30, 1800, the son of James and Elizabeth (Shipman) Burleson. The Burleson family was large (12 children) and moved frequently around what was then the western frontier of the United States. Inevitably, the westward push of the American population resulted in armed conflict with Native peoples. The Burlesons participated in some of these conflicts, as a family.

In 1813, James, 13-year-old Joseph, and Joseph’s 15-year-old brother Edward saw action in the Creek War while serving under future President (then General) Andrew Jackson. The Burlesons fought in the final, large-scale battle of the war at Horseshoe Bend (in present-day Tallaposa County, Alabama) in March 1814. While the American victory that day was significant in that it led to a peace treaty and the acquisition of Creek lands, it was also of importance for the future of Texas. With the Burlesons at Horseshoe Bend was a young lieutenant who sustained serious wounds during the fighting. His name was Sam Houston.

In 1816, the Burleson family moved north, to the Missouri Territory only to return to Tennessee in 1823. Although it appears James and Edward “settled” in Hardeman County, Joseph put some distance between himself and his relatives by residing in Tipton County.

In 1830 and 1831, many Burleson family members (including James and Edward) headed west to Texas. This time, Joseph decided not to accompany them, at least not right away.

It wasn’t until 1833 that Joseph Burleson, his wife, and six children emigrated. Although the acquisition of cheap land was the primary motivation for many Americans who settled Texas, this does not appear to have been a short-term goal for Joseph. For the time being, he was apparently content to join his father and brothers at farming on their land grant in present-day Bastrop County.

By 1834, Joseph was ready to move on. He traveled to the Town of San Augustine to buy farmland of his own. Likely in a hurry to obtain title and get his family settled before Spring planting in 1835, Joseph was fortunate enough to find a pair of highly motivated sellers.

When early San Augustine settler Richard Sims died, he left his widow Maria Concepción Peres and another heir, Maria Binena, in possession of approximately 1080 acres along the west bank of Ayish Bayou. On November 12, 1834, the ladies sold Joseph Burleson their parcel for $800 cash (74 cents/acre).

Looking to expand his holdings, it wasn’t long before Joseph sought a Mexican land grant. Although he had the potential gain title to a parcel many times larger than his San Augustine property, he would also have to interact with some much tougher characters than the earnest and illiterate heirs of Richard Sims.

On June 1, 1835, a representative of the Galveston Bay and Texas Land Company, Archibald Hotchkiss, wrote a letter of reference on Joseph’s behalf. It reads as follows:

I do hereby certify Joseph Burleson is a native of the State of Tennessee that he is a man of family consisting of a wife and six children that he is industrious and a good citizen and friendly to the laws and religion of the country.

(Signed) A. Hotchkiss Primary Judge

Although Hotchkiss’ statements regarding Joseph Burleson (with the probable exception of one) are true, the document itself is a thinly veiled exercise in hypocrisy. First off, Hotchkiss almost certainly did not know Joseph well, if at all. Hotchkiss was a wheeler-dealer land promoter whose job was to convince as many people as possible to apply for titles. Second, there were few if any officials of the Roman Catholic Church in Texas at this time. The overwhelming majority of settlers arrived Protestant and never converted. The pledge of “friendliness to the religion” amounted to little more than a “box-check” on the list of requirements for Anglos seeking a Mexican land grant.

The next day in Nacogdoches, George Antonio Nixon, the Mexican-appointed land commissioner for empresario contracts over which the Galveston Bay and Texas Land Company had gained control, reviewed Joseph’s paperwork. Finding it in order, he directed a survey of a sitio of vacant land in the contract of Lorenzo de Zevala for which Joseph could obtain title. Although the literal translation of the Spanish word sitio is “site,” it was generally understood to refer to one league (4,428 acres) of land. This is the amount of land to which the head of an Anglo family in Mexican Texas was entitled. Lorenzo de Zevala’s contract ran along the Sabine River from the Gulf of Mexico to what is now the northern tip of Toledo Bend Reservoir.

With the application for his land grant progressing nicely, it would have been been logical to conclude that Joseph Burleson was soon to be the titled holder of a huge tract of land a long way from Cass County. However, for reasons that are not exactly clear but not hard to imagine considering the company he was dealing with, things went bad.

On August 17, 1835, Joseph had a local government official named Samuel Thompson write another letter of reference. This time, he presented it to George W. Smyth, a land commissioner (and former surveyor for George Antonio Nixon) authorized to issue titles to settlers in northeastern Texas. After reviewing the paperwork, Commissioner Smyth issued an order for survey.

Having succeeded in obtaining Smyth’s order, Joseph wrote a note on the back of the title application he had submitted to Nixon two months earlier. It is polite in tone, and does not explain the apparent severing of his business relationship with the Galveston Bay and Texas Land Company:

Sir __ I hereby relinquish the right of this order to any person you may wish to give it, as I have taken lands under Mr. Smith.
Yours ___
(signed) Joseph Burleson

Now, things began to move quickly. On October 12, 1835, a surveyor named Joseph Rowe measured off one league of land for Burleson’s headright (land granted to the head of a family). In the type of survey Rowe performed, the surveyor chooses a point of beginning and walks along the proposed property boundary, marking trees and describing landmarks, until he returns to the point of beginning. Since Rowe knew Burleson was entitled to a league, he decided to survey in the shape of a square, 5000 varas on a side (1 vara = 33-1/3 inches). Twenty-five million square varas equal one league.

Choosing a point of beginning proved easy enough. He started 300 varas northwest of the old Choctaw Indian village the Hughes brothers were to stumble upon 3-1/2 years later. Rowe then proceeded south 5000 varas, east 5000, north 5000 and, finally, west 5000 to the point of beginning. Rowe was meticulous. He placed a post at the point of beginning and stakes at the other three corners. He marked trees along his route and noted where creeks crossed his path. Rowe even carved Joseph Burleson’s initials into trees near the corners. Carrying on the long tradition of Anglo-American surveyors, he measured magnetic declination in the area (difference between true and magnetic north), so the lines of Burleson’s League ran exactly north, south, east and west. In his field notes, Rowe was very careful to point out the league as, “Lying on Trammils trail & including the old Choctaw village.”

Unfortunately for Joseph Burleson, Reece Hughes and others, Joseph Rowe was not as careful about other aspects of his notes. Instead of describing the way he actually walked the land (south, east, north, west), he wrote that he had walked east, north, west and south. In other words, his incorrect courses described a parcel of land directly north of the one he surveyed (see diagram below).

Over the next few years, Rowe’s survey notes were reviewed multiple times by experienced individuals but, amazingly, no one noticed their blatant self-contradiction. Burleson’s League could not be defined by the courses in the notes and still, as also stated in the notes, contain the Old Choctaw Village.

By the Fall of 1835, the particulars of the field notes were probably the least of Joseph Burleson’s worries. Relations between Anglo settlers and the Mexican government had gone from bad to worse. The Battle of Gonzales had taken place 10 days before Rowe’s survey. In November, Edward Burleson was elected head of the Texan forces during the siege of Bexar (San Antonio). A few days later, Edward and father James saw action in the “Grass Fight.”

Although Joseph Burleson was far removed from the the battles his relatives were waging in South Texas, he must have judged their profound effect on his future. His Mexican title grant was never going to happen. On December 19, the land commissioner’s office in Nacogdoches closed for good. Worse yet, following the Battle of the Alamo, there was the very real possibility that Santa Anna and his army would sweep all of Anglo Texas into the history books. Around April 13, 1836, the people of San Augustine fled in panic toward the Louisiana border with little more than the clothes on their backs. Disease and malnutrition claimed many of these refugees.

Although Santa Anna may have believed he had victory in hand, 918 Texans under the leadership of Sam Houston and Joseph’s brother Edward had other plans. On April 21, they defeated the Mexicans at San Jacinto and captured Santa Anna. Sporadic fighting continued along the Gulf Coast, but the Texas War for Independence had succeeded and the residents of San Augustine returned to their homes.

For Joseph Burleson, the economic impact of Texas Independence was positive and almost immediate. During the darkest days of the war, delegates had drafted and ratified a constitution. According to SEC. 10 of the General Provisions:

All persons, (Africans, the descendants of Africans, and Indians excepted,) who were residing in Texas on the day of the Declaration of Independence, shall be considered citizens of the Republic, and entitled to all the privileges of such. All citizens now living in Texas, who have not received their portion of land, in like manner as colonists, shall be entitled to their land in the following proportion and manner: Every head of a family shall be entitled to one league and labor of land. . .

Since Joseph was residing in Texas on the day of Independence (March 2, 1836), he was considered a citizen of the Republic. Since he had never received a land title from the Mexican government, he was eligible for a land grant of one league plus one labor (pronounced luh-bore’, equal to 177.14 acres or 1/25 of a league).

SEC. 10 went on to state:

All orders of survey legally obtained by any citizen of the Republic, from any legally authorized commissioner, prior to the act of the late consultation closing the land offices, shall be valid.

This meant Joseph Burleson could use Rowe’s 1835 survey to obtain a Texas land title or patent to his league.

First, however, he went about obtaining his labor. Once again, Joseph Rowe was the man for the job. This time, Rowe surveyed a parcel in the shape of a square, 1000 varas on a side, approximately 5 miles northwest of Shelbyville in Shelby County.

On February 1, 1838 Joseph Burleson appeared before the San Augustine County Board of Land Commissioners, proved that he was eligible for one league and one labor of land, and was issued a headright certificate conditional on his paying the following fees:

- $7 for every labor of irrigable land
- $5 for every labor of arable land
- $2.40 for every labor of pasture land

According to Rowe’s surveys, Burleson’s League contained six labors of arable land and 19 labors of pasture land, total cost: $75.60 (1.75 cents/acre). His labor was arable, total cost: $5 (2.82 cents/acre). The combined cost of the league and labor should have been $80.60.

On February 6, Joseph Burleson filed his paperwork for examination in Shelby County. He may have traveled there because he was acquainted with George English, president of the Shelby County Board of Land Commissioners. English was a prominent early settler of San Augustine.

On February 7, the Shelby County Surveyor (the first of many officials who overlooked Rowe’s error) certified the survey field notes from both surveys as being correct. Now, the only thing left for Burleson to do was pay his land certificate fee.

As luck would have it, whoever was in charge of calculating the fee (possibly one of English’s clerks), wasn’t very good at math. The individual incorrectly multiplied the number of labors of pasture land in Burleson’s League (19) by $2.40. He should have charged $45.60 for the pasture land, but instead charged only $39.60. This error reduced the cost of the league to $69.60 (1.57 cents/acre), and the combined cost of the league and labor to just $74.60, which Joseph then paid.

It is important to note that Joseph Burleson did not own any of his headright land at this point. A private individual could not own land unless it had been “separated from the sovereign” at some point in history. This meant the Republic of Texas owned all land that had never been granted away by Spain, Mexico or Texas itself. While Joseph’s fee payment to the Shelby County Board of Land Commissioners advanced his patent (title) application, the patent itself had to be approved and issued in Austin, and that would take time.

Still, by 1841 his application was making progress. On October 20th of that year the Paschal County Surveyor, Levi Jordan, recorded Rowe’s survey of Burleson’s League at his office in “Dangerfield.” Interestingly, Jordan noted the league consisted of land “Including the Choctaw Village and on the Trammel Trace.” He made no mention of the course Joseph Rowe walked as erroneously described in his field notes.

Finally, on January 21, 1842, the Republic of Texas issued Joseph Burleson a patent for his league grant. The penmanship of the document’s author was flawless, and it bears the secretarial signatures of the commissioner of the General Land Office and the President of the Republic itself, Joseph’s former comrade-in-arms, Sam Houston. Once again, the self-contradiction had been carried forward. The patent describes the league as lying “on Trammels trace, and including the old Choctaw Village,” and then proceeds to perpetuate the course errors in the survey field notes.

Aesthetic qualities aside, the issuance of his patent must have given Joseph great satisfaction. He had likely been aware of the presence of Reece Hughes and family (and friends) on his league survey, but there was nothing he could do about it. He was powerless to evict occupants from land he did not own. Now, the land was his, or so he thought.

While it is impossible to determine the date when Joseph Burleson realized his patent was flawed, it must have been soon after he attempted to evict the first occupant. Everybody from harried East Texas county surveyors to General Land Office officials to members of Sam Houston’s staff had failed to perform even the most cursory quality check of Joseph Rowe’s field notes. It is unlikely, however, that a farmer threatened with eviction from the land he had improved and cultivated, from dawn to dusk, for more than two years would have been quite so careless. Before packing up and moving on, he would have made absolutely sure Joseph Burleson owned what he claimed to own. Unfortunately, Burleson’s League patent would never come close to passing the fine-tooth comb test.

It appears, as a result of the patent defect, that Joseph initially took no legal action against those occupying his land. Clearing the settlers would have involved suing each one individually, with no guarantee of victory and with the knowledge that a loss in just one suit could cost him the title to his league forever. More importantly, Joseph had responsibilities closer to home.

In addition to raising his large family, he needed to build up his San Augustine farming operation. To do so, Joseph spent significant funds acquiring slaves. Then, there were the other land deals he had on his plate.

By 1844, the patent for the Shelby County labor still had not been approved. An early Cass County settler, William Russel, was occupying it. On April 10, 1844, Joseph struck a deal with Russel. Although he couldn’t sell his labor outright (it was still owned by the Republic), he could and did sell the rights contained in his headright certificate for $100. In other words, when the patent issued (which happened in 1849) William Russel would be granted title. This arrangement benefited both parties. Joseph received 56 cents/acre for his land, earning a profit of 400% in just six years, and Russel was assured title to the land on which he was living.

In 1845, Joseph gained title to additional land near San Augustine. He purchased the entire 417 acre San Augustine County headright of Alfred Polk for the princely sum of $2000 ($4.80/acre!). This parcel, like the one Joseph had purchased in 1834, lay west of Ayish Bayou.

By 1847, with his San Augustine operation up and running and rights to the Shelby County labor sold off, Joseph was ready to proceed with recovery of his Cass County league. His first step would seem familiar to many practicing attorneys today--he sued the richest person occupying his land, Reece Hughes. Although the details of the suit itself were apparently lost in the Cass County Courthouse fire of 1933, a document recording an out-of-court settlement still exists.

On July 16, 1847, Reece promised to buy Burleson’s League for $3,500 as soon as Joseph could clear the title. If he were unable to gain clear title, neither man would owe the other anything. Also, as part of the agreement, Joseph dropped his lawsuit against Reece but promised to sue other residents on his land, namely William V. Hughes (Reece’s brother), Grace and James Jackson, and Allen Urquhart.

Allen Urquhart

Without question one of the most colorful characters in East Texas in the 1840s, Allen Urquhart was a planter, surveyor, businessman, and visionary. Always in the middle of the action, he involved himself in countless Cass County land deals as either a principal or witness. In fact, he was there as a witness when Joseph Burleson sold William Russel the rights to his Shelby County labor.

Urquhart was born in North Carolina in 1792 and emigrated to the Republic of Texas on April 11, 1837. Since he did not arrive until after Texas declared independence from Mexico, he was only entitled to land grants totaling 1280 acres. In 1841, he surveyed 640 acres for himself along Big Cypress Bayou in present-day Marion County. Urquhart recognized the area had the potential to become a major riverport, so he went about planning a town on his headright.

Of course, one prerequisite for a town is population. Most ordinary businessmen would have offered land for sale and hoped settlers would buy parcels at a good price. Allen Urquhart, however, was no ordinary businessman. In 1842, he heard that residents of a nearby town were having title problems and looking for a new place to live. Solving their problem (and one of his own at the same time) he invited them onto his headright at no charge!

When it came to the plat of his town, Urquhart innovated once again. Rather than lay out streets according to points on the compass, he planned their construction parallel and perpendicular to Big Cypress Bayou. This allowed easy access to docked steamboats for the loading and unloading of passengers and cargo.

Allen Urquhart’s unorthodox urban planning paid off handsomely. His town, Jefferson, became a hub of commerce and population, riding a wave of prosperity that lasted for decades.

Burleson v. Urquhart (District Court, Cass County)

Unfortunately, due to the Cass County Courthouse fire, details of Joseph Burleson’s trespass to title lawsuit against Allen Urquhart are lost. What we do know is that during the trial, which probably occurred in 1847 or 1848, Joseph freely admitted his patent contained an error. He also demonstrated that the tract of land actually surveyed was clearly marked, and that the mistake in the surveyor’s field notes was not discovered until after his patent issued.

To support his position, he introduced a deposition from Joseph Rowe taken by the Deputy Clerk in Travis County, where Rowe now resided. While the exact contents of the deposition are not known, they apparently favored Burleson. Over the strenuous objection of Allen Urquhart’s lawyers, Rowe’s statements were allowed into evidence.

The jury decided that since Joseph Rowe’s notes did correctly describe the survey location as “On Trammel’s Trace, including a place known as the old Choctaw village;” that a post was put down at the starting point, and that the lines were distinctly marked around the surveyed land; that Burleson’s initials were marked on trees, near the corners; that the Old Choctaw Village and Trammel’s Trace had sufficient notoriety; and that it was well known that the land in question was Burleson’s Headright, they would return a verdict and judgment in favor of Joseph Burleson!

Not only did Allen Urquhart lose claim to title over any portion of Burleson’s League, he was likely to be forced off the land entirely. It is therefore not surprising that Urquhart decided to appeal the verdict.

Today, a party appealing a District Court decision would have their case heard by the Court of Appeals. In the mid-19th Century, however, no such court existed. There was no intermediate step between the District Courts and the Texas Supreme Court. Until the situation was rectified in the 1890s, the Supreme Court struggled with massive backlogs, and parties to cases on its docket often suffered through long delays.

Urquhart v. Burleson
Supreme Court of Texas
6 Tex. 502
1851, Decided

When it came time for his appeal to be heard in Texas’ highest court, Allen Urquhart made sure he was not underrepresented. Three attorneys argued his case. First up was A. Morrill. Morrill argued five points on Urquhart’s behalf:

1) The courses and distances in Joseph Burleson’s patent describe a tract of land completely different from the one he sued to gain title over. If Burleson contends the patent is in error, and the patent is indeed in error, then it is completely invalid.

2) The faulty patent cannot be amended, and no proof exists that Joseph Rowe made a mistake in the first place.

3) The recollections of Joseph Rowe regarding his survey of Burleson’s League more than ten years after its completion should not take precedence over the written record of the survey.

4) If a party to a contract alleges that the contract is different from what is written on paper, all parties to the contract must be called before the Court to give testimony. Since Burleson’s League patent was essentially agreement between Joseph Burleson and the Republic of Texas, and the State of Texas had not, and could not be called before the Court in the matter, the Supreme Court had no jurisdiction to grant relief to Burleson.

5) The judiciary can decide the validity of a title, but cannot make (correct) a title in whole or in part. To do so would be to violate the separation of powers provisions in the Texas Constitution.

Following Morrill’s arguments, Webb and Oldham took up Urquhart’s cause. They tried to back up Morrill’s points with case law, and added an interesting one of their own. They claimed that any mistake was not in the patent but in the survey field notes. They further claimed that Joseph Rowe was acting as a public officer when he made the notes and, therefore, the notes could not be corrected unless Rowe was found to be acting in violation of his office when he made them.

One can see that on their face, the arguments of Allen Urquhart’s lawyers must have seemed ridiculous. First they argued that Urquhart, a surveyor, was fooled into thinking the land he was living on was unclaimed. Even worse, they tried to tell the Justices of the Texas Supreme Court that they lacked the authority to interpret Burleson’s patent in a manner unfavorable to their client!

In contrast to the gymnastics attempted by Urquhart’s attorneys, Burleson’s counsel, J. P. Henderson made only two brief points:

1) Where a mistake is alleged to exist in a patent, oral testimony may be used to explain or correct it.

2) The District Court did not err in admitting Joseph Rowe’s deposition.

Once the lawyers were finished, Justice Abner S. Lipscomb rendered his history-making opinion. First he cited a Pennsylvania case in declaring that,

“Where the calls of a deed, or other instrument, are for natural or well known artificial objects (i.e. the Old Choctaw Village, Trammel’s Trace, etc.), both course and distance, when inconsistent with such calls, must give way and be disregarded.”

Next, Lipscomb decided that the Burleson League survey markings were clear, and well known to the point where no one who subsequently entered the area could be confused as to the league’s location. Furthermore, he stated that if a surveyor did make a mistake in his field notes, oral evidence could be received regarding it.

Justice Lipscomb went on to cite a case in Tennessee very similar to the case before him. In the Tennessee case, the surveyor erred in his notes and described a tract of land on the other side of a creek from the one he had just surveyed. In that instance, there were no references to natural or artificial objects contradicting the incorrect courses in the notes. Still, a Tennessee court decided that the settler for whom the survey had been performed was entitled to the land intended to be granted, and which had been surveyed. In the words of Justice Lipscomb,

Because it (the land) had actually been located and surveyed, he (the settler) could hold the land, and his title was good, on the ground that the mistake of the Surveyor . . . ought not and could not prejudice the title of the patentee.

In other words, what mattered most was where the surveyor actually performed his survey. Physical and oral evidence as to the location of a survey could supersede contradictory written documentation.

At this point, the decision was extremely favorable to Joseph Burleson. Just when it appeared victory was at hand, however, Judge Lipscomb threw in a surprise. He ruled that since the order to obtain testimony from Joseph Rowe in Travis County was directed to the County Clerk, the Deputy Clerk had exceeded his authority when he took the deposition. Therefore, Rowe’s deposition should not have been read to the jury in District Court.

Due to the irregularity in obtaining Rowe’s testimony, the Texas Supreme Court reversed Joseph Burleson’s judgment, and remanded the case back to District Court!

In the end, however, this last-minute bombshell mattered little. Even though Allen Urquhart “won” in that he was able to get the judgment for trespass to title against him temporarily reversed, he had lost any hope of final victory over Burleson. Although no record exists of what happened next, it appears Urquhart gave up, and moved on.

The Aftermath

Joseph Burleson’s legal “victory” in Austin did not end the fight for his league. He was still not able to clear title by 1854, and was thus unable to sell out to Reece Hughes for the agreed upon $3,500. On March 23rd of that year, Joseph and Reece modified their 1847 agreement to reflect the reality of the situation. Joseph gave formal permission for Reece to cultivate the 90 acres of his 4,428 acre league that were occupied at the time by William V. Hughes. In return, Reece was to pay rent of $3/acre, or $270/year.

It would appear this modification benefited both parties to the original agreement. Reece protected his brother from being sued, and Joseph finally began receiving an income from his Cass County holdings, while keeping his $3,500 sale offer on the table.

Later in 1854, Joseph Burleson moved his family from San Augustine to the slightly more distant Navarro County. Now well into middle age, he would make one last push to recover the league that bore his name.

On March 20, 1855, Joseph sued two unauthorized Burleson’s League occupants in Cass County District Court. With the Supreme Court backing the validity of his patent, he attempted to convince a jury to accept a new survey of his land. While retaining the courses from Rowe’s field notes, he moved the point of beginning from the northwest corner of his league to the southwest corner (see diagram below).

In the first lawsuit, Joseph Burleson v. William Moseley, the jury found for Burleson. Although it ordered him to pay Moseley $50 for improvements made to the land, jurors recognized Joseph’s title to his league as he had defined it, starting in the southwest corner! Apparently, the verdict caused no hard feelings as Moseley subsequently released Burleson from the $50 judgment, and Joseph agreed to let Moseley cultivate the plot of land he was occupying rent-free until January 1, 1856.

Next up was the case of Joseph Burleson v. David Wiggins. The jury awarded Burleson title as previously described, and assessed a judgment of $250 against Wiggins for his use of Burleson’s property. Once again, there were no hard feelings as Joseph released Wiggins from the $250 judgment and allowed him to stay on the land until January 1, 1856.

With the Texas Supreme Court upholding the principle that a flawed patent could be valid if other evidence supported the claims of the patentee, and with a Cass County jury twice upholding Burleson’s claim of title to his league based on the new boundary description, an end to the entire land dispute was in sight. On January 22, 1857, Joseph Burleson signed clear title to Burleson’s League over to Reece Hughes for $3,500 (79 cents/acre). Although Joseph made a profit of over 4900% on his initial investment, it had taken him 19 years and untold hassle to realize.

Epilogue

Around the time of initial settlement with Joseph Burleson, Reece Hughes founded the first town of Hughes Springs. He chose to locate his new venture at a Chalybeate spring about one mile west of the Old Choctaw Village and off Burleson’s League. Initially, the town prospered.

By the time Reece Hughes obtained the title to Burleson’s League, he was unquestionably on a roll. A year previously, his slaves had built a four-story mansion for him that, according to his son, “had more appearance of some old English castle than of a modern country residence.” At around the same time, Reece expanded his business empire into the manufacturing arena by having his slaves build a blast furnace capable of producing pig iron.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Reece Hughes owned 20,000 acres of land in Cass and surrounding counties, and was about to start operations at his furnace. It is no wonder that Reece opposed Texas secession from the Union. He correctly surmised that the agrarian Confederacy could never defeat the rapidly industrializing Northern states. All his enterprises depended on slavery, and with Southern defeat would come emancipation.

The price Reece Hughes paid for Secession was enormous. One of Reece’s sons was killed in battle and another returned home a cripple. The Confederate government seized a great deal of Reece’s property including his crops, livestock, slaves and, most important of all, his blast furnace. When the War ended, the U.S. Government confiscated the furnace on the grounds the Confederacy had used it for war production. Reece never got it back.

Things even turned sour in Hughes Springs. Reece Hughes lacked Allen Urquhart’s grasp of demographics. As Reece and another wealthy planter acquired land, they forced less well-off residents to leave. By 1870, the first town of Hughes Springs had died out.

While Reece Hughes himself was never able to adapt to the post-Civil War world, his children utilized late-19th Century technology to realize one of their father’s Antebellum visions. The establishment of a stop on the East Line and Red River Railroad near the remnants of the first town of Hughes Springs provided an economic basis that enabled them to lay out the present-day town in 1878.

Reece Hughes died in 1893, having lived long enough to see the Hughes Springs his children built not far from the Old Choctaw Village succeed as a health resort and transportation center. Although the days of building prosperity through mineral springs tourism and hauling ore by rail are long gone, the town has survived. Hughes Springs boasted a population of 1,856 in the 2000 Census, down 15% from its peak in 1980.

The town of Jefferson grew beyond what even Allen Urquhart had imagined when, in 1845, Daniel Alley purchased 586 acres to the west of Urquhart’s survey. Alley planned a residential area with the streets running true to the compass. This created a problem where the streets in Urquhart’s survey had to intersect with the streets in the “Alley Addition.” Fortunately, a creative solution was found (aerial photo).

Allen Urquhart died in Daingerfield in 1866. He must have foreseen that the rise of rail transport would mean the end of riverboat traffic in Jefferson. Today the downtown area is a historic district that caters to tourists. It’s population in 2000 was 2,024, down more than 70% from its 1872 high.

As previously mentioned, Joseph Burleson moved to Navarro County in 1854. It is likely we would know very little of his life there had it not been for a relatively recent twist of fate. In the early 1980s, construction plans for the Richland-Chambers Reservoir that would cover portions of Freestone and Navarro Counties were moving forward. As part of the project, archaeologists from Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas were commissioned to study the history and culture of the area which was soon to be submerged. Although the archaeologist were able to find a number of sites that gave a good representation of how members of the lower and middle classes lived, they were unable locate an upper-class site for comparative purposes. Their solution--conduct an excavation at the Joseph Burleson plantation, despite the fact it was just outside the reservoir project area! Obviously, Joseph had done very well for himself since his 1833 arrival in Texas.

Joseph Burleson died on December 24, 1877. He is buried in the Burleson Family Cemetery in Navarro County, about 4 miles northeast of the Freestone County town of Streetman, and just south of the Richland-Chambers Reservoir. Aside from a few resort properties apparently associated with the reservoir, the general appearance of the area must have changed little over the past 130 years. It is primarily agricultural, with cotton fields still in abundance.

Finally, Burleson’s League appears to have changed little as well. It does include the southeastern portion of Hughes Springs (map) with its associated residential subdivisions and businesses (including a Sonic restaurant), as well as the intersection of State Highways 11 and 49 (photo). However, most of its area consists of uncultivated woodland (aerial photo).

Legacy of Urquhart v. Burleson

As far as the overwhelming majority of present-day Texans are concerned, Joseph Burleson’s most enduring legacy grew from his insistence that the patent to his league was valid, despite its flaws. The concept that the footsteps of the surveyor take precedence over an erroneous record of those footsteps is now a firmly established legal principle.

In East Texas today, there are a number of land disputes involving alleged 19th Century survey irregularities. Since these disputes typically wind up in court, lawyers and surveyors, as well as the affected surface and mineral owners are likely to study what happened around the boundary of a sparsely populated league of land in southwestern Cass County for many years to come.

Bibliography

Books

Fehrenbach, T. R. Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans. New York: American Legacy Press, 1968.

Moir, Randall W. and David H. Jurney, ed. Pioneer Settlers, Tenant Farmers, and Communities. Dallas, TX: Archaeology Research Program, Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, Southern Methodist University, 1987.

Sesame Literary Club. Hughes Springs Texas Histories, Volumes 1 and 2.

Syers, William E. Texas: The Beginning, 1519-1834. Waco, TX: Texian Press, 1978.

Tarpley, Fred. Jefferson: Riverport to the Southwest. Wolfe City, TX: Henington Publishing Company, 1983.

White, Gifford. The First Settlers of Bowie & Cass County, Texas. Nacogdoches, TX: Ericson Books, 1983.

Articles from The Handbook of Texas Online http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online

Burleson, Edward

Burleson, James

English, George

Galveston Bay and Texas Land Company

Hotchkiss, Archibald

Houston, Samuel

Hughes Springs, Texas

Jefferson, Texas

Lipscomb, Abner Smith

Nixon, George Antonio

Regulator-Moderator War

Rowe, Joseph

Runaway Scrape

San Augustine County

Smyth, George Washington

Thompson, Samuel

Trammell, Nicholas

Trammel’s Trace

Zavala, Lorenzo de

Articles from the Cass County TXGenWeb Project http://www.rootsweb.com/~txcass

Cass County Court House ~ Linden, Texas After fire in “1920.” (Fire was apparently in 1933).

Hughes, H. R. Life of an East Texas Pioneer. Hughes Springs, TX, 1929.

Youngs, Gilbert A. Dedication of Historical Marker Marking Point on Trammel’s Trace. Hughes, Springs, TX, Speech apparently made at intersection of State Routes 11 & 49, 24 March 1968.

From the Navarro County TXGenWeb Project http://www.rootsweb.com/~txnavarr

Burleson Family Cemetery - History (Originally published in the Navarro County Scroll, Vol. XXIII, 1978).