An Application for a Harris County Historical Marker for the Morse-Bragg (Pleasant Bend) Cemetery by Dan M. Worrall

Presented to the Harris County Historical Commission and Harris County Commissioners Court

ABSTRACT The grounds of the Morse-Bragg Cemetery contain a small remnant of a once-vast antebellum plantation. Agur Tomlinson Morse (1801-1865) and his wife Grace Baldwin Morse (1814-1890) were successful planters in Mississippi who moved to then-rural Harris County in 1851, where they founded the Pleasant Bend Plantation.1 Their landholdings grew to nearly eight square miles, including much if not all of the modern Tanglewood, Post Oak-Galleria, and River Oaks neighborhoods, as well as significant parts of West University Place and Southside Place. By the middle of the 1850s they had built a grist mill and cotton gin on the south bank of Buffalo Bayou. Agur Morse was a noted early leader in growing cotton on the dry Houston prairie, when most other production was confined to the Brazos and Colorado River bottoms. Agur's brother, Rev John Kell Morse, held Methodist church services on the plantation. Agur was a leader of Houston’s Home Guard throughout the Civil War, and three sons and a son-in-law were Confederate soldiers. The war years were hard on the Morse family, and the plantation was broken up during Reconstruction, except for sawmill operations along nearby Buffalo Bayou that were briefly continued by Agur's sons Henry and George, along with neighbor Wylie A. Parker and 38 employees and subcontractors. The graveyard was located on a small rise north of a spring-fed creek; the Agur Morse plantation home was about 500 feet to the south, across the (now underground) creek. A bit farther south was the San Felipe-Harrisburg wagon road of 1830, which served the area well into the 1860s. A campground along that road was located at the head of the spring creek, 2500 feet to the southwest of the cemetery; travelers used that rest stop from the 1830s and possibly earlier. The cemetery was used from the 1850s by the Morse family and their neighbors from the surrounding community. It contains the remains of at least seven Confederate veterans, as well as many early citizens of rural Harris County, including members of the Morse, McFee, and Bragg, families, as well as the African-American Banks family, who had ties both to the Morse family

Morse-Bragg (Pleasant Bend) Cemetery -1- Harris County Historical Commission Dan M Worrall July 5, 2015 and to the nearby Lovely Canada Baptist Church (est. 1876). Old Three Hundred settler Thaddeus C. Bell (1822-1871), reportedly the first male child born in Stephen F. Austin's colony, is buried there. Grace Morse deeded the plantation cemetery in 1874 for its continued use by the Morse family and the neighboring community, with an additional part sold to Mrs. Benjamin Bragg. Parts of its grounds were encroached upon by residential development in the 1940s to present, and there were several unsuccessful efforts to develop the remainder before the grounds were adopted by Harris County Precinct 3 as a historic cemetery in 2014. All but two of the headstones and an iron fence were destroyed in the late twentieth century, and a group of descendants have organized to restore and replace monuments. The Texas Historical Commission designated the Morse-Bragg Cemetery as a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2010.

Morse-Bragg (Pleasant Bend) Cemetery -2- Harris County Historical Commission Dan M Worrall July 5, 2015 An Application for a Harris County Historical Marker for the Morse-Bragg (Pleasant Bend) Cemetery by Dan M. Worrall

Presented to the Harris County Historical Commission and Harris County Commissioners Court

I. CONTEXT The settlement of western Harris County began in the Piney Point area, with settler John D. Taylor's brief stay in 1824-1825, 2 during the same decade that settlers John Punderson Austin, John Richardson Harris and others took up residence in central and eastern parts of the County. After that, the western area was strongly influenced by the construction in 1830 of the San Felipe-Harrisburg wagon road by the Ayuntamiento at San Felipe (Figure 1).3 The east-west road followed an old Native American trail along the southern edge of the riparian forest of Buffalo Bayou, used extensively by early explorers and traders. The wagon road was a major conduit of cotton produced in plantations along the Brazos River to ports at Harrisburg and, after 1836, Houston.4 It also became an important route of entry for German immigrants travelling to New Braunfels and Fredericksburg. Figure 1 shows its trace, and was compiled from available nineteenth century maps and surveys in Harris County Archives and in the General Land Office in Austin. Where the wagon road cut across the prairie, water was often scarce. A small spring-fed creek, now underground but once known as Spring Creek, lies immediately south of the Morse- Bragg cemetery, and flows northeastward into Buffalo Bayou (Figure 2). Early travelers on the trail and later wagon road camped along the upper reaches of this creek. In 1851, South Carolina and (later) Mississippi planter Agur Tomlinson Morse (1801-1865) and his wife Grace G. Morse (1814-1890) settled along the south bank of Spring Creek, building a home about 500 feet south of the cemetery. Here they founded a cotton and timber plantation that they named Pleasant Bend. The Morse-Bragg cemetery rests on a tiny remnant of that large southern plantation, whose inhabitants came to exploit a two-fold natural resource in early Harris County: timber along Buffalo Bayou, and cotton on the prairies. The Agur Morse family's Pleasant Bend Plantation ultimately spread out over nearly eight square miles of what is now heavily urban

Morse-Bragg (Pleasant Bend) Cemetery -3- Harris County Historical Commission Dan M Worrall July 5, 2015 Figure 1

White Oak Bayou

Allen Reynolds Houston, 1836 Buffalo Sawmill, 1831 Bayou Moore Camp, Thomas 1839 Agur Morse Habermacher Plantation and Wheaton’s Farm, 1841 Morse-Bragg Ford and Inn, 1831 Cemetery, 1851

John Taylor home, 1824 Pine (Piney) Buckman Canfield/ Harriet George Home and Inn,1838 Harrisburg, Point Area of Figure 2 1826 Brays 0 Miles 5 Bayou

White Oak Bayou

San Felipe - Harrisburg Wagon Road, 1830

Buffalo Allen Reynolds Houston, 1836 Bayou Sawmill, 1831

Moore Camp, Agur Morse Thomas 1839 Habermacher Plantation and Wheaton’s Farm, 1841 Morse-Bragg Ford and Inn, 1831 Cemetery, 1851

John Taylor home, 1824 Buckman Canfield/ Harriet George Prairie Pine (Piney) Harrisburg, Point Home and Inn,1838 1826 Pine Forest (long and shortleaf pine, oak) Brays Riparian Forest (oak, hickory, magnolia, pine) Bayou

The San Felipe wagon road of 1831 in Western Harris County, with a few landmarks mentioned by early travelers. White Oak Figure 2 Bayou

Mixed Riparian and Pine Forest

2

1 4 3 Buffalo 6 Bayou 5 7 14 Houston 8 9 12 1 mile John Kell Morse Farm 10 11 15 16 1 John Kell Morse home, 1857 2 Barton's ford 13 3 Henry Morse home, ca 1868 Agur Morse 4 Dutchman's ford Pleasant Bend 5 Morse gristmill, sawmill and millpond Piney Point Plantation 5 Crawford/Kolbe nursery, 1838 1 mile 1851-1865 7 Rocky ford 8 Agur T. Morse home and Tall Grass Prairie Morse-Bragg cemetery, 1851 9 McGowen-McFee farm, 1849 Pleasant Bend 10 Early campsite with spring, used Plantation by Clinton Moore, 1839 11 Buffalo Bayou Community Church, extension 1870. Nearby, Elizabeth Morse Grant home Pleasant Bend 12 Early sawmill, probably 1831, abandoned by 1846 Historical area, 1830s-1880 Tall Grass Prairie 13 William and Hannah Morse home, 1863 1 mile 14 Allen Reynolds mill, 1831; house Charles Shearn gristmill, 1846 cemetery wagon road 15 Lovely Canada Baptist Church, 1870s-1939 (AfricanBrays American) sawmill spring 16 Jordan Banks farm,Bayou 1870s near-west Houston (Figure 2). By the middle of the 1850s they had built a cotton gin and a grist mill, and had founded a plantation school. Agur was a noted early leader in growing cotton on the dry Houston prairie, when most other production was confined to the Brazos and Colorado river bottoms. Agur's brother, Rev. John Kell Morse (1808-1863) and his wife Caroline A. Jones Morse (1820-1864) held Methodist church services on the plantation. The cemetery is the final resting place of this antebellum family and some of their neighbors, employees, and African- American slaves. The southern ante-bellum plantation phase for Harris County lasted little more than two decades before the Civil War intervened. The Morse family was deeply involved in supporting the war effort, both at home and at the front. Three of Agur's sons served in the CSA army (two were in the City's own Bayou City Guards, which was part of General John Bell Hood's famed Texas Brigade in Lee's Army of Northern Virginia). Lieutenant Agur Morse, at age 60, led the City of Houston's Beauregard Cavalry (Home Guard) throughout the war. He also donated corn, grown on the plantation, to desperate families of Houston's Confederate soldiers during the war.5 All of this was to support the plantation lifestyle that he and other southern immigrants had only very recently brought to Harris County. That life came to a chaotic end in Houston in early 1865, with civil unrest, floods of arriving Southern deserters from the fields of war, and triumphant Federal troops on the way. Lieutenant Morse, still in command of the Home Guard, died at his home of typhoid fever on April 10, a day after Appomattox. Although Harris County was spared the destruction of battle, former plantation life at Pleasant Bend came to an abrupt halt, and with Agur's death it was left to Grace to deal with the immediate aftermath. Grace's son Henry was maimed in battle, and George was stricken with a lengthy illness resulting from the rigors of Confederate service. Another son, William, died soon after the war, probably of cholera, and her son-in-law, Lovett Taft, died of yellow fever in 1864. Agur's brother Rev. John Kell Morse and his wife had died from consumption in 1863 and 1864. The family's money, in Confederate currency, vanished. With arrival of Federal troops and a new city government, the Morse family's old contacts in city and county government were gone overnight. Slave labor was no longer readily available to work the cotton fields, resulting in collapse of the plantation economy across the South, including Pleasant Bend. Grace Morse was forced to sell off most of the plantation's land, reserving only a small plot to protect the old family – and plantation – cemetery. Her returning sons faced a world with scant employment.

Morse-Bragg (Pleasant Bend) Cemetery -4- Harris County Historical Commission Dan M Worrall July 5, 2015 And yet, out of this total disaster, the two injured sons built (or possibly re-built) a steam sawmill along Buffalo Bayou and took the first baby steps toward entering modern Houston, by generating employment for a large, ethnically-diverse group of returning Confederate soldiers, German immigrant craftsmen, and newly-freed African Americans. Some of those in this last group had only a few years earlier toiled without pay on the family's plantation. Others in the family ran small shops in nearby Houston, leaving the old plantation life behind as life moved forward in a completely different direction. These stories, told in more detail below, are of the people whose mortal remains rest in this graveyard. Long forgotten by all but a few descendants of the family and of the neighborhood people who were buried there, and by historians and local neighbors, the cemetery has been under threat of development for decades. It is a place well worth protecting.

II. OVERVIEW Location and history of the cemetery. The Morse-Bragg Cemetery is located on South Wynden Drive in West Houston, just west of Loop 610 and north of Post Oak Boulevard (Figure 3). In 1874, Grace Morse, the widow of Agur Tomlinson Morse and executrix of his estate, deeded a one acre plot, by then already in service as "the family burial ground of the Morse Family," to be used "exclusively for a burial ground for the Morse Family and their decedents and other neighbors of the surrounding neighborhood." In addition, she deeded an adjacent one- third acre to Benjamin A. Bragg "to be used only and exclusively as a burial ground for B. A. Bragg, his family and descendants."6 (Figure 4). An early map of the cemetery appears in the Gaut subdivision map of 1901, which was surveyed in 1898 (Figure 5). It had a roughly square shape, and an E-W entry road on its southwest corner. That road led to South Post Oak Lane. In the early 20th century, this was a very rural area. As Houston began to grow westward, developers began to consider repackaging local exurban small farms as a suburban development. At this time, investors wrested the cemetery away from the descendants of the Morse and other families interred there in a 1929 civil court suit.7 The area surrounding and including the cemetery was then platted by developer R.W. Griffith as the West Oaks Subdivision in 1939,8 and South Wynden Drive was built (Figure 6a). When suburban lots were determined, the core of the old cemetery – where the tombstones were concentrated – was kept as a reserve for the subdivision waterworks (Reserve B, Figure 6b-c). Lot owners were each awarded a 1/36 share in

Morse-Bragg (Pleasant Bend) Cemetery -5- Harris County Historical Commission Dan M Worrall July 5, 2015 Fig. 3

General location map showing the location of the Morse-Bragg cemetery, drawn by J K Wagner & Company and included in documentation for Historic Texas Cemetery designation. Fig. 4a Grace Morse’s deeds of 1874 Fig. 4b Fig. 4c Fig. 5a

Area of Enlargement, Figure 5b Morse-Bragg Cemetery

Most of a map of the Gaut subdivision, William White 1/3 League, surveyed in 1898 by A.B. Langarm. An enlargement showing the cemetery follows on the next page. Fig. 5b

Buffalo Bayou

South Post Oak Lane

Morse-Bragg Cemetery

An enlargement of the 1901 Gaut map showing the cemetery and its E-W entrance road, which started at South Post Oak Lane. Fig. 6

A 1 and 1/3 acre cemetery as West Oaks subdivision plat map deeded by Grace Morse in B at dedication, April 6, 1939.The 1874, plotted on County Assessors core of the cemetery had been Block Book of 1939 (v 45, p 140-5) dedicated as “Reserve B”

Enlargement of above C map the land of Reserve B and the waterworks equipment.9 This arrangement was unsuccessfully challenged in the early 1990s by another developer on the basis of a rival deed originating with the heirs of Griffith, the original 1939 developer. Those heirs sold an apparent separate deed to the property to a developer, who petitioned for the cemetery to be declared abandoned and the bodies removed.10 By that time, most of the original tombstones had been stolen or destroyed, and an archeological investigation was mounted to determine the extent and numbers of burials (see discussion below).11 The issue was resolved out of court, when the title company that had insured the rival deed paid a claim to the erstwhile new developer.12 In 2010, Morse descendant Stephen Loy registered the site as a Historic Texas Cemetery with the Texas Historical Commission. In 2014, Harris County Precinct 3 assumed operatorship of the site, in order to preserve and maintain it as a Harris County historic site and cemetery.

Physical description and archeology. The remnant core portion of the cemetery (Figure 7), is approximately 80 feet by 200 feet in size, covering 0.3705 acre. Fully forested since at least 1930, when a first aerial photograph was taken, it lost two thirds of its trees and forest understory to would-be developers in 2008-2011. An iron fence and 17 tombstones were present in Reserve B as late as 1972,13 but by 1992 only two markers, those of Lovett Taft, Jr. (c 1828-1864) and Mary Bragg (1822-1873), and a portion of the iron fence, remained. Those two marble headstones (Figure 8) were hidden by neighbors for safe keeping during the 1990s, and were recently recovered. A primitive native sandstone headstone existed in the cemetery until recently (Figure 8). It was likely quarried at Rocky Ford, a sandstone outcrop in Buffalo Bayou formerly used as a wagon crossing, less than a half mile away. The marker was unfortunately taken from the cemetery during tree clearances in 2011. A McFee family descendant related that several McFee burials were marked by reddish sandstone, and that by the early 1960s the inscriptions on the soft stone markers had weathered away.14 A small concrete headstone base remains (Figure 9), one of few outward signs of the cemetery today. There are scattered bits of broken tombstones and small fragments of brick-and- concrete gravesite surrounds on the few parts of the cemetery not covered by a layer of fill dirt, brought in during construction of adjacent townhomes in the early 2000s. Two important physical studies were done in 1992-1993 that reveal the structure and partial contents of the cemetery. A history study conducted by J.K. Wagner & Company in 1992

Morse-Bragg (Pleasant Bend) Cemetery -6- Harris County Historical Commission Dan M Worrall July 5, 2015 Fig. 7

Morse-Bragg Cemetery (Reserve B)

NORTH April, 2014 Google Earth view Fig. 8

Tombstones of Mary Bragg (1822-1873) and Lovett Taft Jr. (c 1828-1864). These were hidden by neighbors in 1992 to keep them from being stolen, and have now been recovered for re-setting in the cemetery. Mary Bragg’s husband, Benjamin A. Bragg, purchased 1/3 acre from Grace Morse to form the southern part of the cemetery. Lovett Taft Jr. married Agur Morse’s daughter Elizabeth, and they had several children. He owned a retail business in Houston.

A primitive native sandstone headstone in the cemetery, 2010. It was likely quarried at Rocky Ford in Buffalo Bayou, a short distance from the cemetery. It was taken from the cemetery during earth moving and tree clearances in 2011. Fig. 9 included a mapping of visible signs of graves, and was made just after the two marble headstones had been removed by neighbors for safe-keeping. A number of apparent grave depressions were observed, organized into 5 or 6 east-west oriented grave rows (Figure 9). There were also a large number of red cedar trees (Juniperus virginiana), some providing a boundary for the center access lane. Two red cedars still remain at the cemetery today, along with a number of cut stumps. Such cedars are prevalent as ornamentals in pioneer-era cemeteries, such as the old Columbia Cemetery in West Columbia, and the Oakwood Cemetery in Huntsville. Other ornamental plants observed in the study included two clumps of small lilies, one of which is still there as of late 2014. Ornamental oyster shells were observed at one grave depression along the east edge of the plot, and were uncovered by archeologists while excavating another. Following the Wagner study, an archeological excavation was ordered by Hughes, Waters and Askanase, LLP and DeLange, Hudspeth and Pitman, LLP, as part of ongoing litigation-related research. Diana Dismukes, archeologist with BC&AD Archeology, Inc., headed the archeological investigation in 1993 to determine if burials had been made and if human remains were still in place. The project was for testing purposes only, at three depressions marked from Wagner’s study. The archeological crew excavated through natural soil until human remains were found, at which time the attorneys were called to view the findings. Three test units were set in different areas of the cemetery, three feet wide and fifteen feet long to assure access by the excavator crew. Human remains were encountered at the first two of these sites. The first site extended from the existing headstone base toward the north. At 3.35 feet depth, the top of a wooden casket with parallel sides (hence a four-sided casket) was found, with half of the top formed by (broken) glass. Such "viewing caskets" were popular around 1890. Remains of a large man were found inside. Wagner and others in the archeological study interpreted this to be the remains of Louis Bering (1843-1891). Louis was married to Eugenia Morse Bering (1843-1866), buried at the cemetery. Immediately to the north of that grave were two additional burials, each with a wooden coffin (six-sided). Each of the graves was oriented in the grave row mapped by Wagner, with feet facing to the east, as was the practice in rural cemeteries of the time. At the second site excavated, near the eastern edge of the cemetery (Figure 9), there were oyster shells and parts of three vases in the covering soil - obvious grave ornamentation. A wood

Morse-Bragg (Pleasant Bend) Cemetery -7- Harris County Historical Commission Dan M Worrall July 5, 2015 coffin contained the remains of a "robust adult." The coffin, like the others, was oriented perpendicular to the grave row described by Wagner, with feet facing east. The final, third site excavated was outside of the area of the grave rows described by Wagner. No remains were found. Neighborhood children of the 1970s reported small children's tombstones a short distance to the west of that last site (Figure 9).

Known burials. The most complete historical research of burials at the site was done by J.K. Wagner & Company in 1993-1995,15 using Harris County archives and other historical resources, as well as a genealogical study of the Houston Morse family by Marie Marshall in 1975.16 The following list (Table 1) is based upon Wagner's work, with a few additions and deletions based upon sources recently found by the author. Research to date has identified 34 individuals buried in the Morse-Bragg Cemetery, ranging in time from 1857 to 1928. Most are members of the Morse, McFee, Bragg, and Banks families. Five of these 34 are African Americans, one of whom was formerly enslaved; one was a member of Stephen F. Austin’s Old Three Hundred; and seven were Confederate veterans. There are undoubtedly others buried here for whom no definitive records have been found, especially among people who died in the 19th century, when this area was very rural and death certificates did not yet exist.

Morse-Bragg (Pleasant Bend) Cemetery -8- Harris County Historical Commission Dan M Worrall July 5, 2015 TABLE 1. Known Interments in the Morse-Bragg Cemetery**

AGUR TOMLINSON MORSE FAMILY (15) Agur Tomlinson Morse (1801-1865) Pioneer settler from New Haven, Connecticut via South Carolina and Mississippi; owner of Pleasant Bend Plantation; head of the City of Houston’s Home Guard during Civil War; his widow Grace Morse protected the family burial ground by deed in 1874. Died of typhoid fever. William A. Morse (1831-1866) Son of Agur Morse; born in South Carolina; Houston businessman; Confederate veteran. He is thought to have died from cholera.17 William died July 23, 1866 according to state Masonic records. A 1923 Harris County affidavit by his granddaughter, Hattie Monaghan, claims that he predeceased his father,18 but such seems incorrect. His wife, Hannah Canfield, married twice more. Henry Augustus Morse (1840-1876) Son of Agur Morse; Confederate veteran; co-operator of Morse sawmill after the War. His wife Cecelia Morse kept a Civil War diary of life on the Pleasant Bend Plantation.19 Smallpox. Infant Morse (1861) Child of Henry and Cecilia Morse. George W. Morse (1845-c 1885)* Son of Agur Morse; Confederate veteran. George was co-owner of the Morse sawmill after the War with his brother Henry. Anna M. Dowd Morse (c 1852-1877) First wife of George W. Morse Willie D. Morse (aft 1873-1887) Child of George W. Morse and Anna M. Dowd. Mary E. Morse (c 1847-1898) Second wife of George W. Morse. After George’s death, she became a dressmaker, living in Houston. Frederick Morse (1855-1874) Son of Agur Morse. Never married. Lovett A. Taft , Jr. (1828-1864) Native of Sheffield, Berkshire County, MA; Houston businessman; first husband of Agur Morse’s only daughter, Elizabeth A. Morse Grant (1838-1920). Cousin of President William H. Taft.20 The tombstone was removed by neighbors in the early 1990s for safekeeping, and awaits re-setting in the cemetery. Yellow fever. His son, Lovett A. Taft, III (c. 1861-1889) is buried in Glenwood, in Section C-1, Lot 122, the same lot where his grandmother, Grace Morse, and uncle, Josiah B. Morse, are buried. Mary Ellen Rowley Morse (c 1833-1867) Wife of Agur Morse's son Josiah B. Morse, who is buried at Glenwood Cemetery. Yellow fever. Infant Morse (1863) Child of Mary Ellen Rowley and Josiah B. Morse. Mollie E. Morse (1861-1864) Child of Mary Ellen Rowley and Josiah B. Morse. Infant Morse (1867) Child of Mary Ellen Rowley and Josiah B. Morse. Possibly yellow fever.

Morse-Bragg (Pleasant Bend) Cemetery -9- Harris County Historical Commission Dan M Worrall July 5, 2015 Emma Frazer Bachelder (c 1852-1871) Niece of Grace Morse (via Cecelia Morse diary) and member of Houston First Presbyterian Church. Church records state, “interred near the Morse place.” Her husband, Edmund J. H. Bachelder (1840-1872) was buried at Glenwood, Section West Avenue, Lot 260.

JOHN KELL MORSE FAMILY (4) Rev. John Kell Morse (1808-1863) Pioneer settler from New Haven, Connecticut via South Carolina; brother of Agur T. Morse; traveling Methodist minister; held Methodist church services on the Pleasant Bend Plantation. Death cause is probably consumption. Caroline A. Jones Morse (1820-1864) Pioneer settler; wife of Rev. John Kell Morse; from South Carolina. Death cause is probably consumption. Eugenia Morse Bering (1843-1866) Daughter of John and Caroline Morse; wife of Louis Bering. Cholera. Louis Bering (1840-1891) Pioneer German settler; married Eugenia Morse Bering in Houston on June 1, 1861;21 Confederate veteran. Louis owned a hardware store in Houston after the War. Eugenia died in 1866, and he remarried twice after Eugenia's death, fathering children with both wives. Thought to be buried in half-glass coffin unearthed by archeologists in 1993. Paralysis.

McFEE FAMILY (6) James McFee (1814-1903)* Pioneer settler of Pleasant Bend and Piney Point; born in Delaware of Scots-Irish parents; arrived in Harris County in 1848; farmer, carpenter and carriage-maker; Confederate veteran. Died in old age. Buried at Morse-Bragg, according to granddaughter Cassie McFee Reeder's autobiography.22 Cassandra Hough McFee (1824-1890) Pioneer settler, Pleasant Bend and Piney Point; wife of James McFee. Stroke. Buried at Morse-Bragg, according to Cassie McFee Reeder's autobiography. John H McFee (1852-1888)* Son of James McFee and Cassandra Hough; worked in the Morse sawmill. Caught pneumonia and died after a hunting trip on Buffalo Bayou. Buried at Morse- Bragg, according to Cassie McFee Reeder's autobiography. Joseph S. McFee (1853-1874) Son of James McFee and Cassandra Hough. Buried at Morse-Bragg, according to Cassie McFee Reeder's autobiography.

Morse-Bragg (Pleasant Bend) Cemetery -10- Harris County Historical Commission Dan M Worrall July 5, 2015 Hugh Cecil McFee (1855-1887) Son of James McFee and Cassandra Hough. Died of accidental gunshot in Piney Point. John, Joseph and Hugh were buried in a row in the cemetery, according to Cassie McFee Reeder's autobiography. Aaron Truitt Reeder (1915) Infant child of Cassie McFee Reeder, and great grandson of James McFee. Buried at Morse-Bragg, according to Cassie McFee Reeder's autobiography. Removed to Piney Point Cemetery in 1915, according to Wagner report. Note: There is a detailed discussion of the McFee family below.

BANKS FAMILY (4) Rachel Davis Banks (c 1845-1919)* Wife of Jordan Banks, daughter of Spencer Davis of Louisiana, Rachel Banks was probably brought to Texas as a slave. Domestic servant and mother of fifteen (or perhaps nineteen) children. Texas death certificate lists pneumonia as cause of death on March 13, 1919, and “Moss (Morse) cemetery” as the place of burial. James Banks (c 1868-1927)* Son of Jordan Banks and Rachel Banks. Texas death certificate lists Occupation as “common laborer,” and states that apoplexy was the cause of death on December 7, 1927. It lists the “Moss (Morse) cemetery” as the place of burial.23 Sadie Banks Scott (c 1881-1927)* Daughter of Jordan Banks and Rachel Banks, and husband of Pleasant Scott.24 Worked as a domestic servant. Texas death certificate lists apoplexy as cause of death on April 13, 1927, and “Moss (Morse) cemetery” as the place of burial. Laura Banks Koontz (c 1872-1928) Daughter of Jordan Banks and Rachel Banks. First husband was named Woods, and second husband was John Koontz.25 Worked as a domestic servant. Texas death certificate lists cirrhosis of liver as cause of death on November 23, 1928, and “Lovely Canady” as the place of burial or removal. Lovely Canada Baptist Church was adjacent to the Jordan Banks farm, but had no known cemetery. Laura Koontz was listed amongst Morse-Bragg decedents in the above-mentioned 1929 lawsuit.

BRAGG FAMILY BURIALS (2) Mary Bragg (1822-1873) Born in Vermont; wife of Benjamin A. Bragg. Tombstone was removed by neighbors in the early 1990s for safekeeping, and awaits re-setting. Benjamin A. Bragg (1818-1886) Born in Vermont; husband of Mary Bragg. Co-founder of Morse- Bragg Cemetery, via purchase of 1/3 adjoining acre from Grace Morse. After Mary's death, married Anna (b. c 1834; native of Ireland), continued to live in Texas at time of 1880 census.

Morse-Bragg (Pleasant Bend) Cemetery -11- Harris County Historical Commission Dan M Worrall July 5, 2015

OTHER NEIGHBORHOOD BURIALS (3) Thaddeus Constantine Bell (1822-1871)* “Old 300” settler; reportedly the first male child born in Stephen F.Austin’s colony; planter; Confederate veteran; Superintendent of Texas Prisons after the Civil War. Bought adjacent Dabney Walker farm in 1870. Member of First Presbyterian Church, where his burial is recorded with the note, “interred near Morse place.” Kidney cancer. See detailed discussion below. William H. Keeling (died 1862) Schoolteacher on Pleasant Bend Plantation; kept a diary of ante- bellum plantation life with the Morse family. Patsy Thomas (c1872-1910) Listed amongst Morse-Bragg decedents in the above-mentioned 1929 lawsuit. African American, daughter of Sidney Sullivan and Celia Francis Sullivan, who lived next door to Jordan Banks at the time of the 1880 Federal census.26 She married John Thomas in 1895 in Harris County,27 who was a teamster and hack driver, according to Houston City Directories of 1908-1911. No death certificate for Patsy Thomas has been found.

** Above list based upon work of J. K. Wagner & Company in 1993-1995, with a few additions and deletions based upon sources recently found by the author. Additions to the Wagner list are marked by an asterisk.

Morse-Bragg (Pleasant Bend) Cemetery -12- Harris County Historical Commission Dan M Worrall July 5, 2015 Disease on the bayou. Houston and parts of rural Harris County along Buffalo Bayou were dangerous places to live in the middle of the nineteenth century. Many of the early settlers lived along the edge of the bayou in the shade of the trees of the riparian forest, which left them especially vulnerable to mosquito-borne diseases. Yellow fever was the largest killer at the Pleasant Bend Plantation, as can be seen from the preceding list of Morse-Bragg burials.28 It was especially dangerous after overflows of the bayou during flooding left behind breeding ponds for mosquitoes. At that time, the connection between yellow fever and the mosquitoes that spread it had not yet been made, and window screens were not yet in use. There are historical records of Houston yellow fever epidemics in 1838-39, 1845, 1847, 1853, 1855 (quarantine), 1856 and 1857 (sporadic), 1858 and 1859 (quarantine), 1863, 1867, 1871 (sporadic) and 1897.29 Some of the burials in the Morse-Bragg Cemetery relate to these epidemics, for example the death of Mary Ellen Rowley Morse in 1867. But yellow fever could appear at other times too, as when it felled Lovett Taft Jr. in 1864. Other killers were cholera and typhoid fever, spread by contaminated water. In the earliest days, settlers drank from spring creeks or even from the Bayou, which were easily contaminated by livestock and humans. As settlers began to dig open wells, usually 10 to 30 feet in depth, these too were susceptible to contamination if livestock or humans lived close by. There were cholera epidemics in Houston in 1845-46 and 1866 (quarantine).30 Eugenia Morse Bering and William A. Morse were felled by the cholera epidemic of 1866. Typhoid fever, another disease spread by contaminated drink and food, was sporadically present, and was the cause of death of Agur Morse in 1865. With his position in the Home Guard, he was traveling and especially vulnerable to such an ailment. Another killer was smallpox, which killed Civil War veteran Henry Morse in 1874, when the Houston newspapers mentioned that the disease was frequenting the city. There was another smallpox epidemic in Houston in 1890.

The African American Banks Family and the Lovely Canada Baptist Church. Five burials are of African Americans in the neighborhood. All but one of those burials are of the family of Jordan Banks (c1845-1933) and Rachel Davis Banks (c1845-1919). Jordan Banks was born in Virginia, and arrived in Texas in about 1860,31 in all likelihood as a slave working on the Pleasant Bend Plantation. He stayed on with the Morse family after the Civil War; the diary of

Morse-Bragg (Pleasant Bend) Cemetery -13- Harris County Historical Commission Dan M Worrall July 5, 2015 Cecelia Morse (wife of Henry Morse) mentions him as a family servant in an entry of June 27, 1869. The 1910 and 1930 Federal Census records show that he claimed to have given service to the Confederacy, although he was a young teenager when the war broke out. In 1870, Jordan Banks lived with his wife Rachel Davis and their children Maria Banks (born c 1865), James Banks (c 1868-1927) and Fred Banks (b. 1870), next door to Henry Morse, as noted in the Federal census of that year. Jordan Banks was then working at the Morse sawmill, and listed as a “sawmill laborer.” In August 1875, he purchased an eight acre plot along San Felipe Road, on part of the former plantation (Figure 2).32 His wife Rachel, born in Louisiana, eventually bore at least fifteen children from 1865 to 1893 while they lived on the small farm. Three of those children, James, Sadie Banks Scott (c 1881-1927) and Laura Banks Koontz (c 1872-1928) are buried with their mother Rachel Banks in the Morse cemetery, according to their death certificates and the notes of the aforementioned 1929 lawsuit, where developers wrested ownership of the cemetery away from Morse and Bragg heirs.33 Jordan Banks, the family patriarch, outlived those family members and was buried in Houston’s Oak Park Cemetery (now known as Golden Gate Cemetery) in northeast Houston in 1933, according to his death certificate. On January 29, 1876, Jordan Banks and two other men, Jack Alfred and Quince Oliver (c1830-1911), acting as trustees, purchased one acre of land across San Felipe Road from the Banks farm (Figure 2) for the purpose of building a church, a few years later to become known as the Lovely Canada Baptist Church.34 Elder S.H. Francis was the first pastor of that church.35 One fifth of that land was later purchased by Harris County when they widened San Felipe Road in 1898, at which time the trustees of the Lovely Canada Baptist Church included Alena Allen, Allen Williams and Quince Oliver’s son, Jerry Oliver (b. c1860).36 In 1938, the River Oaks Corporation bought the church land and sold the church another larger plot, on the southwest corner of modern Timmons Lane at Westheimer, as part of the expansion of the exclusive River Oaks subdivision.37 By 1953, the church appears to have been demolished at that latter site, according to historic aerial photos on Google Earth. The neighborhood around the original church became known as Lovely Canada, which is listed as the city or address of residence on the death certificates of Rachel Banks and her daughter Sadie Banks Scott. The death certificate of another daughter, Laura Banks Koontz (c 1878-1928) specified her burial at “Lovely Canada,” although the 1929 trial notes make it clear

Morse-Bragg (Pleasant Bend) Cemetery -14- Harris County Historical Commission Dan M Worrall July 5, 2015 she was buried at Morse-Bragg. The death certificates of two other daughters, Flordia Robinson (c 1893-1916) and Julia Banks Robinson (c 1873-1918), show their burial at Lovely Canada Baptist Church, as do the death certificates of other members of the extended Banks family.38 In the testimony at the 1929 trial, two Italian farmers living nearby mentioned seeing "Negro" burials at the cemetery. According to Cosmos Lomontello's testimony, "There is a road over to it [the cemetery], but I don't know if it is a public road or anything about that, I don't know. ...No one has been driving that road since I have been there. They buried three Negros there, no white people that I know of since I have been there. They are still there, there is two tombstones there....They buried three Negros there several years ago, they came on this land and when they got here they stopped and did not go any further. They got in off the road by taking down the [fence in the] gap."39 In a 1995 lawsuit deposition by McFee descendant Allen Reeder (and a brother of Aaron Reeder, an infant buried at Morse-Bragg in 1915), he said that he visited the cemetery with his father in 1937, and that his father told him that "two more persons had been buried after his brother and that they were believed to be Negros from the neighborhood ... He recalls his father mentioning that the cemetery was about two acres and remembers seeing many tomb markers, some being wooden."40 Because the Banks family members who buried their decedents entered the cemetery from the southwest, along the old road, it would seem likely that the burials were in the southern Bragg portion of the cemetery, either in Reserve B or the part of the original cemetery that lay on the adjacent lot to the west, where townhomes are today. Before 2008, there was a suburban house on that lot. According to Wagner, bodies were encountered there "when someone tried to put in a swimming pool and ran into graves in the 1970s."41 It is possible that some of their family’s remains were removed during that construction, or alternately that they still lie on the southern part of Reserve B. A partial archeological investigation of that adjacent lot was undertaken by trenching in the early 1990s, but the archeologists were able to dig only in the narrow grassy area to the east of the existing house, driveway and swimming pool, directly adjacent to Reserve B. No graves were found in that area.

Pleasant Bend Plantation, 1850-1860. Agur Morse (1801-1865) was born in New Haven, Connecticut, and was a fifth generation descendant of John Moss (1603-1707), a planter and one of the founders of that former colony and city. In about 1818, his father, Josiah Boothe

Morse-Bragg (Pleasant Bend) Cemetery -15- Harris County Historical Commission Dan M Worrall July 5, 2015 Morse (1775-1847) moved the family to Sumter County, South Carolina and began a successful cotton plantation.42 Here Agur met and married Grace Baldwin,43 in 1830. In 1834, former Chickasaw Indian lands in northern Mississippi were opened up for settlement, and by at least 1837 Josiah and his now adult son Agur moved there with their families; by then each of these two men owned four slaves.44 They grew prosperous, and helped found the town of Colbert, Mississippi. Agur was a founder of the Colbert Male and Female Academy in 1838,45 and bought additional property in the area in 1841 and 1846.46 Then disaster struck in the form of the great Tombigbee River flood of 1847, which destroyed Colbert town, and with it the Morse's plantation and warehouse. The family took refuge in a high bank along the river to the north, and with other Colbert residents they founded the new town of Barton.47 A despondent Agur wrote in May 1847 to revoke his former last will and testament, noting bitterly that "circumstances have changed. My parents are both dead, [and] property I then possessed by misfortune has been swept away [and I am] compelled to begin anew and make something for my family and little children."48 Agur started a ferry operation at Barton in 1848, realizing that closure of the ferry after the flood would doom his plantation's future. That ferry was soon abolished and moved elsewhere by the petition of others,49 and the Morses faced a rocky future. Agur sold his land there in 1849,50 and although the Morses were listed on the 1850 US census in Lowndes County MS, Agur Morse and his wife Grace, five children and an unknown number of slaves were soon Gone To Texas. According to historian Janet Wagner, Agur Morse "purchased 738 acres of the William White League ([later site of the] South Wynden [cemetery] included) on December 26, 1851 for $140051.... He also purchased 160 acres five months later in the same League.52 Two years later, Morse purchased 1476 acres in the White and Sage Surveys (Tanglewood etc.). One year later, he purchased 600 improved acres of the Reynolds League (River Oaks) with sawmill improvements, fields and woods ([modern] River Oaks Country Club included). In 1860 Morse purchased 1650 acres, the balance of the Reynolds League with improvements."53 He also purchased 150 more acres in the William White League that same year.54 Fairly large even by southern standards at nearly 5000 acres, the complete plantation by 1860 contained all or most of present day Tanglewood, the Post Oak/Galleria area, River Oaks, and much of West University and Southside Place. A map, Figure 10, shows many of the land transactions on the White and adjacent Sage and Reynolds tracts. The family named their plantation Pleasant Bend, for a

Morse-Bragg (Pleasant Bend) Cemetery -16- Harris County Historical Commission Dan M Worrall July 5, 2015 Fig. 10

A compilation map made from deed records of the William White 1/3 League, Harris County, showing the Morse property and cemetery during the 1850s-1870s. From Janet K Wagner & Co, Houston. nearby bend in Buffalo Bayou, which formed the northern border of the Morse holdings. Agur's grown sons, William (1831-c 1864) and Josiah (1833-1889), neither interested in farming, both opened retail shops in the nearby small town of Houston in the 1850s.55 By 1857, Agur was joined by his brother Rev. John Kell Morse (1808-1863) with his wife, Caroline A. Jones (1820-1864). John was an ordained Methodist preacher who had a traveling circuit in South Carolina. The couple left their home in South Carolina and bought a 300-acre farm that lay along the western edge of the Pleasant Bend plantation. John held church services at Agur’s plantation. Numerous accounts attest to Agur's skill in running the plantation, including this one from the Houston Weekly Telegraph of June 30, 1858: PLEASANT BEND. This beautiful place, which is situated about eight miles from this city, is one of the most pleasant places in Harris County. Several extensive improvements have lately gone up. A.T. Morse has lately erected a large Gin House [for processing cotton], also several new farms have been laid out. Crops look exceedingly well in this neighborhood. The neighbors meet every other Sunday, and have preaching by the Rev. J. Morse.56

Agur seems to have been on the cutting edge of Harris County farming, as this Weekly Telegraph article of August 18, 1858 declares: The "mean Houston prairies" are a byword and reproach. But they have been proved productive. Whitmarsh, of the Union Press [a cotton press and warehouse in Houston], in this city yesterday, finished bailing seventeen bales raised by A.T.Morse, Esq., on the bald Houston prairies last year, at about two-thirds of a bale to the acre. This was good cropping for that year anywhere. The fact is, nearly every acre of Harris County prairies may be made to produce first rate crops of cotton by cultivation. The proximity of these lands to market, ought to make them valuable if nothing else, and when their capabilities are fully tested, we shall see a population upon them that will astonish old settlers.57

There was yet more praise in the Weekly Telegraph of May 25, 1859. This article reflects upon the conundrum that arriving immigrants were then heading west in large numbers to settle in dangerous central Texas Indian lands, when Agur Morse was demonstrating that there was plenty of good and inexpensive farm land in safe, peaceful Harris County: For the Telegraph, RAMBLES THROUGH HARRIS CO., No. 1.

Morse-Bragg (Pleasant Bend) Cemetery -17- Harris County Historical Commission Dan M Worrall July 5, 2015 According to your request I will sketch for your paper such matters as I think may interest your readers, and conduce to the wealth of our county, during my perambulations through its limits. Thus far my explorations have not extended more than six miles from Houston, but even within that distance I have found much to interest me.... I found that the agricultural resources of Harris County have been vastly underrated. A few years since Mr. A.T. Morse purchased a tract of land which by addition since made amounts now to 2100 acres. The average cost of the whole tract was about one dollar per acre. It is situated some six miles south-west of Houston, near Buffalo Bayou. On this tract of land Mr. M. has made 2/3 of a bale of cotton per acre, planted 8th and 9th of April. He has realized fifty bushels of corn per acre on a portion of his farm. He planted corn one season 7th and 8th of April and had no rain, worth mentioning, until the crop was matured and yet that season he realized from thirty to fifty bushel per acre. Mr. M. says he needs nothing but to have his ground thoroughly broken up during winter to ensure a good crop of corn. He thinks his prairie land stands a drought better than the Brazos bottom lands. Now how many acres of land similar to those cultivated by Mr. Morse does Harris County contain? Will someone – some of our county surveyors – present or former – inform your readers? Why expose our heads to be scalped by the Indians in search of good soil, when we have it in such abundance in our own county? I found the lands in the vicinity of Mr. Morse are rapidly attracting occupants. The grazing facilities are superior. Farming and stock-raising can there be advantageously combined. A school is in demand. A good teacher could make a support now with a prospect of doing better.58

That same year, Grace Morse established a school at the plantation, headed by William Keeling, a homeless traveler who was 'adopted' by the Agur Morse family.59 He is buried at the cemetery. With the school and with Rev. John Kell Morse's Methodist Church, there was a strong beginning of the Pleasant Bend community. It was not to last.

The Civil War at Pleasant Bend. In November 1860, Abraham Lincoln, an abolitionist, was elected President, and that event sent shock waves throughout Texas. Governor Sam Houston, who only 15 years previous had helped guide Texas into the United States, was against secession. In the previous 15 years, however, the state had changed markedly, with many rural southerners having moved to empty lands outside the old Austin colony, bringing with them both their slaves and the plantation economy.60 The Morses were part of that movement. Sensing that Governor Houston would not act with the other southern states in considering secession, citizens in various towns and counties began to petition the Governor to call a special Legislative session

Morse-Bragg (Pleasant Bend) Cemetery -18- Harris County Historical Commission Dan M Worrall July 5, 2015 to decide what the State should do. In Houston, a mass meeting was held on December 1, 1860 to consider the matter. On the motion of Thomas Lubbock, a Texas Ranger and secessionist, a committee of 21 prominent Harris County and Houston citizens was formed to draft a petition for the Governor. Among them was Agur Morse, along with other prominent citizens like William Marsh Rice and William R. Baker. Their report began: That danger is imminent, and that our social institutions are doomed to ultimate destruction under the domination of Black Republicanism, either by the strong arm of power or by a sure process undermining them, is too apparent to be questioned.... Resistance in some shape is a necessity; without it we cannot reasonably hope for a settlement of the conflict - with it we may secure our future peace and safety, and liberty. Whether in the Union, or out of it as a separate nation, the march of events may determine.61

They recommended a plan to elect delegates for a State convention, and further recommended that the statewide convention be held in late January 1861 in order to decide the State's immediate course of action. Those recommendations were echoed in much of the State, and the arguments eventually won State legislature support over the objections of Sam Houston. At the convention, it was recommended that Texas secede.62 By that time, seven other states had already seceded. War began on April 12, 1861. The city and county were at that time dominated by southern planters who were strongly pro-secession. By August 1861, ten full Confederate companies had been raised in Harris County. These Harris County volunteers represented fully 12% of the white population of the county (24% of the white males),63 and that number was to increase later in the war, with conscription backfilling the ranks of the fallen soldiers (by battle or sickness) and deserters. These units included the Houston's own Bayou City Guards (Co. A, Fifth Texas Infantry), which was sent to Virginia. Agur's sons George (1845-1885) and Henry (1840-1876) in 1862) joined that unit. Agur's eldest son, William, joined Capt. Capt. J. W. Lawrence’s Co. D, 1st Infantry Regiment, Texas State Troops in 1863, and later in the war transferred to Bourland's Regiment of the Texas Cavalry. Louis Bering, son-in-law of Agur's brother, Rev. John Morse, joined the 26th Texas Cavalry. Of the Agur and John Morse families, every able bodied male between the ages of sixteen and forty except one (Josiah Morse, who as a pharmacist may have been exempt) volunteered; this family was all-in, fully supporting their adopted State and their southern plantation life style.

Morse-Bragg (Pleasant Bend) Cemetery -19- Harris County Historical Commission Dan M Worrall July 5, 2015 Agur Morse himself, at the age of 60, organized a Home Guard unit for the City of Houston, called the Beauregard Cavalry.64 Such units were organized to keep public order on the home front and to round up deserters and runaway slaves, many of whom were in desperate straits and thus often involved in crimes against persons and property. A good general description of a home guard unit from the admittedly limited perspective of a young eyewitness in New Orleans perhaps can serve to describe the unit in Houston: Every afternoon found us [boys] around in Coliseum Place, standing or lying on the grass watching the dress parade of the Confederate Guards. Most of us had fathers or uncles in the long, spotless, gray, white-gloved ranks that stretched in such faultless alignment down the hard, harsh turf of our old ball-ground. This was ...the home guard. The merchants, bankers, underwriters, judges, real-estate owners, and capitalists of the Anglo-American part of the city were all present or accounted for in that long line...Here and there among them were individuals who, unaided, had clothed and armed companies, squadrons, battalions, and sent them to the Cumberland and the Potomac. A good three-fourths of them had sons on distant battlefields, some living, some dead….And they really served for much. [As] a gendarmerie they relieve…many Confederate soldiers of police duty... and enabled them to man forts and breastworks.65

Although clearly the leader of the Beauregard Cavalry, Agur's rank is somewhat unclear, as official records for Home Guard units in Texas are nearly non-existent. Some thought that he held the rank of Major, because Captain Burns of the 5th Texas Infantry wrote home after that army unit's engagement at Second Manassas that "None of the officers of the Bayou City Guards were hurt, [and] none of Major Morse's boys [George and Henry] were hurt."66 However, when Agur wrote an advertisement in the Tri-Weekly Telegraph in early 1864, looking for his horse and saddle that had been stolen at a theatre in Houston, he claimed only the rank of Lieutenant.67 His obituary notice, discussed below, refers to him as Captain. Other male members of the Pleasant Bend community were also called to War duty. Carpenter and carriage-maker James McFee (1814-1900) enrolled as Corporal in Capt. Sheldon’s Co. B, First State Troops, Texas Infantry (the same unit as William Morse). A compilation of war records of all known Veterans of the Civil War buried at the Morse-Bragg cemetery is included as Table 2. Hard times. The absence of the young men was intensely wearing on their wives and families. Henry Morse's young wife, Cecelia Hough Morse, wrote in her diary on April 13, 1862:

Morse-Bragg (Pleasant Bend) Cemetery -20- Harris County Historical Commission Dan M Worrall July 5, 2015 Mr. Morrison told me he had just seen a letter from the Bayou City Guards and they had just been in a fight and one skirmish but one or two had been killed. What fate our loved ones share we do not know [Henry and George were both in this unit]. God hope for the best. We can hear nothing from them [in the way of official pronouncements], only occasional answers, and generally speaking they are false and not worth reflecting. Oh, how I long for a letter, just one more...but Providence rules all things and to Him we entrust ourselves and feel that all will be well....Oh, are our friends to come back to us safe and sound or [has] God ordered them to be of that number that will never return? My little darling [son Emmett] is just six months old and very interesting indeed. Would to God his Pa could see him....How my heart does ache. I am so afraid when news does reach us it will be of sorrow, and God knows what will become of us if this present state of things exists long. Our families are broken up and our homes left desolate and all is broken up.68

In 1863 Agur Morse donated corn meal for the destitute in Houston;69 many families of soldiers were in increasingly desperate economic straits as the war dragged on. During this time, when all the Morse family adult males were engaged in the war effort, it is most likely that day to day operations of the plantation fell to Grace Morse and her African-American slaves. Meanwhile, Rev. Morse and his wife Caroline died of consumption in 1863 and 1864, leaving their young son George Edward Morse an orphan, to be raised by the Theodore Bering family (the brother of Louis Bering, who had married Rev. Morse's daughter Eugenia).70 Lovett Taft Jr., the husband of Agur's daughter Elizabeth, died of a fever in 1864. Josiah, Agur's son, and his wife Mary Ellen lost an infant in 1863 and a daughter, Mollie, who died suddenly in 1864.71 There was very little to cheer about on the Morse home front during the war years. Agur's seventeen year old son George, serving in Virginia, was stricken with a serious illness and hospitalized in Richmond, then furloughed for a year and a half to Texas to convalesce. His son Henry, with courage and amazing luck, survived intense fighting and extremely high unit casualties at Second Manassas, Antietam, Gettysburg, Chickamauga, and The Battle of the Wilderness, but his luck ran out when was severely wounded in his arm at the last battle of 1864 for the Texas Brigade, at the battle of Darbytown Road on October 7, only six months before Lee’s surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia. He was sent to hospital in Richmond, then on to Mobile to convalesce, his war over a few months before surrender.72 Both Henry and George received paroles (the equivalent of an honorable discharge for troops who had

Morse-Bragg (Pleasant Bend) Cemetery -21- Harris County Historical Commission Dan M Worrall July 5, 2015 served a government that no longer existed) in Houston – Henry on June 28, and George on July 3, 1865. Hood's Brigade, Henry's unit, started the war with over 5,000 men, and by 1865 mustered only a few hundred at Appomattox, an indication of the horrors seen by Henry and George during the war. Back in Texas, as the war came to a close in late 1864 and early 1865, the work of Agur Morse and the Home Guard became increasingly more difficult in ever more difficult circumstances as the economy worsened, the public mood darkened, and Confederate army desertions grew.73 In most cases, captured deserters faced return to the front, and in some cases even death, so they were not to be captured easily. The Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph newspaper records that Agur Morse was paid directly by the Houston City Council at several intervals during the war, specifically on May 21, 1862 ($200), July 28, 1862 ($9.75), and March 20, 1863 ($60). We don't know precisely what those payments were for, because Houston city council records of 1848-1865 were destroyed by Federal troops when they were quartered in city council chambers upon their arrival in the City in June 1865. 74 The irregularity of the payment amounts and intervals suggests that these were repayments of expenses incurred, or possibly even bounty payments for captured deserters, rather than salaries (it seems certain that Agur and others in his unit volunteered their services, which was commonly the case for Home Guard units). By early 1865, as the news from the front grew progressively more dire, Houston began to experience civil unrest as floods of deserters passed through the city, and as citizens began to revolt against rampant private and government fraud and corruption. People began to point fingers, questioning why local and state government officials had not done more to confront corruption that harmed the overall war effort. District Court Judge William P. Hill, serving the Eastern Texas District, formed a "Grand Jury of the Confederate Court" to deal with the worsening situation, hoping to speed up the process of ferreting out wrongdoers of all stripes before public confidence in government institutions further eroded.75 On January 20, 1865, a panel of 19 prominent Harris County citizens was formed, including Agur Morse as well as George W. Frazer, T. M. Bagby, and Andrew Crawford. Of this group, the Tri-Weekly Telegraph stated that

Morse-Bragg (Pleasant Bend) Cemetery -22- Harris County Historical Commission Dan M Worrall July 5, 2015 It will be seen that the gentlemen composing this Grand Jury are all men of character, and in whom the public will not fail to have the utmost confidence....We have good ground to hope that the present session of the court will have an important bearing on the respect of the people and their servants for the laws of the Confederacy.76

The Grand Jury reported out on Monday, March 6, 1865, having served a great number of indictments on "vast and various" crimes to the District Court. With regard to the larger issue of the overall state of the Confederacy in Harris County, they were upbeat – in retrospect, they seemed to be in denial of current events. Only one month before the surrender of Lee's army at Appomattox, they observed that In the conditions and prospects of our cause and country, we are unable to perceive any cause for discouragement, or an abatement of confidence. Revolution implies a condition of gloom and suffering. When the storm rages, we hardly expect sunshine, and if it comes at all it is only in glimpses. With some reverses and defeats our progress is onward, and our success only a problem of time....For awhile, some talked of reconstruction, but the moral and patriotic sentiment of the people has been so shocked at the suggestion that it is now only to be mentioned to be denounced.77

Such unreasonably upbeat reports in the face of torrents of bad news from the front was typical of Houston and other Texas cities at the time, and the Tri-Weekly Telegraph served up weekly helpings of jingoistic optimism up until nearly the day the victorious Federals arrived in Houston in June. In the tumult of the last few days and weeks of the Confederacy, Agur Morse contracted typhoid fever and died April 10, 1865, only a day after Lee's surrender at Appomattox. His obituary, published in the Galveston Daily News of April 13, reads as follows:

Died at his residence, near this city, April 10th, 1865, of typhoid fever, Captain A.T. Morse, of the firm of A.T. & J.B. Morse, Druggists, of Houston. Capt. Morse was born in the city of New Haven, Conn., October 1801, but was raised in South Carolina; thence the family emigrated to Alabama; thence to Mississippi. The last thirteen years of his life have been spent in Texas, where he has earned and enjoyed the confidence and esteem of all who knew him, as an honest man and an honorable gentleman. The community have lost a most valuable citizen and patriot; the Presbyterian Church a firm friend and supporter; and the bereaved family the gentle, noble and loving guardian. Peace to his ashes. T.C. Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina papers please copy.78

Morse-Bragg (Pleasant Bend) Cemetery -23- Harris County Historical Commission Dan M Worrall July 5, 2015 The last war involvement by the Morse family was by Agur's son George. Following a long convalescence after his service in the Bayou City Guards in Virginia, he was “temporarily assigned” to Captain O. G. Jones' Battery of Light Artillery in August 1863, by special order of Lt. Gen. E. Kirby Smith. This unit traversed the Texas Coast from Sabine Pass to Galveston to Brownsville. George's new unit had a leading role in the last battle of the Civil War at Palmetto Ranch, May 12-13, 1865, which the Confederates won. George was paroled in Houston on July 3, 1865, and he rejoined his mother and surviving brothers at Pleasant Bend.

Morse-Bragg (Pleasant Bend) Cemetery -24- Harris County Historical Commission Dan M Worrall July 5, 2015 Table 2. Civil War Service Records of adult males buried in the Morse-Bragg Cemetery

At this time, seven Confederate veterans are known to be buried at the Morse-Bragg Cemetery.

Agur Tomlinson Morse (1801-1865) Lieutenant, Beauregard Cavalry (Texas State Troops; Home Guard).79 There are few official records of Texas State Troops. Houston newspapers cite his service on two occasions, as mentioned above. Died in April 1865 from typhoid fever.

William Agur Morse (1831-1866), Agur's first son. 1. Private, Capt. J. W. Lawrence’s Co. D, 1st Infantry Regiment, Texas State Troops, from 9/25/63 to 2/15/64. This unit served in Texas, at one time guarding bridges along the Bernard River.80 There is no record of it having been in any engagements. 2. Private, Company C, Bourland's Regiment Texas Cavalry, enrolled November 1864. This unit patrolled the northwest borders to protect settlers from Indian attacks (the Federals had been evacuated from all the frontier forts early in the War, leaving Texas exposed to increased Indian raids).

Henry Augustus Morse (1840-1876), Agur's third son. 1. Enlisted as Private in Company A, 5th Texas Infantry (Bayou City Guards) on March 27, 1862 in Houston. This regiment, the famous 'Bloody Fifth,' was assigned to General Hood, part of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Saw action at numerous engagements, including Second Manassas, Sharpsburg/Antietam, Gettysburg, Chickamauga, and The Battle of the Wilderness. This unit suffered heavy casualties throughout the War. Henry was wounded in the arm on October 7, 1864 at the Battle of Darbytown Road/Newmarket. He was furloughed to Mobile, Alabama to recuperate, and later furloughed back to Texas. Paroled June 28, 1865 in Houston. Henry ran the Morse sawmill with brother George W. Morse in the 1870s.

George W. Morse (1845-c1885), Agur's fourth son.

Morse-Bragg (Pleasant Bend) Cemetery -25- Harris County Historical Commission Dan M Worrall July 5, 2015 1. Enrolled in Co. D, 1st Texas Heavy Artillery on September 17, 1861 at about age 16. He was in it for less than a year, and may have been turned out of it for being underage. 2. Enlisted as Private in Company A, 5th Texas Infantry (Bayou City Guards) on March 27, 1862 in Houston, along with his brother Henry. He became very ill in December 1862 and was sent to a Richmond, Virginia hospital. He was furloughed back to Texas to recuperate on January 30, 1863, and remained on the roster as sick through 1864. 3. Transferred as Private to Captain O. G. Jones' Battery, Texas Light Artillery on August 8, 1863. This unit traversed the Texas Coast from Sabine Pass to Galveston to Brownsville, and took a leading role in the last battle of the Civil War, at Palmetto Ranch, May 12-13, 1865, which the Confederates won. George was paroled in Houston on July 3, 1865.

Louis H. Bering (1840-1891), husband of John Kell Morse's daughter Eugenia Morse. 1. Louis enlisted in 2d Company A, 13th Texas Volunteers on May 6, 1862 in Houston. This unit was known as Bates’ Texas Infantry Battalion until it was enlarged to a regiment in 1863. Initially a Trans-Mississippi unit based in Velasco, Texas, it moved to Houston in October 1862 serving garrison and fatigue duty; it had no major engagements during the War. 2. He became a Private in Company A, 26th Texas Cavalry by May 1863, serving in an enrollment office in Houston. By August 1863 he was enrolled as a Special Courier for the Quartermaster’s Dept. and in January 1864 he was serving as a detective in Houston. In March 1865 he was detailed as a printer in Houston. Louis was paroled from the 26th Cavalry on June 22, 1865 in Houston.

James McFee (1814-1903) 1. Enrolled as a Corporal in Sheldon's Company B, First State Troops, Texas Infantry, on August 7, 1863 in Harris County. 2. By November 1863, he was in Company B, 16th Battalion, Texas State Troops, and worked in the Quartermaster's office in Houston as a carpenter. Note: There is a detailed discussion of James McFee and his family below.

Morse-Bragg (Pleasant Bend) Cemetery -26- Harris County Historical Commission Dan M Worrall July 5, 2015

Thaddeus Constantine Bell (1822-1871) Thaddeus Bell objected to secession but he enrolled as a matter of duty. On July 10, 1863, he enlisted in Company C, Brazoria County, Volunteer Cavalry, 16th Brigade, Texas State Troops, for six months, serving in Texas.81 See detailed discussion below.

“Reconstruction” and the end of the plantation. Grace Morse was left to deal with the grim tally of the war's aftermath for the family and for the plantation at Pleasant Bend. First and foremost, she had lost the family patriarch, Agur. Her son Henry was maimed. Her son-in-law Lovett Taft was dead, and her son William would be dead within a year. Rev. Morse and his wife Caroline were both dead, as soon would be their daughter Eugenia. Much of the family's cash was in worthless Confederate notes. The family's slaves had been freed, leaving the plantation economy in ruins, as was the case in plantations all across the South. Strapped for cash, she and her son George began to sell off the plantation's land in the 1870s, and she left the Pleasant Bend plantation for good to live in Houston with her widowed daughter Elizabeth, who remarried a merchant in town.82 It was at this time that Grace deeded one and a third acres that had contained the family and neighborhood graveyard for the purpose of maintaining a permanent burial site; the rest of the plantation land was gradually sold or bequeathed to her children. And yet there were positive notes in these hard times. Agur, hedging his bets during the early part of the war, had bought a partner's interest in a Houston drugstore at Preston near Main Street in 1861 (Figure 11). Remembering the Tombigbee River flood of 1847, he probably figured that he should have a second investment should the war turn out badly. As his obituary stated, he partnered with his son Josiah in this venture. After Agur's death in 1865, Josiah ran the drugstore for many years, providing much-needed income for Josiah and his mother Grace. In later years, Josiah was known affectionately as "Professor Morse" due to his pharmacy experience, and died in 1889 after being run over by a streetcar in Houston.83 Agur's sons Henry and George managed to build (or perhaps re-open) a sawmill after the war, with characteristic optimism. In 1869, in partnership with Thomas J. Belk, they bought a steam engine that had formerly been at James McLeod's plantation. They bought the machinery from Wylie A. Parker, paying him with sawn lumber.84 The census of 1870 gives us an exceedingly clear view of the operation. It was an operation typical of the Houston to come,

Morse-Bragg (Pleasant Bend) Cemetery -27- Harris County Historical Commission Dan M Worrall July 5, 2015 Fig. 11

Notice and advertisement from the Weekly Telegraph (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 27, No. 4, Ed. 1, Tuesday, April 9, 1861. Agur bought a partner’s interest in this drugstore during the early part of the War, probably to diversify his holdings in highly uncertain times. His partner A J Hay was gone by 1864, and Agur’s son Josiah Morse took it over after Agur’s death in 1865. consisting of a very diverse mix of ex-Confederate soldiers, German immigrants, and African Americans. The operation centered around a 15 horsepower stationary steam engine, cared for by a number of sawmill workers, and fed by a small army of woodchoppers, wagon drivers, and timber merchants. Of 38 employees and subcontractors, the census tells us that 10 were white and 28 were black. Of the black employees, all were ex-slaves and only two were born in Texas, the rest having come from most of the states of the Deep South. African-American ex-slave Jordan Banks can be tied by records to the former Pleasant Bend plantation. The white males were likewise mostly not Texas-born, but were predominantly from the Deep South as well as Germany. By 1880 the sawmill was gone, probably as a result of local deforestation and of the general migration of timbering operations to East Texas in the 1880s with the advent of railroads. The old Morse sawmill site was reclaimed by the Buffalo Bayou forest and forgotten. Its millpond dam was repaired in the 1940s, becoming Lake Diana in the mid-20th century. Somewhat later the former site of the old Morse sawmill was covered by the building of the Omni Hotel, off Woodway just west of Loop 610. The small pond there today is a tiny remnant of the once much larger Morse sawmill millpond. As difficult as the post-war situation was for the Morses and other families, consider the predicament of African-American ex-slaves from these Texas plantations. In nearly an instant, their freedom had come, but with it the uncertainties of living in an extremely difficult and unpredictable new post-War world, in which they were in many cases homeless and with few financial resources.85 As discussed above, the vast majority of these ex-slaves had migrated to Texas in the 1830s-1850s with the southern planters who had owned them, from other slave states to the east. So where was home now? Overnight, the reality of no more unpaid labor and the post-war dearth of capital had shut down Pleasant Bend and countless other plantations, so day-to-day farming operations ceased. The jobs of black farm hands, and of black domestics at the homes of rich planters, were gone. Some men went to the city, finding work at the port or in manufacturing, and women tried to find work as domestic servants, or in laundries and the like.86 Others stayed on in rural areas, becoming share-croppers for those who bought the new smaller farms. Few blacks bought land in the early going, for obvious reasons: they had no capital. A few held jobs in the Morse sawmill, and so kept a sense of belonging to a place. The Jordan Banks family made such a transition, and lived next door to Henry Morse on what had been part of the

Morse-Bragg (Pleasant Bend) Cemetery -28- Harris County Historical Commission Dan M Worrall July 5, 2015 old plantation by 1870. It seems likely that the choice of graveyard made by Jordan’s wife Rachel Banks and her children James Banks, Laura Banks Koontz, and Sadie Banks Scott – or the choice made by those burying them – was in some way affected by the location of the cemetery within what had once been home for their family. It is difficult to say with any authority, as neither family records nor census and tax records from pre-War days state the names of the slaves and their families. A positive sign of the times was the growth of new cultural institutions for black families, which replaced the previous plantation-centered social life of slaves. In 1865, two or three miles to the west of Pleasant Bend in the former farm of the Canfields at Piney Point, William Morse's wife Hannah Canfield Morse (who was the daughter of pioneers Buckman Canfield and Harriet Canfield George) sold one acre of land including an existing cemetery to a group of ex-slaves. They built the Pilgrim's Rest Missionary Baptist Church.87 The church has moved over the years, and is now located at 3401 Jeanetta Street. The original church site lay along what is now Shady Lane, north of Westheimer. In 1876, as mentioned earlier, the Banks family and other African American families built the Lovely Canada Baptist Church on an acre of what had once been part of the Pleasant Bend Plantation (Figure 2), and that church existed on that site for six decades.

McFee family. There are six known graves of the McFee family at the Morse-Bragg Cemetery, evidence of close relationships between the McFee and Morse families over many decades. Hough McFee, born in Scotland, and his wife Bridget Kerr, born in Ireland, were immigrants in Delaware when they met and married. One of a number of children from that union was James McFee (1814-1903), who moved as a young boy with his family to New Orleans, Louisiana. In 1848, James married Cassandra Hough (1824-1890) in Natchez, Mississippi, and the couple moved to Texas.88 James joined the Houston First Presbyterian Church in 1850. His wife Cassandra purchased a 50-acre farm from Thomas McGowen (via short-term owner George Fisher) in 1853 that was located within the greater area of the Pleasant Bend plantation. James became a carriage maker, using lumber from the nearby Morse sawmill, and his son John worked at the mill. Here Cassandra bore seven children. Two died in infancy, in 1857 and 1859, and the rest were John Hough McFee (1852-1888), Joseph Adams McFee (1853- 1874), Hugh Cecil McFee (1855-1888), Lewis Lum McFee (1861-1947), and Annie Cecilia

Morse-Bragg (Pleasant Bend) Cemetery -29- Harris County Historical Commission Dan M Worrall July 5, 2015 McFee (1863-1941). During the Civil War, James McFee served as a carpenter in the Texas State Troops, where he was engaged as a carpenter (Table 2). Cassandra Hough McFee sold the farm to Sophronia Parker in 1866, and the family moved on. Eventually they returned, and purchased a farm near Piney Point, a few miles to the west. James McFee's son Lewis McFee married a local girl, Cecelia Walker Crump (1865- 1930), whose pioneer grandparents were Dabney Walker (1800-aft 1866) and Mary Binkly Walker (b. 1799). Dabney was a stockraiser and sharecropper from North Carolina who lived on 89 acres of the Taylor League two miles to the west of Pleasant Bend, which he bought from Harriet George in 1866.89 Dabney and Mary are buried at the now-lost Piney Point Cemetery.90 According to the extensive autobiography of Cassie McFee Reeder (1886-1985; Lewis McFee's daughter),91 her uncle, Hugh Cecil McFee (1855-1887) was ...32 years old, single, living with his mother and father in the big house at Piney Point, had many friends [and would] go out of his way to make more friends, drove a good horse and buggy, came to Houston often. Liked by everyone. He and the negro hand were going to kill a beef at 5 a.m. and his pistol jammed, and did not fire; he threw the pistol down, it turned over, and fired, hitting Hugh in the side....[they] sent for a Dr. He lived until 3 am next morning. My mother said it was a moonshiny night, and that the night he was sick the house was full of people and that every post around the place had a buggy and horse tied to it, many from Houston 10 miles away, but no one could save him. His last words [were] "I hate to leave my mother". He was buried by his brother Joe…in Morse cemetery 6 mi. west of Houston. They sold one of his horses and bought a nice tombstone (it is there now).

A death notice in the Houston Herald also mentioned his "burial in old Morse graveyard, about five miles from City."92 By the time of the 1870 census, James' son John Hough McFee was living near the Morse sawmill near Woodway and Hwy. 610, where he worked as a laborer. He died a year later than his brother Hugh, in 1888, and of that death and burial Cassie Reeder wrote, The days came and went [that] summer, and ... the roses seemed to me now that they were always in bloom, but in the fall death called again. My papa and uncle John went hunting on the Bayou, spent the night sleeping on damp ground, didn't hurt papa but uncle John caught Pneumonia and died in a few days leaving his wife, 2 girls and expecting another baby...John was buried by the side of Hough McFee and Joe in the Morse cemetery 6 miles from Houston.

Morse-Bragg (Pleasant Bend) Cemetery -30- Harris County Historical Commission Dan M Worrall July 5, 2015 By the late 1880s, James McFee and his family had several Morse neighbors at Piney Point, including Charlie Morse (William A. Morse's son) and George E. Morse (John Kell Morse's son). Cassandra Hough McFee passed away in 1890,93 and James McFee in 1903. Both were buried at the Morse-Bragg cemetery, according to Cassie's account. Cassie McFee Reeder had an infant son, Aaron Truitt Reeder, who died in infancy and was buried at the cemetery. According to a grandniece, Cassie Reeder "considered the grave of her son, Aaron Truitt Reeder, a very special place and made every effort to maintain the grounds until she was no longer able to do so."94 Cassie McFee Reeder died in 1985 at an age of 99. Cassie Reeder's other son, Allen D. Reeder (1917- 2006), also visited the graves, sometimes with his mother and at other times with his wife, Allyne Reeder. Allyne Reeder recalls many trips to the graveyard in the 1950s and 1960s, when she and her husband would clean the headstones of the McFee graves.95

Thaddeus Bell. Thaddeus Constantine Bell (1822-1871) was born near old Washington, in Washington County, on October 4, 1822. He was reportedly the first male Anglo-Texan child born in Stephen F. Austin's colonies in Texas, and the second Anglo-Texan child born in the State (after Jane Long's daughter, born on Bolivar Island in December 1821).96 Thaddeus was the third of eight children of Josiah Hughes Bell (1791-1838) and Mary Evaline McKenzie Bell (1799-1856), who had married in Kentucky in 1818. Josiah Bell brought his family and slaves with him to join Stephen Austin in 1821, and settled on New Year Creek, near old Washington. From 1822 to 1823, Josiah Bell was Austin's Alcalde at San Felipe, when Austin was in Mexico. Josiah and his family moved downriver on the Brazos in 1824 to what is now Brazoria County, and over the next few years founded what became the towns of East Columbia and West Columbia, where he died in 1838.97 In 1837, Josiah Bell took young Thaddeus and his siblings, Lucinda and James, to Bardstown, Kentucky for schooling. Upon returning in 1840 at age 18, Thaddeus took over his widowed mother's farms and business. He married Elizabeth Hodge Cayce in 1847, and they had six children during the period 1848-1864. Thaddeus had the life of a successful cotton planter until the Civil War intervened. According to his son-in-law, Andrew Phelps McCormick (1832- 1916), Bell: ...continued to devote himself to the business of a cotton planter until the close of the

Morse-Bragg (Pleasant Bend) Cemetery -31- Harris County Historical Commission Dan M Worrall July 5, 2015 Civil War brought even to Texas [June 19, 1865] the actual emancipation of the slaves. He voted against the ordinance of secession. He believed that it was impolitic to the degree of madness and unpatriotic in the highest degree. He, however, submitted to the powers that be and rendered such service as was required of him by the Confederate and State authorities.98

Thaddeus Bell eventually enrolled as a matter of duty, and became a Private, Company C, Brazoria County, Volunteer Cavalry, 16th Brigade, Texas State Troops (Table 2). Thaddeus Bell's wife died in 1864, during the War. In 1867, he moved with some of his children to Huntsville, where he was Superintendant of the state penitentiary. While there, he married Cornelia McKinney (1844-c1900). After his term finished, he moved to Harris County, to the neighborhood around the Morse sawmill along Buffalo Bayou, where he appears in the 1870 census with his new wife and a daughter by his previous marriage, Sophronia Lucinda Bell (1855-1925). They joined the First Presbyterian Church in Houston – the same church that Grace Morse and her daughter Elizabeth Taft had also joined in 1868, following the deaths of their respective husbands during the War.99 Thaddeus purchased land in the Reynolds survey and began a farm. That farm was not to last, as he died of kidney cancer on May 22, 1871, not long after the birth of his last son, John Randolph Bell (1871-1945).100 First Presbyterian Church records show that Thaddeus was "interred near the Morse place." Those records also show that Grace Morse's niece, Emma Frazier Bachelder, was also interred at the Morse cemetery, the same year.101 There is a granite 1936 Texas Centennial marker102 dedicated to Thaddeus Bell and his first wife Elizabeth Hodges Cayce Bell at the old Columbia Cemetery in Brazoria County, where Elizabeth and her father-in-law, Josiah Hughes Bell, are buried. There appears to be no documentation showing that he was buried there, however,103 and abundant documentation and biographical information that places him in Harris County at the end of his life, and interred in the Morse-Bragg Cemetery.

Morse-Bragg (Pleasant Bend) Cemetery -32- Harris County Historical Commission Dan M Worrall July 5, 2015 III. SIGNIFICANCE There is little physical evidence left in urban Houston and central Harris County of their rural past as a center for cotton and timber production, and of the once-dominant plantation economy. The old Morse-Bragg Cemetery is a perfect place to remember the beginnings of agriculture in Harris County, and the role of the nearby San Felipe-Harrisburg wagon road of 1831 in encouraging settlement of the area. The cemetery provides the resting place of a significant number of Civil War veterans, and offers a place to reflect on the great sacrifices made by Houston families who found themselves in the chaos and tragedy of a faltering antebellum social system. The hard times and personal tragedies of the war years for the Morse family were shared by many other families in Harris County and throughout Texas. Last but not least, it offers a place for reflection on the harshness of African-American life before and immediately after Emancipation, and on the many early contributions of African-Americans to the establishment of the city and county. Agur Morse, the patriarch and founder of the cemetery, rests in this plot. He was a model planter and early leader in Harris County agriculture, and an important civic volunteer/leader during Houston's darkest hours. Morse Street in Montrose is the only known current reference to his memory in Houston, and it is fitting that the Morse-Bragg Cemetery historical marker recognize his contributions to the city and county. Thaddeus Bell is another imposing figure buried in the cemetery, primarily because of his status as an Old 300 settler and the first male child born in Austin's new colonies. The small Morse-Bragg Cemetery, stripped of its monuments and several times nearly paved over with development, was adopted by order of the Harris County Commissioners Court in December 2014 as a Harris County Precinct 3 historic cemetery, which will protect it from future development. In the recent effort to preserve it, scattered descendants of the families buried there have organized to replace some of the stone monuments and to install a County historical marker, exercising their right and duty to protect the graves of their ancestors. With such actions, and some luck, the cemetery's first 160 years will not be its last.

Morse-Bragg (Pleasant Bend) Cemetery -33- Harris County Historical Commission Dan M Worrall July 5, 2015 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This manuscript was greatly improved with the editorial assistance and additional information provided by Harris County Historical Commission members Bernice Mistrot, Trevia Beverly, Sarah Jackson, Mike Vance, Gayle Davies, and Janet Wagner.

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FOOTNOTES 1 Dan M. Worrall, in press, Upper Buffalo Bayou in the Nineteenth Century. Also see Marie Marshall, 1975, Forebears and Descendants of an Early Houston Family, 311pp. A copy of this genealogical book can be found at the Clayton Library, and online. 2 Melissa M. Peterson, ed., 1994, The Road to Piney Point: Piney Point Village Historic Committee, p. 9. Also see Diana J. Kleiner, "Taylor, John D.," Handbook of Texas Online, uploaded on June 15, 2010. Published by the Texas State Historical Association. 3 Eugene C. Barker, 1918, Minutes of the Ayuntamiento of San Felipe de Austin, 1828-1832: The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 2, p. 183 and 189. Accessible via the Portal to Texas History, http://texashistory.unt.edu. The location of the San Felipe Road was compiled by the author from many period documents, and is discussed at length in his book, Upper Buffalo Bayou in the Nineteenth Century, in press. 4 Andrew Forest Muir, 1943, "The Destiny of Buffalo Bayou:" The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, volume 47, p. 101-102. Accessible via the Portal to Texas History, http://texashistory.unt.edu 5 Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph, February 25, 1863, p. 2, col. 2. 6 Harris County Deed Records, vol. 13, p. 348, and vol. 12, p. 681. 7 E.C. Smith vs. William White et al, July 8 1929, Harris County Civil Court case 159,106. 8 "Old tombstones become center of grave debate:" Houston Business Journal, August 24, 1992, vol. 22, no. 14, p. 1. 9 Deed, Fred Boettcher et al to West Oaks Water Association, July 1, 1939, Harris County Real Property Records, vol. 1158, p. 660. 10 Newspaper articles of the period covered the ensuing lawsuits, including, a Houston Chronicle article of December 8, 1994 that discussed the legal issues and the hunt for burials on the property. A Houston Business Journal article of August 24, 1992, a Houston Chronicle article of August 29, 1992, and a Houston Post article of May 6, 1993 contain similar information about this case. 11 "Land lawsuit may go beyond the graves:" Houston Chronicle, December 8, 1994, Section A, p. 29. 12 Roberta (Bobbye) Harris, claims attorney for Old Republic Title Company at the time of the lawsuit, personal communication, 2014. 13 From testimony of neighbors in 1994, as per Janet Wagner, personal communication, 2014. 14 Mrs. Allyne Reeder, wife of the late Allen Reeder, personal communication 2014. 15 J.K. Wagner & Company, 1995, Interments in the Morse-Bragg Cemetery: research done for DeLange, Hudspeth and Pitman, LLP, 22pp. 16 Marie Marshall, 1975, Forebears and Descendants of an Early Houston Family, 311pp. A copy of this genealogical book can be found at the Clayton Library, and online. 17 J.K. Wagner & Company, 1995, Interments in the Morse-Bragg Cemetery: research done for DeLange, Hudspeth and Pitman, LLP, 22pp. 17 Janet Wagner, 1995: Historical Development of Buffalo Bayou: in Buffalo Bayou Erosion

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18 Harris County Deed Records, vol. 527. p. 105, Affidavit of Mrs. Hattie A. Monaghan, Jan. 10, 1923. 19 Cecelia Morse’s diary was transcribed by Janet Wagner in 1992, and a copy is in the author’s personal files. 20 The obituary of Lovett’s son, George L. Taft, stated that Lovett was a cousin of William Howard Taft’s father, Alonzo Taft: “George L. Taft Funeral Friday; Death takes cousin of Late President, William H. Taft:” San Antonio Express, May 26, 1932. Lovett, whose headstone states that he was from Sheffield, Berkshire County MA, was the son of Lovett D. Taft (1784-1853) and Betsey Strong (1787-1869), both buried in Hewins Cemetery, Sheffield according to FindAGrave.com. 21 Texas, Marriages, 1837-1973: Louis H. Bering m. Eugenia M. Morse, 1 June 1861, Harris, Texas 22 Cassie McFee Reeder, 1962, Through the Years: unpublished autobiography, a copy of which is in the author’s personal files. 23 James Banks Death Certificate, Texas State Board of Health Bureau of Vital Statistics, Dec. 12, 1927, no. 40720. 24 Texas, Marriages, 1837-1973: Sadie Banks m. Pleasant Scott, 16 Jan 1900, Harris County, Texas. 25 Texas, Marriages, 1837-1973: Laura Woods m. John Koontz, 26 May 1910, Harris County, Texas 26 US Federal Census 1880, 13th Subdivision, Harris, Texas (T9-1309-294D), 23 Jun 1880. "Sidney Sullivan (32, VA-VA-VA, farmer), wife Celia Sullivan (52, LA-LA-LA), stepdau Arnie Sullivan (13, TX-VA-LA), dau Althea Sullivan (13, TX-VA-LA), dau Patsy Sullivan (8, TX-VA-LA), dau Aurelia Sullivan (7, TX-VA-LA), dau Matilda Sullivan (4, TX-VA-LA).". 27 State Marriage Index. Patsy Sullivan m. John Thomas, 18 April 1895, Harris Co, Texas. 28 Most of the causes of death for burials at Morse-Bragg are taken from J.K. Wagner & Company, 1995, Interments in the Morse-Bragg Cemetery: research done for DeLange, Hudspeth and Pitman, LLP, 22pp. 29 Janet Wagner, 1995: Historical Development of Buffalo Bayou: in Buffalo Bayou Erosion Control and Stabilization Study for the Harris County Flood Control District, prepared by Brown and Root with McBride-Ratliff and Associated, Inc., Houston. 30 Ibid. 31 1867 Voter Registration Lists, Reel 6, line 1046, 25 Jun 1867. "Jordan Banks, res. Houston, Harris, TX; 7 yr in state, 7 yr in county, colored, signed (his mark)." 32 William Hunter to Trustees of the Baptist Church, filed 1896, Harris County Deed Records, volume 95, p. 549. 33 E.C. Smith vs William White et al, Harris County District Court Cause 15906, March 5, 1929. 34 The property deeds of 1899 and 1938 (discussed below) refer to the “Lovely Canada” Baptist Church as does the death certificate of Mrs. Julia Robinson, and that title is followed here. However, the death certificates of a number of other decedents who were members of this church call it “Lovely Canady” or even Lovin Canady.” 35 William Hunter to Trustees of the Baptist Church , filed 1896, Harris County Deed Records, volume 95, p. 464. 36 M Alena Allen et al to Harris County, filed 1899, Harris County Deed Records, volume 111, p. 24. 37 River Oaks Corporation to Trustees of the Lovely Canada Baptist Church, filed 1938, Harris County Deed Records, volume 1143, p. 343. 38 A Harris County Historical Marker, with further documentation, is planned for Lovely Canada Baptist Church. 39 Ibid. 40 Reeder Testimony, Case No. 95-003664 Whitney vs Bragg 333rd Judicial Harris County. 41 Janet K. Wagner, personal communication, 2014. 42 Marie Marshall, 1975, Forebears and Descendants of an Early Houston Family, p. 6-7. A copy of this genealogical book can be found at the Clayton Library, and online. 43 Her daughter Elizabeth Morse (Taft) Grant’s death certificate lists her mother’s maiden name as Grace Baldwin. 44 Mississippi State Census, Lowndes County, 1837.

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45 John D. Toy, 1838, Laws of the State of Mississippi, 1824-1838., Jackson MS, p. 857-859. 46 Mississippi General Land Office certificates 18233, Feb 27 1841; 27091, Feb 27, 1841; 27313, September 1, 1846. 47 Jack D. Elliott, Jr., Colbert, Barton, and Vinton, Extinct Tombigbee River Towns: in Lowndes County Mississippi, History and Genealogy: http://lowndes.msghn.org. 48 Notes in Aug 29 1865 Probate Court M126, Harris County Texas, Will Bk. Q, p. 447, as quoted in Marie Marshall, op. cit., p. 8. 49 Jack D. Elliott, Jr., op.cit. 50 Mississippi General Land Office certificate 33,319, Dec.1, 1849. 51 Harris County Deed Records, vol. O, p. 609, J.C. Massie to A.T. Morse, half of the upper third of the William White A 836 League, December 26, 1851 52 Harris County Deed Records, vol. Q, p. 47, D. Gregg to A.T. Morse, 160 acres of William White headright, May 11, 1852. 53 Janet Wagner, private communication, 2011. 54 Harris County Deed Records, vol. Z, p. 188, James Wallis and wife to A.T. Morse, 150 acres of William White 1/3 League, June 13, 1860. 55 W.A. Morse's new hardware store was advertised in the Houston Weekly Telegraph of June 25. 1856. Among other ventures, Josiah teamed up with Charles Holmes in a grocery and auction business, advertised in the Weekly Telegraph of August 19, 1857. He later ran the Morse drugstore, after the death of his father in 1865. 56 The Weekly Telegraph (Houston, TX), Wednesday, June 30, 1858, pg. 1, col. 2 http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth235999. 57 : The Weekly Telegraph (Houston, TX), Wednesday, August 18, 1858, pg. 1, col. 6 http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth236005. 58 The Weekly Telegraph (Houston, TX), Wednesday, May 25, 1859, pg. 2, col. 3 http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth236043. 59 Cecelia Morse’s diary, op.cit. 60 T.R. Fehrenback, 1968, Lone Star: A History of Texas and the Texans: Da Capo Press, Chapter 18. 61 "Mass Meeting of Harris County:" in Houston Weekly Telegraph, Dec. 4, 1860, pg. 2, cols. 2-3; http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth236122. 62 T.R. Fehrenback, op.cit, Chapter 18. 63 James O. Moore, 1988, The Men of the Bayou City Guards (Company A, 5th Texas Infantry, Hood's Brigade): University of Houston at Clear Lake MA Thesis, p. 20. 64 "Harris County at War:" Houston Weekly Telegraph, August 14, 1861. 65 George W. Cable, New Orleans Before the Capture: The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, November 1884- April 1885, vol. 29, p. 918. 66 "The Texas Brigade in Virginia," in the Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph, October 3rd, 1862, p.2. 67 Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph, January 22, 1864. 68 From the diary of Cecelia Morse, wife of Henry Morse. See Dan M. Worrall, op. cit. 69 Houston Tri-Weekly Telegraph, February 25, 1863, p. 2, c. 2. 70 Mrs. Arch Bruce Marshall, 1975, Forebears and Descendants of an Early Houston Family, privately published (see Clayton Library), pp. 14-15. 71 See Table 1.

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72 James O. Moore, op. cit. 73 E.g., see Fehrenback, op.cit., Chapter 19. 74 Minutes of Houston City Council Proceedings, 1865. This document, on microfilm at the Houston Public Library, shows that about 15 years of Council minutes are missing. The minutes of the first City Council meeting under Federal control, in June 1865, state that Federal soldiers burned the papers while quartered in Council Chambers. 75 Houston Tri-weekly Telegraph, January 25, 1865, p. 4 c. 2. 76 Houston Tri-weekly Telegraph, January 25, 1865, p. 4 c. 2. 77 "Presentment of the Grand Jury, CS District Court:" Galveston Daily News, March 9, 1865. 78 Galveston Daily News, Thursday, April 13, 1865, p2 c5. 79 "Harris County at War:" Houston Weekly Telegraph, August 14, 1861. 80 Compiled Confederate Service Records, Fold3.com. 81 Texas, Muster Roll Index Cards, 1838-1900; http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=2059 82 Elizabeth married Richard A Grant in Houston. Grace Morse lived with them until her death in 1890; she was buried at Glenwood cemetery in Houston, in Section C-1, Lot 122. The Grants later moved to San Antonio, where Elizabeth died in 1920, the last of Agur's children to pass away. 83 Galveston Daily News, September 25, 1889, p.3. 84 Janet K. Wagner, 1992, Morse-Bragg Cemetery, Chronology: Dateline William White League: private manuscript. 85 E.g., see Fehrenback, op. cit., Chapter 20. 86 See Cary D. Wintz, 1982, Blacks in Houston: Houston Center for the Humanities, National Endowment for the Humanitites, Fred R. von der Mehden, series editor, pp. 8-15. 87 History of Pilgrim's Rest Missionary Baptist Church: online at www.pilgrimrest.net. 88 Cassandra McFee Reeder, Through the Years (Autobiographical memoirs passed down through the Allen Reeder family), 1962. Parts of this volume are attached to Petition in Intervention of Allen D. Reeder, Cause no. 95-03664, 333rd District Court, Harris County Texas, 1995. 89 Janet K. Wagner, 1992, Morse-Bragg Cemetery, Historical Document Review: private manuscript. 90 Unpublished notes "Written by Mrs. Daisy Crump Furlow who lived at 907 Hays St. San Antonio Texas." From the files of McFee relative Allyne (Mrs. Allen) Reeder. 91 Cassandra McFee Reeder, op.cit. 92 Notes from Janet Wagner, personal correspondence, 2014. 93 Galveston Daily News, Weds., Mar. 5, 1890, p3 c1. "Houston Local Record. Death of Mrs. C. M’Fee." 94 Gary White, letter to Mrs. Gayle Anderson, September 10, 1992. The grandniece that she refers to in the letter was the late Reba Marie McFee Laughter (ca. 1926-2014) of Montgomery, Texas. 95 Allyne Reeder, Montgomery, Texas, personal communication, 2August 8, 2014. 96 State of Texas stone memorial to "Thaddus Constantine Bell" at Columbia Cemetery, West Columbia Texas, 1936. Bell's wife, Elizabeth Cayve Bell (1830-1864) and his father, Josiah Hughes Bell (1791-1838) are buried at that cemetery. Also see The Handbook of Texas, Texas State Historical Association, entry on Josiah Hughes Bell. 97 The Handbook of Texas, Texas State Historical Association, entry on Josiah Hughes Bell, with information from James A. Creighton, A Narrative History of Brazoria County (Angleton, Texas: Brazoria County Historical Commission, 1975), and Andrew Phelps McCormick, Scotch-Irish in Ireland and America (1897). 98 Andrew Phelps McCormick, 1897, Scotch-Irish in Ireland and America. Unpublished family manuscript, p. 128. https://dcms.lds.org/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE219769

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99 List of Communicants, First Presbyterian Church of Houston. On microfilm, Texas Room, Houston Public Library. 100 Andrew Phelps McCormick, Scotch-Irish in Ireland and America (1897). 101 Register of Deaths, 1871, First Presbyterian Church, Houston Texas; on file at the Texas Room, Houston Public Library. 102 http://www.thc.state.tx.us/preserve/projects-and-programs/state-historical-markers/1936-texas-centennial- markers 103 Bob Arnold and Alan Bell, Bell descendants, personal communication 2014. Also Jamie Murray, Brazoria County Historical Museum, personal communication, 2014.

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