John Horan, Irishman II

In this second part of his letter, John H. Horan (1850-1932) briefly describes his father's life:

About 1840, John Horan came to Houston, then an embryo city on the banks of the Buffalo Bayou and had a store for two or three years. He then moved to Placid Creek in Bastrop County, and ran a store for several years. 

In 1846 he married the beautiful Kate Cassidy (Ed. Note:  Catherine Agnes Cassidy, b. 1828) and moved to Austin, Texas until his death in Nov. 1869.

In 1870 after my fathers death I received a letter from his brother, then living in Oakland, Calif. He had just discovered the whereabouts of his brother John. I answered the letter telling him my father had just died. I never heard from him again.

Signed; John Horan #2

Source:  Mary Lou Fear and Al Yeager

John Horan, Irishman I

The oldest son, John H. Horan, (b. 1850), penned a letter telling his father's story.  It may have a bit of the blarney. It begins:

John Horan was born in Ireland, either at Waterford or Cork in 1815. He left home about 1829, went to Liverpool where he had an uncle in the Linen Export business. He stayed a short while in Liverpool and decamped to New York, where he had another uncle, who was a linen merchant. After a short rest in N.Y. he went to New Orleans and worked in a drug store, where he remained about two years. The roving spirit took possession of him and he went up the Red River and landed in the Indian Nation.

I think his brother Ed joined him in New Orleans, for in 1834 they parted on the Washita or Ouachita River, John going to Texas, and Ed hiked for the Pacific Coast, and finally landed in Oakland, Calif.

After arriving in Texas, he was captured by the Comanche Indians. There was 3 other young men with them. An arrow shot by one the Indians pierced his leg and stuck in the rib of his horse. The Indian squaws were extremely cruel to the boys: They would get thorny switches and whip them. Whenever the Indians stopped for the they would tie the boys to trees and then the squaws would torture them. One evening one of the boys got his hands loose and picked up a club within reach and felled the squaw to the ground. The Indians stripped him, tied his feet to the limb of a tree, with his head hanging down, got long dogwood switches and flayed him from his head to his heels, not leaving a piece of flesh on his body. After they got through whipping him they left him hanging head down, built a fire underneath him and burned him alive; but fortunately for the poor lad had lost consciousness. For four years the other three boys were tortured by the savages.

One day a band of warriors started out on a raid and seemed to have been successful, as they brought in several barrels of whiskey. Then the festivities began and the boys were to be offered up to th Great Spirit as a human sacrifice to appease his wrath. The day before the sacrifice was to have been offered, they drank and feasted all day and into the night, until every warrior was wrapped in the slumbers of Bacchus. About midnight an Indian girl came to them and cut the ropes that held them, and gave them a supply of jerked of buffalo beef and Indian bread and told them not to stop, till the next night, and to travel on foot. They started out and traveled the rest of the night and all the next day. Near sundown they reached a strip of cross timbers and concluded to rest in the tops of trees. Darkness came soon after and with it came ten Indian bucks on horseback , right on their trail and losing their trail when the boys climbed the trees, they pitched camp right under the trees where the boys were hidden. The Indians rose after the first streak of day, and being anxious to have another feast of whiskey, soon turned back on their way to camp.

The boys traveled for six weeks, living on nuts, fruit, and berries, and roots, they finally reached a white settlement; that was in 1838.   To Be Continued ...

Source:  Mary Lou Fear and Al Yeager

Cassidys III (Bastrop and Austin)

Bastrop County

With the birth of her last child and the death of her husband in 1844, Margaret McElroy Cassidy (b. 1810) became head of her family on their farm in Bastrop.

In 1846, her oldest child, Catherine Agnes (b. 1828), married an Irishman named John Horan (b. 1815) at Placid Creek, Bastrop.  By 1850, the Horans had moved to nearby Austin, the State Capital,  a community at the edge of American Anglo settlement.  John was a liquor dealer, owner of restaurant saloon, and a billiard parlor.

Margaret's oldest son, Stephen, (b. 1832), also moved to Austin, and the other children followed suit.  On 11 Apr 1852, Sarah Jane (b. 1833) married Thomas Cassidy (b. 1824), a sometime business partner of John Horan.  By mid-decade, he disappeared, faced with legal questions arising from shady business dealings. 

In April 1855, Margaret rented out her farm and moved in with children in Austin.

By October 1855, local creditors decided that she had abandoned her family homestead and the County of Bastrop promptly sold her property at auction to James W. Shepherd.  She sued in district court that she had not abandoned her homestead since she had not purchased a new place to reside, and was only visiting her children.

According to trial testimony, Margaret told one of her creditors that

...she intended moving to Austin, that she wanted to live with her children, society was bad in Bastrop, and that she would not live in any such place. (p. 26)

Her negative comments about Bastrop did not seem to bother the court. 

Texas has always had strong protections even in bankruptcy for one's personal homestead from being seized, and the County's actions were overturned.  Mr. Shepherd appealed. 

The case, Sheperd v. Cassidy went to the Texas State Supreme Court.  The Court found that she had bought no new residence, and that she had the right to visit her family without abandoning her homestead:

We are satisfied with the findings of the jury.  They were acquainted with the parties and were the judges of the weight to be given to the petulant observations of this old lady, made, some of them, when she was in very bad humor. (p. 31)

Margaret Cassidy was 45 years old at the time.


SOURCE:  1850 US Census, Bastrop and Travis Counties.   Court citations:  Texas. Supreme Court., Oliver Cromwell Hartley, and R. K. Hartley. Reports of cases argued and decided in the Supreme Court of the State of Texas, during Austin session, 1857, and part of Galveston session, 1858. Volume 20., Book, 1882; (http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth28554/ : accessed March 16, 2015), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, http://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries, Denton, Texas.

Copyright by Donald R. Temples, 2015

Cassidys II (New York and Texas)

Hudson River Valley

The Hudson Valley was a long way from County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland.  In addition to Catherine Agnes Cassidy, James and Margaret had two other children in New York, Stephen Cassidy, b. 1832, and Sara Jane Cassidy, b. 1833.

The newly formed Republic of Texas recruited new immigrants from American cities on the east coast.  

By 1837, the Cassidy family moved to Texas.  Their next child was Margaret Elizabeth Cassidy, b. 6 Mar 1836, born four days after Texas Independence Day. She listed Texas place of birth, but it could have been right before the move

The Red River County tax list (this county was later divided into many counties, including Bastrop) listed James as being on the tax roll in 1840. The 1842 Bastrop County tax roll included him on the list.

For its recruitment efforts, Texas offered land grants to new settlers.  The family received a second class headright patent, 1240 acres in Bastrop County.  Second Class was a grant to those who settled between 2 Mar 1836 and October 1838.  The Cassidy grant indicates it was made on 15 Sep 1837. This land is still cited in real estate in Badtrop County as the James B. Cassidy Survey.

They have more children in Bastrop County:  Welch, b. 1836, death date as child, unknown;  Isabella Mary, b. 12 Aug 1840 (1850 U.S. Census, either married or died); Anna Lucy, b. 11 Jan 1842; and James Britton Cassidy, 9 Feb 1844

In 1842, James B. Cassidy joined Billingsley's Company, Republic of Texas Army,  in the Wall Expedition. This expedition was to stop the invasion of Mexican General Wolls and an invading Mexican army.    

James died in 1844 near Houston.  

SOURCES:  Red River County Tax Roll 1840, Bastrop County Tax Roll, 1842, Texas General Land Office Land Grants, 1850 U.S. Census.

Copyright by Donald R. Temples, 2015

Cassidys I (Ireland)

County Fermanagh makes up one of the six counties of Northern Ireland, the portion of the island that is still under British control, and one of the four Catholic majority counties.  It is mostly rural, with rivers and lakes, grasslands, mountains and bogs.  The average summer temperature is 65 degrees and is moderate throughout the year.

What was not moderate was the tension between Catholics and the Calvinist (Presbyterian) Orange Men, or Protestants, who taunted the Catholics by marching past their homes, and sometimes forcing Catholics to meet in caves and secret places in the rural countryside. This tension continued into the 20th Century where several acts of violence occurred between IRA and Protestants in the county.

In the rural village Gortgall, in the parish of Boho, about seven miles from the only real town in the county, Enniskillen, Stephen Cassidy (b. est. 1784) and his wife Catherine Britton (1788) had four sons:  Thomas, b. 1805; Edward, b. 1807; Philip, b. 1809;  and James, b. 1810.

James married Margaret McElroy (b. 1810) - probably from a Catholic family who had moved to Ireland from Scotland once it had become protestant or perhaps a Calvinist family.  Sometime in the late 1820s, James and Margaret left Ireland for the United States.

On 23 Mar 1830, in a trial in Enniskillen, his brothers Thomas, Edward, and Philip were convicted by the British court of killing a horse, and sentenced to life in imprisonment.  They were given the opportunity to choose banishment to the British penal colony in Australia.  Placed on the ship Hercules 3, the brothers arrived in Sydney Cove on 21 Oct 1830. Thomas and Philip married and had families in Australia.  They were given conditional pardons in 1846. Their descendants continue to live in that country.   Edward disappears from public records.

James Cassidy and his wife Margaret settled in the Hudson River Valley north of New York City.

I assume they were joining Irish who had been attracted to the region because of the need for laborers on the Ohio and Erie canals.  From the Irish Archives:

Work on the Ohio and Erie Canal, which began in Cleveland in 1825, attracted droves of newcomers to the area. Individuals of Irish descent were undoubtedlyalready numbered among the pre-canal settlers. ...  But the first notable influx of Irish immigrants was prompted by the need for laborers to dig the canal.  

In 1828, James and Margaret had their first daughter, Catherine Agnes, in the village of Guilderland, outside of Albany, New York.

Sources:  Jefferson D. Horan Family Bible; Australian Convict records, 1850, 1860, and 1870 U.S. Census - Catherine Agnes Cassidy.

Copyright by Donald R. Temples, 2015