“How are you good folks today? … Wonderful!
It is a beautiful day today here in Seguin? Don’t you think? …
But let’s not be piddling around. Let me get down to business. (By the way, I am speaking with considerable poetic license. I hope that this doesn’t offend. … Also, y’all be prepared to ask me any quick questions when I finish.)
Now …. Who the heck am I?
I am William Henry Burges and have lived here in Seguin, Texas for much of my life. Normally I would keep a longer beard, but this morning my wife Mary Lou, who lies here beside me, pleaded with me to trim my beard back considerably for this occasion and for the telling of my tale.
Also, I am a practicing lawyer and like to speak from outlines and notes. Therefore, I brought my journal here from which to speak.
Okay. First of all, let’s establish this point: Am I a Texian? Well I have lived most of my years here in Seguin. Therefore, certainly I am a Texian. … Yes! But by way of Tennessee.
I was born in Jackson, Tennessee in 1838, the year the great colored statesman and orator, Mr. Frederick Douglas escaped from slavery. (Tennessee was one of 26 states in the United States of America then.) The year 1838 was also the year Nicaragua and Honduras down south of here declared their independence as sovereign nations, only two years after Texas did so. And it was the year that President Jackson removed the Injuns from east of the Mississippi to the Injun Territory of Oklahoma. Many Injuns died on that long trail of forced settlement from within their Turtle Island.
Back while in Tennessee, my father—a farmer—died in 1853, and Mom Eugenia Ann Fenner Burges moved us young uns, and our coloreds, to Seguin in what was by then the state of Texas within the United States of America. My Uncle Timothy Pickering Jones lived in Seguin, his wife Aunt Catherine had died in the birth of cousin Kate, and Momma moved us to Seguin to help raise Kate. Momma eventually adopted Kate into our family of brothers Richard, Robert, and Pickering, and sister Eugenia. … We joined the lovely St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church up the way from here when we arrived with our coloreds (who by the way, at that time had a worth of over $10,000, which was a substantial amount of money in the 1850s!)
Now, I have a question for y’all. How many of you have experienced War directly? Raise your hands!
Well, I can tell you that War is Hell and I don’t really like to talk about it. But the War-Between-the-States broke out in 1861 and I served for four (4) years in that terrible and bloody conflict (And what War isn’t terrible and bloody? … even immoral and unethical??).
During this very bad mess of brutal fighting, I was in an outfit that came to be called Hood’s Brigade of the Confederate Army. Hood’s Brigade, or the Texas Brigade, was led for a brief time by the daring and well-respected Colonel John Bell Hood who had become a Texian, at least temporarily. Well over half of my fellow soldiers with whom I fought in Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, and in my old home state or Tennessee were killed. According to some future thing called Wikipedia (see immediately below): “Of the estimated 5,353 men who enlisted in the three Texas and one Arkansas regiments [including Hood’s Brigade], only 617 remained to surrender on April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House in Virginia.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Brigade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bell_Hood
[By the way, the fellow who is serving as my medium today, returned via Amtrak last evening from a board meeting in Garden City, Kansas. While at the board meeting in Garden City, he learned that a contemporary of mine, a prominent businessman and benevolent community leader of Garden City in that era, Frederick Finnup, fought against those of us in Hood’s Brigade … as a Union soldier at the Battle of Chickamauga, Georgia. … A crazy coincidence!?!!]
A year after the War ended, I came back to Seguin and married Bettie Rust … and we had children William Henry, Lone, Alfred, and Richard. (And I will tell you that son William Henry had a much more interesting and colorful life that I did. For example, as a lawyer he was a champion of the large Chinese population of El Paso and represented the famous prostitute madam, Tillie Howard. https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fbu72 ) … My wife Bettie died giving childbirth and I then married Agnes Erskine in 1875 who died two years later at the age of 40. Shortly afterward I courted Mary Louisa Jefferson and we were wed in 1879. And we were fortunate to have the lovely children Matilda, Bettie, and John.
During the 25 years after the War, Guadalupe County developed to a population of about 7000, Germans, 5000 Americans who came in from other states, 4000 coloreds, and 150 Mexicans and 20 Hebrews. In 1887 according to census records, Seguin had 2000 inhabitants and in Guadalupe County cotton was king in acreage followed by corn, oats, and millet. We had 9,000 horses and about 8,000 milk cows.
Now, if you are a typical audience, you will say that you don’t care much for lawyers and politicians! Well … I have been proud to have practiced law since before the War-Between-the-States. And I served as Texas Senator under the governorship of Sul Ross (later President of the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas). I was senator in the Texas Legislature during a period when Progressive Populism was starting to take hold. During that legislative service I was even honored to be President Pro Tempore.
(From my experiences in the Texas Legislature, at St. Andrew’s, and with the young Mary B. Erskine, I will predict that someday a great Democrat from this region will emphatically and truthfully say that “the only thing worth being is a teacher, a preacher, and/or a politician!” Moreover, I’ll predict that we’ll even have a Farmers Union here in Texas and be a leader in that aspect of the union movement.
https://www.humanitiestexas.org/news/articles/lbj-teacher
https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/aaf04
Now let’s return to my service as a senator. In the three (3) legislative sessions in which I have participated, I am proud that we resolved to strengthen the regulation of the railroads and to take care of the needs of public education, the summer normal institute, the Lunatic Asylum, the widow of the State Fish Commissioner, Texas veterans & widows of veterans, and crippled Confederate soldiers.
Okay. Now I am going back to the subject of Wars. So many Wars in my lifetime. The Mexican-American War! The dreadful Apache and Comanche Wars!!! The terrible War-Between-the-States!! These Wars involved grabbing more Land and extermination of Injuns, including by the killing off of the food and livelihood source for many of them, the buffalo. It’s why we are now 45 states of America in Land that was of the Injuns, up from 26 when I was born. And now we are declaring War against Spain! Finally, these Wars are only the ones in which we Americans were or are involved. There were many others in my lifetime when the world as a whole is considered.
I am tired of Wars! I’m just tired period. I think it’s time to go. To just pass away.
(But I am a Knight of the Templar!!! I’ll be okay!)
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Now y’all head on out through this cemetery and stop in for a wonderful tale of one of our good coloreds, Harry Burges. That boy Harry was baptized at St. Andrew’s and regularly took communion there. … A good colored!
Thank y’all!
Any quick questions?
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*I am grateful to Ms. Diane Gesick, Seguin, Texas for sending my medium pdfs of the historical background of myself and Harry Burges.
I do apologize for my medium’s not having props and poster boards in order to facilitate learning about me. However, he was quite busy in the month proceeding this presentation.
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pbm
[ 7 Ss / VV->^^ ]
