Dr. James Long—1819
The settlement of the boundary dispute between the United States and Texas on February 22, 1819, by fixing the Sabine river as the boundary, met with strong opposition in Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi, as well as Eastern Texas. The American settlers had contended for the Neches river as the true boundary, and Dr. James Long, who had married the daughter of a wealthy planter at Natchez, Mississippi, lost no time in exploiting his scheme of forming the Republic of Texas. Leaving Natchez June 17, 1819, with 75 men, he reached Nacogdoches with approximately 300, including Samuel Davenport, Bernado Guitierrez de Lara, and many others who had fled in 1813.
Upon reaching Nacogdoches, Long’s forces occupied the Old Stone Fort, organized a provisional government, and issued a proclamation declaring Texas a free and independent republic, and another newspaper—the third in Nacogdoches as well as in Texas—was published by Horatio Bigelow. It was called “The Mexican Advocate.”
It is very probable that Dr. Long’s expedition would have been completely successful if it had been organized a year later, after the revolutionary movement had begun in Spain but in 1819 the royalists were in control in Mexico; and that fact, together with Long’s division of his forces after leaving Nacogdoches for the West, so weakened his fighting units as to cause them to fall an easy prey to the successive onslaughts of the Spanish Army sent against him under Colonel Perez.
With the capture of his block houses and forts on the Brazos, Trinity and Red rivers, Mrs. Jane Long, who had been left at Nacogdoches, fled across the Sabine, and her husband soon followed, thus ending his first attempt at freeing Texas, in October, 1819.
Frost Thorne Home—Hart Hotel
Residence of Texas’ first millionaire. Built 1825. See [page 12].