After further interesting exercises the festivities were brought to a close.
PAPERS CONTRIBUTED TO THE SOCIETY,
During the Year, for Publication.
THE IRISH PIONEERS OF TEXAS.
BY HON. JOHN C. LINEHAN, CONCORD, N. H.
Philip Nolan can well be styled the original “Texan Ranger.” He was one of the first, if not the very first, of the adventurous spirits to explore Texas, and whose daring and persistent bravery finally added the Lone Star state to the American Union. His romantic career and tragic fate, it is said, furnished a name for Edward Everett Hale’s “Man Without a Country.”
He was of direct Irish origin and a citizen of the United States. He left Natchez, Miss., in the summer of 1797, ostensibly to buy horses, but in reality to reconnoitre and survey the country. A second trip was made in 1800. He was accompanied by thirty armed men. The viceroy of Mexico, looking on his movements with suspicion, issued orders to arrest any foreigners who might enter the Spanish province.
He had been informed that a number of them had gone into Texas, and that Philip Nolan was considered the most dangerous among them; that he was authorized by General Wilkinson to reconnoitre the country, and make maps of it, and that it was of the utmost importance that he be captured and disposed of. In accordance with these instructions an expedition was fitted out to secure him.
It was composed of one hundred men, sixty-eight of whom were regulars, well armed, and possessed of one field piece. It started in pursuit on March 4, 1801. Two weeks later they reached the point where he had entrenched himself on the bank of a river. The Spanish commander thereupon sent a messenger, “Mr. William Barr, an Irishman,” who had joined his command as interpreter, to summon Nolan to surrender. Nolan and his men determined to fight, and at daybreak next morning, began the engagement by firing on the Spaniards. The contest lasted until nine o’clock a. m., when Nolan was struck and killed by a cannon ball. His party then surrendered.
HON. JOHN J. LINN,
Born in County Antrim, Ireland, 1798; a pioneer
settler of Texas; was a member of the Texan
Congress; author of “Reminiscences of Fifty
Years in Texas.”