History

From the Handbook of Texas Online   

By Mary Belle Ingram

From the Matagorda County History & Genealogy page

From the Matagorda County History & Genealogy page

Condition Critical at Houston Hospital, While Tenant is Held in Jail 
   Dr. W. W. Bouldin, 60, physician and drug store owner at Bay City, was in a critical condition in St. Joseph’s infirmary Tuesday night, his face shattered by a charge of buckshot which ripped out both eyes. 
   He was wounded late Monday afternoon on his plantation about 12 miles from Bay City, after engaging in an argument with Dace Layton, his tenant, about pasturing a horse, according to information obtained by officers. 
   Layton was arrested by Deputy Sheriff Harris Milner of Matagorda county and charged with assault to murder before Justice of the Peace D. E. Capes. 
   At a preliminary hearing Tuesday morning, Layton was bound over to await action by the Matagorda county grand jury under $3,000 bound. Layton late Monday still was in jail, unable to furnish bail. 

From the Matagorda County History & Genealogy page

   EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second installment of our occasional review of newspaper articles about Bay City and Matagorda Count .
   We pick up from The Bay City Breeze - the city’s first newspaper - in 1895 and continue through 1896.

   Hosea H. League, one of the Old Three Hundred colonists, first visited Texas in company with his brother-in-law, William D. Horton. 
   After returning to Tennessee he decided to join the Stephen F. Austin colony and returned to Texas under provisions of the colonization act of March 1825, stating in his petition for land in March 1826 that he was 36 years old and was bringing his wife and five slaves. 
   In August 1826 he signed a petition for the establishment of Matagorda. In January 1827 he was in Nashville, Tennessee, and had twenty families ready to leave for Texas and a group of colonists bound for the colony of Green DeWitt. 
   To broaden his empresario activities, he was appointed agent for the Texas Association in March 1827 and in October 1827 was recognized by Mexican authorities as the agent of the Nashville Company (later Robertson’s colony).

 John Huff, early settler, soldier, and judge, was born in Pennsylvania around 1801 and traveled to Texas in the early 1820s, in time to be one of Stephen F. Austin’s Old Three Hundred colonists.  
   On July 10, 1824, he received title to a sitio on the west side of the San Bernard River, at the head of Bay Prairie, now in Wharton County. George Huff, who was probably his brother, acquired title to the adjoining sitio six weeks later. 
   In the 1826 census John Huff was classified as a blacksmith, a single man aged between twenty-five and forty. 
   In May 1830 he married Sarah Emiline Savage by bond in Austin County.  
   He was elected a sublieutenant for the fourth militia district in 1829. 
   In 1830 he presided over the alcalde election held at Lawrence Ramey’s In February 1836 he was a teller for the election to choose delegates from Bay Prairie to the Convention of 1836.  

From the Matagorda County History & Genealogy page

   EDITOR’S NOTE: We came across this article by Mrs. McElrath that was published in 1956 in the Bay City Herald about the Hawkins Lake House. The articles and phohos of this Matagorda County landmark are found on the Matagorda County History & Genealogy website (rootsweb.ancestry.com/~txmatago).

    Charles L. Langham, was a county treasurer of Matagorda County, and had an active business experience of more than half a century. 
   Langham was born in Wilcox, County, Alabama, in Sept. 1850, son of Louis and Catherine (Thompson) Langham, both natives of Alabama, where his father was a farmer and planter. 
   There were seven children in the family: James, who died at the age of twenty-five; Charles L.; John, who died when sixty-six years old; Joseph, who died at the age of three years; Olivia, who died at the age of forty-five; Margaret, deceased; and Mary, who died when six years old. 
   The only two to come to Texas were James and Charles. James settled at Navasota in 1867 and died there in 1869.
   Charles L. Langham during his boyhood in Alabama attended the common schools and also several boarding schools in different parts of the state. 

From the Matagorda County History & Genealogy page