By Tracy Gupton
Columbia Historical Museum Board Member
“The Old 300” refers to settlers in Stephen F. Austin’s original colony in the Mexican province of Texas.
Historic Columbia Cemetery in West Columbia is the final resting place of a handful of those whose families were issued land grants in early 1821 by Moses Austin, the father of Stephen Austin. Moses died in Missouri before he could see his dream of colonizing eastern Mexico with Anglo families come to fruition.
The younger Austin led nearly 300 families comprised of Americans from western Louisiana into the portion of Mexico where his father had been given land grants from the Spanish government. Austin’s colony included land along the Colorado, San Bernard and Brazos rivers in the general vicinity of current day Washington, Grimes and Fayette counties and it extended to the Gulf of Mexico where plantations eventually were arrayed along the rich coastal river bottoms of Southeast Texas.
The small communities that eventually became East and West Columbia were founded by Josiah Hughes Bell. He and his wife Mary were the heads of one of the nearly 300 original families that joined Austin on his expedition. Along with Josiah and Mary Bell and their sons Samuel McKenzie Bell (1819-1833) and Thaddeus Constantine Bell (1822-1871), others interred at Old Columbia Cemetery in West Columbia who were “Old 300” members are David McCormick, Dr. Samuel T. Angier, Catherine Jane Patterson Borden and Rachel Underwood.
Rachel was the daughter of “Old 300” settler William C. Carson who came to Texas with her father when she was a child. She eventually married early Texas pioneer Ammon Underwood (1810-1887) who is also buried at Columbia Cemetery in West Columbia.
There are many other early Texas heroes like Ammon Underwood who, although they did not make the journey to Texas with Stephen F. Austin’s original “Old 300,” soon followed these early settlers to help lay the foundations for the strong communities of East Columbia (originally known as Marion but referred by residents most often as Bell’s Landing) and West Columbia (which was originally simply known as Columbia).
David McCormick, born in 1794, was buried on the plot of land that was originally a section of Josiah and Mary Bell’s plantation when he died at 42 on May 30, 1836, in Columbia which was the capitol of the Republic of Texas at that time. David McCormick received title to a league of land in what is today known as Brazoria County on July 21, 1824. He moved to Texas in 1821 from Hempstead County, Arkansas. The census of 1826 classified him as a farmer and stock raiser, a widower with one slave. McCormick was buried near his home when he died in 1836 but his body was later moved to the Bells’ plantation for reburial at the new Columbia Cemetery.
Dr. Samuel Tubbs Angier, born in 1792 in Pembroke, Massachusetts, in Plymouth County, was laid to rest at the cemetery in West Columbia following his death at 74 on April 17, 1867. He received his medical degree from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1823. On August 16, 1824, Dr. Angier and two partners received a sitio (4,338 acres) of land on the west bank of Chocolate Bayou three leagues above its mouth. The land is now in Brazoria County. He also was granted a labor (177 acres) of land on the east bank of the Brazos River about 4 miles above its mouth on August 24, 1824. On April 30, 1829, he married “Old 300” colonist Permelia Pickett. Samuel Angier was one of four physicians of the Brazoria-Columbia area in the 1820s. As a Freemason, Samuel Angier was a charter member of St. John’s Lodge No. 49 (later changed to lodge No. 5) of Columbia, Texas. He was selected grand master of the local Masonic lodge on June 1, 1848.
At the tender age of 4 years old, Rachel Jane Carson joined Stephen F. Austin’s “Old 300” colony with her father, William C. Carson. She married Ammon Underwood in 1839, and they lived for many years near the banks of the Brazos River in East Columbia. She lived in this area until 1889 when she moved to Galveston. Rachel died at the age of 76 in Galveston on February 14, 1896, and was returned to West Columbia for burial at Old Columbia Cemetery. She is buried near her husband, Ammon Underwood, who passed away in 1887.
Rachel’s mother, Catherine Jane Patterson Borden (1795-1875), is also buried at Columbia Cemetery. Catherine was born in Nova Scotia, Canada, in 1795. She came to Texas with Stephen F. Austin and her husband, William C. Carson (burial details unknown), who died in 1836. Catherine and her husband received title to a league (4,428 acres) of land now in Brazoria County on May 15, 1827. He was in poor health on his arrival in the Columbia area and died before the end of the Texas Revolution in 1836. Catherine married Gail Borden, Sr. in 1842.
Mary Evaline McKenzie Bell married Josiah Hughes Bell December 1, 1818, at Hopkinsville, Kentucky, in Christian County, and they soon after moved to Natchitoches, Louisiana, where Josiah rekindled his friendship with Stephen F. Austin who he had known when both were living in Missouri.
The Bells joined forces with Austin and the other “Old 300” families to venture into eastern Mexico with plans to settle Texas. The couple already had two small children accompanying them: first-born Samuel McKenzie Bell, born October 10, 1819, and sister Elizabeth Lucinda Bell, born December 22, 1820.
The family of four made history when Thaddeus Constantine Bell was born on October 4, 1822, in Washington County, becoming the first Anglo male child born in Austin’s Colony. He died at 48 in 1871, in Houston and is buried in West Columbia near his parents’ graves. His sister Elizabeth (1820-1893) died in Austin and is buried elsewhere. The exact location of first-born son Samuel’s grave is unknown. He died at the young age of 13 on July 11, 1833, three years before Texas won its independence from Mexico.
While Columbia remained the capital of the Republic of Texas for only a short time, the city’s historic cemetery is dotted with numerous state historical markers that signify the importance West Columbia and East Columbia have in early history of the Lone Star State.
