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Henry Millard, veteran of the battle of San
Jacintoqv and one of the
founders of Beaumont, the son of Josiah and Nancy (Tower)
Millard, was born in Stillwater, New York, probably in 1796. He
was a relation of both President Millard Fillmore and author
Nathaniel Hawthorne. In 1804 the Millard family moved to Ste.
Genevieve, Missouri. Sometime between 1822 and 1825 Millard
moved to Natchez, Mississippi, where on August 24, 1826, he
married Mary Dewburleigh Barlace Warren Beaumont, the daughter
of a prosperous Natchez merchant family. Their two sons were
born in Natchez. In 1827 Millard went into business with his
brother-in-law, Franklin Beaumont, opening a drug, medicine,
book, and stationery store. Millard moved to New Orleans in 1832
and formed the partnership of Millard and Mason, a drug firm,
with Samuel Mason of Massachusetts. Mason died on September 15,
1833, which brought financial problems to the business, and Mary
Millard died on May 30, 1834. Millard formed a new partnership
with Joseph P. Pulsifer and Thomas B. Hulingqqv
and, leaving his sons to be reared in New Orleans, moved to
Texas in August 1835. There Millard and Pulsifer opened a store
in the settlement of Santa Anna on the Neches River. Huling kept
another store in Zavalla, on the Angelina River. Millard began
to speculate in land, and on September 4, 1835, the partnership,
called J. P. Pulsifer and Company, purchased fifty acres along
the Neches River, between the settlements of Santa Anna and
Tevis Bluff. There the company laid out the town of Beaumont,
named after Millard's late wife.
Later that fall Millard was elected a
delegate from the Liberty District to the Consultation,qv
where he served on numerous committees. On November 13, 1835, he
cast his vote for the new municipality of Jefferson. The Millard
family tradition is that Millard himself named the municipality
after his brother-in-law in Natchez, Jefferson Beaumont, but
there is insufficient evidence to prove this story. Millard was
also elected to serve on the General Councilqv
of the Consultation, but he soon resigned to take the commission
of lieutenant colonel in the revolutionary army.qv
For a time he was stationed at Nacogdoches as a recruiting
officer. In February 1836 he accompanied Gen. Sam Houstonqv
to treat with the Cherokee Indians. In the spring of 1836
Millard, commanding a regular battalion of infantry, joined
Houston's army while it was camped on the Brazos and marched
with it on the long retreat toward San Jacinto. During the
battle on April 21 Millard led two companies of regular infantry
and a battalion of volunteers to capture the Mexican breastwork.
After the battle Houston gave him two duelling pistols belonging
to Mexican general Antonio López de Santa Anna.qv
Millard's descendants later donated the pistols to the Republic
of Texas Museum.qv
During the summer of 1836 Millard became
involved in an army plot to arrest Acting President David G.
Burnet.qv The plot failed, and
Burnet eventually had Millard "suspended" from the army. That
fall Millard returned to Beaumont, where from 1838 to 1840 he
served as chief justice of the new county of Jefferson. In 1840
Millard was alderman of Beaumont; he held office briefly as
justice of the peace. In 1837 he also became a charter member of
the Masonic Grand Lodge of Texas, serving as its secretary in
1840-41. Millard moved to Galveston in January 1842 to seek new
business opportunities and became tax assessor for Galveston
County. He also rejoined the Texas militia as colonel commandant
of the Fourth Regiment, Second Brigade, stationed at Galveston.
He began to suffer from poor health, however, and after various
bouts with serious illness, he died on August 28 or 29, 1844. He
was buried in the Episcopal Cemetery on Broadway on August 30,
1844, by the Masons of Harmony Lodge No. 6 in Galveston, with
whom he had affiliated the previous year.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Judith Walker Linsley and Ellen
Walker Rienstra, "Henry Millard, Forgotten Texian," Texas
Gulf Historical and Biographical Record 21 (1985).
Judith Linsley and Ellen Rienstra
- Handbook of Texas Online, s.v.
","
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/MM/fmi10.html
(accessed March 4, 2008).
(NOTE: "s.v." stands for sub verbo, "under the word.")
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