News from Lake Creek Settlement
The Marriage of Charles Bellinger
Stewart
or
So, Mr. Stewart Where Did You Go for
Your Honeymoon?
By Kameron K. Searle
Montgomery County
is very proud to have been the home of Charles Bellinger Stewart
and the birthplace of the Lone Star Flag. As we will see in the coming
weeks, Charles B. Stewart would play an active role in the early
history of Montgomery County and in the establishment of the Town
of Montgomery as the first county seat. Later, historians would credit
him with designing the Lone Star Flag and the Seal of Texas in the
Town of Montgomery in 1839.
On March 1, 1836, at Washington (Washington-on-the Brazos),
the Texian independence convention began. The
convention lasted from March 1 to March 17, 1836. The
delegates to the convention declared Texas
independent from Mexico on March 2, 1836. One of
these delegates was Charles B. Stewart. Stewart, who
had already served as the first Secretary of State of
Texas, was an active member of the convention where he signed
the Texas Declaration of Independence and was a member of the
committee that drafted the Constitution of the Republic of
Texas.
On
March 6, 1836, the Alamo fell. As the Texas Revolution
raged on, an interesting and little known fact about C.
B. Stewart occurred. C. B. Stewart, one of the most
active members of the Convention at Washington, left the
convention for several days and got married! On
March 8, 1836, James Hall, Judge of the Municipality of
Washington, authorized “W.W. Shepperd of Lake Creek to
celebrate a contract of marriage between C B Stewart &
Julia Shepperd.”
Stewart left Washington and traveled to the house of W. W.
Shepperd in Lake Creek where he married Julia Shepperd (W.W.
Shepperd's daughter) on March 11, 1836. Stewart then returned
to the Convention at Washington by March 16 where he signed
the Constitution of the Republic of Texas on March 17,
1836.
For some
reason, probably a photograph taken later in his life, Texas
founding father, Charles B. Stewart, is always thought of and
portrayed as an older man. According to a number of sources,
Charles B. Stewart was born on February 6, 1806. Other sources
provide a date of February 18, 1806. So, Stewart would have just
turned 30 the month before he signed the Declaration of
Independence and married his first wife, Julia
Shepperd.
The
witnesses to the marriage of Charles B. Stewart and Julia Shepperd
were John Marshal Wade, Charles Garrett and William C.
Clark.
Just over a month after
witnessing the Stewart/Shepperd wedding in Lake Creek, John Marshal
Wade would be detailed to fire one of the cannons known as the
“Twin Sisters” during the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836.
Wade would later found the Montgomery Patriot
newspaper. Charles
Garrett was one of Stephen F. Austin’s original “Old Three
Hundred.” Garrett was
the son-in-law of Owen Shannon and Margaret
Shannon. William
C. Clark was one of the original settlers of the Lake Creek
Settlement. He
received his Mexican land grant from Empresario Stephen F.
Austin in 1831.
Each of these gentlemen will appear regularly in many of the
records that will be featured in future articles regarding
the Lake Creek Settlement.
Where was
the house of W. W. Shepperd located in Lake
Creek? In March
1836, W.W. Shepperd lived on the land that would later become
the Town of Montgomery in July of 1837. This marriage record is the
earliest known record of someone getting married on the lands
that would become Montgomery, Texas. This wedding was also held
during the Texas Revolution just nine days after Texas
declared its independence from Mexico and five days after the
Alamo fell. Most
men were either fighting in the Texas army or assisting in
the “Runaway Scrape.” As such, C. B. Stewart’s
wedding has to be one of the earliest recorded weddings in
Republic of Texas history.
Before
Montgomery County was created on December 14, 1837, the Lake Creek
Settlement was part of Washington County. Note that the Stewart/Shepperd
marriage record was filed following the Texas
Revolution. It was
filed in the deed records of Washington County, Texas (Washington
County Clerk) in Deed Book A-1, pages 240-243.
Kameron K. Searle
is an attorney in Houston, Texas who has thoroughly researched the
history of the Lake Creek Settlement and the early history of
Montgomery County for the last eight years. For more information about the
Lake Creek Settlement, go to the TexasHistoryPage.Com .
This article
originally appeared in the December 31, 2008 edition of the
Montgomery County News.
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