Our Local Confederate
Heroes & Heroine
OUR CHAPTER NAMESAKE
Brigadier General Benjamin Andrew McColloch - Commander of the Indian Territories,
Commander of Co. K "Alamo Guards", 6th Texas Infantry
November 11, 1811 (Rutherford County, Tennessee) - March 7, 1862: KIA - Battle of Pea Ridge
"I tell you sir, the army shall come in, and no power here can prevent it."
- Ben McCulloch to Apostle E. Snow, 1858
Ben McCulloch, Indian fighter, Texas Ranger, United States marshal, and brigadier general in the Army of the Confederate States of America, was born in Rutherford County, Tennessee, on November 11, 1811, the fourth son of Alexander and Frances F. (LeNoir) McCulloch. His mother was the daughter of a prominent Virginia planter, and his father, a graduate of Yale College, was a major on Brig. Gen. John Coffee's staff during Andrew Jackson's campaign against the Creeks in Alabama. Ben was also the elder brother of Henry Eustace McCulloch. The McCullochs had been a prosperous and influential colonial North Carolina family but had lost much of their wealth as a result of the Revolutionary War and the improvidence of Alexander McCulloch, who so wasted his inheritance that he was unable to educate his younger sons. Two of Ben's older brothers briefly attended school taught by a close neighbor and family friend in Tennessee, Sam Houston.
Ben McColluch (EXPLICET)
Like many families on the western frontier, the McCullochs moved often—from North Carolina to eastern Tennessee to Alabama and back to western Tennessee between 1812 and 1830. They settled at last near Dyersburg, Tennessee, where David Crockett was among their closest neighbors and most influential friends. After five years of farming, hunting, and rafting, but virtually no formal schooling, Ben agreed to follow Crockett to Texas, planning to meet him in Nacogdoches on Christmas Day, 1835. Ben and Henry arrived too late, however, and Ben followed Crockett alone toward San Antonio. When sickness from measles prevented him from reaching the Alamo before its fall, McCulloch joined Houston's army on its retreat into East Texas. At the battle of San Jacinto, he commanded one of the famed Twin Sisters and won from Houston a battlefield commission as first lieutenant. He soon left the army, however, to earn his living as a surveyor in the Texas frontier communities of Gonzales and Seguin. He then joined the Texas Rangers and, as first lieutenant under John Coffee Hays, won a considerable reputation as an Indian fighter. In 1839 McCulloch was elected to the House of Representatives of the Republic of Texas in a campaign marred by a rifle duel with Reuben Ross. In the affray McCulloch received a wound that partially crippled his right arm for the rest of his life. On Christmas Day of that year, Henry McCulloch killed Ross in a pistol duel in Gonzales.
Ben chose not to stand for reelection in 1842 but returned to surveying and the pursuit of a quasimilitary career. At the battle of Plum Creek on August 12, 1840, he distinguished himself as a scout and as commander of the right wing of the Texas army. In February 1842, when the Mexican government launched a raid against Texas that seized the strategic town of San Antonio, McCulloch rendered invaluable service by scouting enemy positions and taking a prominent role in the fighting that harried Rafael Vásquez's raiders back below the Rio Grande. On September 11, 1842, a second Mexican expedition captured San Antonio. McCulloch again did valuable scouting service and joined in the pursuit of Adrián Woll's invading troops to the Hondo River, where Hays's rangers engaged them on September 21. After the repulse of the second Mexican invasion, McCulloch remained with the ranger company that formed the nucleus of an army with which the Texans planned to invade Mexico.
The so-called Somervell expedition was poorly managed, however, and Ben and Henry left it on the Rio Grande only hours before the remainder of the Texans were captured at Mier, Tamaulipas, on December 25, 1842. McCulloch was elected to the First Legislature after the annexation of Texas.
At the outbreak of the Mexican War, he raised a command of Texas Rangers that became Company A of Col. Jack Hays's First Regiment, Texas Mounted Volunteers. He was ordered to report to the United States Army on the Rio Grande and was soon named Zachary Taylor's chief of scouts. As such, he won his commander's praise and the admiration of the nation with his exciting reconnaissance expeditions into northern Mexico. The presence in his company of George Wilkins Kendall, editor of the New Orleans Picayune, and Samuel Reid, who later wrote a popular history of the campaign, The Scouting Expeditions of McCulloch's Texas Rangers, propelled McCulloch's name into national prominence. Leading his company as mounted infantry at the battle of Monterrey, McCulloch further distinguished himself, and before the Battle of Buena Vista, his astute and daring reconnaissance work saved Taylor's army from disaster and won him a promotion to the rank of major of United States volunteers.
McCulloch returned to Texas at the end of the war, served for a time as a scout under Bvt. Maj. Gen. David E. Twiggs, and traveled to Tennessee on family business before setting out from Austin on September 9, 1849, for the gold fields of California. Although he failed to strike it rich, he was elected sheriff of Sacramento. His friends in the Senate, Sam Houston and Thomas Jefferson Rusk, mounted a campaign to put him in command of a regiment of United States cavalry for duty on the Texas frontier, but largely due to McCulloch's lack of formal education, the attempt was frustrated. In 1852, President Franklin Pierce promised him the command of the elite Second United States Cavalry, but Secretary of War Jefferson Davis bestowed the command instead on his personal favorite, Albert Sidney Johnston. McCulloch was, however, appointed United States marshal for the Eastern District of Texas and served under Judge John Charles Watrous during the administrations of Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan. In 1858, he was appointed one of two peace commissioners to treat with Brigham Young and the elders of the Mormon Church; he is credited with helping to prevent armed hostilities between the United States government and the Latter-Day Saints in the Utah Territory.
When secession came to Texas, McCulloch was commissioned a colonel and authorized to demand the surrender of all federal posts in the Military District of Texas. After a bloodless confrontation at the Alamo on February 16, 1861, General Twiggs turned over to McCulloch the federal arsenal and all other United States property in San Antonio. On May 11, 1861, Jefferson Davis appointed McCulloch a brigadier general, the second-ranking brigadier general in the Confederate Army and the first general-grade officer to be commissioned from the civilian community. McCulloch was assigned to the command of Indian Territory and established his headquarters at Little Rock, Arkansas, where he began to build the Army of the West with regiments from Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas. Although hampered by logistical nightmares and a total disagreement over strategic objectives with Missouri general Sterling Price, with whom he had been ordered to cooperate, McCulloch, with the assistance of Albert Pike, established vital alliances with the Cherokees, Choctaws, Creeks, and other inhabitants of what is now eastern Oklahoma. On August 10, 1861, he won an impressive victory over the army of Brig. Gen. Nathaniel Lyon at Wilson's Creek, or Oak Hills, in southwest Missouri. McCulloch's continuing inability to come to personal or strategic accord with Price, however, caused President Davis, on January 10, 1862, to appoint Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn to the command of both McCulloch's and Price's armies. Van Dorn launched the Army of the West on an expedition to capture St. Louis, a plan that McCulloch bitterly resisted. The Confederates encountered the army of Union Major General Samuel R. Curtis on the Little Sugar Creek in northwest Arkansas.
Due largely to McCulloch's remarkable knowledge of the terrain, Van Dorn's army was able to flank the enemy out of a strong position and cut his line of communication to the north. McCulloch, commanding the Confederate right wing in the ensuing battle of Pea Ridge, or Elkhorn Tavern, on March 7, 1862, overran a battery of artillery and drove the enemy from his original position. As federal resistance stiffened around 10:30 A.M., however, McCulloch rode forward through the thick underbrush to determine the location of the enemy line, was shot from his horse, and died instantly. His command devolved upon Brig. Gen. James M. McIntosh, who was killed but a few minutes later while leading a charge to recover McCulloch's body. Col. Louis Hébert, the division's senior regimental commander, was captured in the same charge, and soon McCulloch's division, without leadership, began to fall apart and drift toward the rear. Most participants and later historians attribute McCulloch's untimely death to the disaster at Pea Ridge and the subsequent loss of Arkansas to the Union forces.
McCulloch was first buried on the field, but his body was removed to the cemetery at Little Rock and thence to the State Cemetery in Austin. McCulloch never married. His papers are located in the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin.
The Scottish PERSONAL Coat of Arms
of Ben McColloch
Following the Secession of Texas in 1861, and Ben's efforts to secure the Alamo from destruction. Queen Victoria conferred this Coat of Arms for his own personal use. The Traditional Coat of Arms of his Grandfather, Alexander McColloch - who served in the American Revolution - was used. The addition of the Alamo was incorporated in reference to the surrender of all Union property in Texas by Maj. General Twiggs. The addition of the Confederate flowers, the Crinum Lily, the Confederate Rose, and the Nacogdoches rose was added in 1862 following his death at the Battle of Pea Ridge in memorium for his service to the cause. To date, this is the only Cost of Arms that was conferred to an American by a foreign sovereign for their heroic actions.
Brigadier General Henry Eustace McColloch - Commander of the Dept. of Texas
December 6, 1816 (Rutherford County, Tennessee) - March 12, 1895 (Rockport, Aransas County, Texas)
Henry Eustace McCulloch, early pioneer, Texas Ranger, and Confederate officer, son of Alexander and Frances (LeNoir) McCulloch, was born in Rutherford County, Tennessee, on December 6, 1816. Although he played an important role in military affairs in early Texas, he received fewer accolades than his more famous cohorts John S. (Rip) Ford, John C. (Jack) Hays, and his older brother, Benjamin McCulloch. In the 1830s Ben and Henry McCullochs carried on several economic enterprises. They traveled the Mississippi River on log rafts to various markets, and by the end of the decade, they had moved to Gonzales to survey and locate lands. In 1839, in the political struggles at Gonzales, Henry McCulloch shot and killed Reuben Ross, after the latter, intoxicated and obnoxious, drew his pistols. The angular-featured, gentle-looking McCulloch joined the Texas Rangers in the heyday of their role as citizen soldiers against Indians and Mexican troops.
In the battle of Plum Creek in 1840 against the Comanches, he scouted, fought with distinction, and was wounded. In addition, he served as a lieutenant in Hays's rangers in their military operations against the Comanches and Mexican nationals. In 1842, in the attack on San Antonio and retreat by Mexican troops, McCulloch scouted, infiltrated enemy lines seeking information, and participated in the battle of Salado Creek.
For the next two decades, he mixed his military career with other ventures. In 1843, he was elected sheriff of Gonzales and began a merchandising career there. The following year, he moved his business to Seguin. During the Mexican War and afterward, he served as a captain of a volunteer company guarding the Indian frontier. He became especially adept at organizing regular ranger patrols in intervals from different camps to cover a designated area. In the early 1850s, McCulloch served in the state legislature (both houses) from Guadalupe County, and at the end of the decade, he accepted an appointment as United States marshal for the Eastern District of Texas.
He served as a high-ranking Confederate officer during the Civil War. As Texas left the Union, he assumed command of the posts on the northwestern frontier from Camp Colorado to the Red River and used Texas secessionist troops to accept the surrender of federal forces. Given the rank of colonel by the Confederate Congress, McCulloch organized the First Regiment, Texas Mounted Riflemen, in 1861. This body of troops slowed down the penetration of the western frontier by Indians through a system of patrols and small-scale engagements. After promotion to brigadier general, McCulloch commanded the Northern Sub-District of Texas from 1863 to the war's end. In this role, he faced the threats of Indian raids and the movement of Union forces. He also had to deal with the activities of draft dodgers, deserters, and bushwhackers. At one time, he tried unsuccessfully to arrest William Quantrill for robbery and murder. With the war ended, McCulloch went home to Seguin with an armed escort for protection against deserters, who swore to take his life.
After the Civil War, he remained in the limelight. In 1874, he assisted the newly elected governor, Richard Coke, in removing Edmund J. Davis from the executive offices. Early in 1876, as a reward for his years of service, McCulloch was given the superintendency of the Deaf and Dumb Asylum (later the Texas School for the Deaf). Here, his lax and inept administration brought about a legislative investigation that made him resign his position in 1879. He was married to Jane Isabella Ashby in 1840. He died on March 12, 1895, in Seguin and was buried in San Geronimo Cemetery.
The Scottish Coat of Arms
of Clan McColloch
The Traditional Coat of Arms of his Grandfather, Alexander McColloch - who served in the American Revolution - was used by many of his descendants at annual clan meetings and at the local San Antonio Highland games.
Brigadier General Hamilton Prioleau Bee - Commander of 1st Texas Cavalry
July 22, 1822 (Charleston, South Carolina) - October 3, 1897 (San Antonio, Texas)
"Stonewall! That's your new name."
- Giving General Thomas J. Jackson his new nickname.
Hamilton P. Bee, Confederate brigadier general, the son of Anne Wragg Fayssoux and Barnard E. Bee, was born in Charleston, South Carolina, on July 22, 1822. He was the brother of Gen. Barnard Elliott Bee, Jr. The family moved to Texas in 1836, and Hamilton became the sole clerk of Francis R. Lubbock while he was still a youth. He received a deed for 320 acres in Harrisburg County on July 11, 1839. Later that year he served as secretary for the commission that established the boundary between the Republic of Texas and the United States, and in 1843, Texas President Sam Houston dispatched Bee, with Joseph C. Eldridge and Thomas S. Torrey to convene a peace council with the Comanches. On August 9, 1843, the commissioners obtained the promise of the Penatekas to attend a council with Houston the following April.
The meeting culminated in the Treaty of Tehuacana Creek. In 1845, Bee lived in Washington, D.C., where he worked as an agent of the Texas Treasury Department. He received 320 acres of land in Travis County on September 2, 1845, and was named secretary of the Texas Senate the following year. During the Mexican War he served briefly as a private in Benjamin McCulloch's famed Company A–the "Spy Company"–of Col. John Coffee Hays's First Regiment, Texas Mounted Rifles, before transferring in October 1846, as a second lieutenant, to Mirabeau B. Lamar's independent company of Texas cavalry. Bee volunteered for a second term in October 1847 and was elected first lieutenant of Lamar's Company, now a component of Col. Peter Hansborough Bell's Regiment, Texas Volunteers. After the war, Bee moved to Laredo and was elected to the Texas legislature, where he served from 1849 through 1859. From 1855 through 1857, he was speaker of the House. While living in Austin, he became a mason and joined Lodge No. 12. Bee was married to Mildred Tarver of Alabama in 1854, and they had eight children. In 1856, he received 320 acres of land in Nueces County from Nathaniel Cody. He was elected brigadier general of militia in 1861 and appointed brigadier general in the Confederate Army to rank from March 4, 1862. His brigade was composed of August C. Buchel 's First, Nicholas C. Gould's Twenty-third, Xavier B. Debray's Twenty-sixth, James B. Likin's Thirty-fifth, Peter C. Woods's Thirty-sixth, and Alexander W. Terrell's Texas cavalry regiments.
Given command of the lower Rio Grande district, with headquarters at Brownsville, Bee expedited the import of munitions from Europe through Mexico and the export of cotton in payment. On November 4, 1863, he was credited with saving millions of dollars of Confederate stores and munitions from capture by a federal expeditionary force under Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks. After transfer to a field command in the spring of 1864, Bee led his brigade in the Red River campaign under Lt. Gen. Richard Taylor. Having had only slight training or experience in the art of war and having served only in an administrative capacity to that time, he was less than skillful in handling troops. While he was leading a cavalry charge at the battle of Pleasant Hill, two horses were shot from beneath him, and he suffered a slight face wound. Though he was afterward the object of some heavy criticism, he was assigned to the command of Thomas Green's division in Gen. John A. Wharton's cavalry corps in February 1865 and was later given a brigade of infantry in Gen. Samuel Bell Maxey's division.
In 1865, Bee and his family relocated to Mexico and attempted to start a plantation near Orizaba. He worked briefly as a ship broker in Havana, Cuba, in 1866, but relocated to Parras, Coahuila, where he engaged in agricultural experiments, including distilling brandy. He returned to Texas in 1876 and served as college steward and superintendent of the farm at the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas (renamed Texas A&M University) near Bryan, where he owned land and his son attended school. He moved to San Antonio in 1879 to practice law, but lived in Austin from 1885 to 1886 when he served as Commissioner of the Office of Insurance, Statistics, and History (renamed the Texas Department of Insurance). He died on October 3, 1897, and was buried in the Confederate Cemetery in San Antonio.
Colonel John Salmon "R.I.P" Ford - Commander of the Rio Grande District
May 26, 1815 (Greenvill Dist., South Carolina) - November 3, 1897 (San Antonio, Texas)
John Salmon (Rip) Ford, soldier, elected official, and newspaper editor, son of William and Harriet (Salmon) Ford, was born in Greenville District, South Carolina, on May 26, 1815. He moved to Texas in June 1836 and served in the Texas army until 1838, rising to the rank of first lieutenant under John Coffee (Jack) Hays. Ford settled in San Augustine and practiced medicine there until 1844, when he was elected to the House of the Ninth Congress, where he introduced the resolution to accept the terms of annexation to the United States. In 1845, he moved to Austin and became editor of the Austin, Texas Democrat; he was later in partnership with Michael Cronican. During the Mexican War Ford was adjutant of Hays's regiment and in command of a spy company; he was commended for gallant service by Gen. Joseph Lane.
While serving as adjutant, Ford acquired the lasting nickname "Rip." When officially sending out notices of deaths, he kindly included at the first of the message, "Rest in Peace"; later, under the exigencies of battle conditions, this message was shortened to "R.I.P". In 1849, with Robert S. Neighbors, Ford made an exploration of the country between San Antonio and El Paso and published a report and map of the route, which came to be known as the Ford and Neighbors Trail. Later in 1849, he was made captain in the Texas Rangers and was stationed between the Nueces and the Rio Grande, where he had numerous Indian fights during 1850 and 1851. In 1852, he was elected to the Texas Senate; again, he became an editor and, in partnership with Capt. Joe Walker established the State Times, which was published in Austin until 1857. Early in 1858, he accepted a commission in the state troops and defeated the Indians in two major battles on the Canadian River. Late in 1859, he was sent to the Rio Grande, where he commanded operations against Juan N. Cortina.
In 1861, Ford served as a member of the Secession Convention, commanded an expedition to Brazos Santiago, initiated a trade agreement between Mexico and the Confederacy, and was elected colonel of the Second Texas Cavalry, with a command in the Rio Grande district. Between 1862 and 1865, he discharged with tactful moderation the duties of commandant of conscripts, while at various times he was engaged on border operations protecting Confederate-Mexican trade. In May 1865, he led Confederate forces in the battle of Palmito Ranch, the last battle of the Civil War. In 1868, Ford moved to Brownsville to edit the Brownsville Sentinel. In 1872, he was a delegate to the Democratic convention in Baltimore. He was a special sergeant-at-arms when Richard Coke was inaugurated as governor in 1873 and quelled a riot of Austin citizens who were aroused against the radicals and Edmund J. Davis. In 1873, Ford served as a cattle and hide inspector of Cameron County, and in 1874, he was mayor of Brownsville. He was a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1875 and served in the Texas Senate from 1876 to 1879, when he was appointed superintendent of the Deaf and Dumb School (later the Texas School for the Deaf). While in the Senate, he urged the promotion of immigration to Texas and popular education, supported in part by the sale of public lands.
Ford spent his later years writing reminiscences and historical articles and promoting an interest in Texas history. As a charter member of the Texas State Historical Association, he contributed one of the first articles published in its Quarterly. He died in San Antonio on November 3, 1897.
Mrs. Sallie Moore Houston - Chapter President of the UDC Bernard Bee, Chapter #84
1850 (Mobile, Alabama) - February 11, 1928 (San Antonio, Texas)
Sallie Moore Winstead Houston was born Sallie Moore sometime in 1850 to Leonard James Moore and Mary Emily Tobin in Alabama, USA.
Sally married Stephen F. Winstead (Born 1843, North Carolina) on February 21, 1867, in Calhoun, Arkansas. They had two children, Mary D Winstead and Edwin Winstead. Stephen passed away in 1871 at age 28. Sallie Moore Winstead took her two children and then moved to Austin, Texas. There she met Augustus W. Houston, (born August 3, 1850 in Lauderdale, Alabama) in Austin, Texas. She married Augustus Houston, in Austin, TX. They moved to San Antonio, TX where Augustus and his brother Reagan Houston, joined Col. Tom Frost in the Houston Brothers Law Offices. Sallie Moore Winstead Houston and Augustus Houston had one daughter, Elizabeth Reagan “Bessie” Houston. Miss Elizabeth Houston never married and is buried next to her mother and father in the Confederate Cemetery, San Antonio TX.
These are simple facts, but they do not tell the whole story. Mrs. Houston was a woman of great courage and honor. She and her sisters in the Bernard E. Bee Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy wanted to keep the memories of the fallen Confederate heroes alive and provide a place where mothers, sisters, and family members of the lost fallen soldiers can go to grieve, lay flowers and pray if they want. The words on the Confederate Monument read, “Lest We Forget”. Some of us here today, have lost Confederate Fallen Hero's and for over 100 years, we have no idea where their bodies lay.
The monument that Sallie and her sisters of United Daughters of the Confederacy, Bernard Bee Chapter #84, commissioned the design and construction of a Confederate cenotaph in memory of the common soldiers of the Civil War (pictured here) in what became Travis Park. Designed by Louisiana artist Elizabeth Montgomery and constructed by Llano stone carver Frank Teich in 1899, it was the first monument designed by a woman in the United States and the first monument of its kind ever placed in San Antonio. The UDC financed this project with bake sales, teas, and quilting bees, and was supported by the citizenry of San Antonio. Perpetual use of land for the statue in Travis Park was given to the United Daughters of the Confederacy by unanimous vote of the City Council and the City of San Antonio in 1899. This memorial was illegally removed by order of the San Antonio, TX, city council on August 31, 2017, despite a large majority of the citizens and registered voters where in favor of keeping the monument in place for its historical relevance to Texas and to the city.
