Turns out there was a number of Kerrs in Texas, the William Kerr I mentioned above was actually the business partner of the Kerr I had intended to refer to, Peter Kerr, and neither should be confused with one James Kerr, allegedly "the ugliest man in Texas"...
http://www.tamu.edu/faculty/ccbn/dewitt/dewitt&kerr2.htm...tho surely we got 'Fire members could give him a run for his money.
Sadly too, one eighteen year-old Joseph Kerr died defending the Alamo. No degree of blood relationship attends to these four Kerrs. The ugly one is to whom Kerrville TX refers.
Peter Kerr is one of them guys you wish you could sit down and talk with. Originally from Pennsylvania, Peter Kerr arrived in Texas aged twenty-nine years of age and established a mercantile business in Victoria amid the Martin De Leon grant, the only predominantly Mexican colony in Texas.
At one point he was contracted to marry a pretty senorita from a good family but lost everything to an Indian Raid, the father of the bride subsequently refusing permission to marry. The next time Kerr returned to Texas he brung a still, but accounts say somehow it sailed from New Orleans without him.
Martin De Leon is worthy of mention, Criollo aristocracy from Mexico, tall, gentlemanly and dynamic. Sadly "Capitan Muchas Vacas" perished of cholera in 1833, his six sons however all supported at least the Federalist Revolution, sheltering Texian refugees during the war, including the family of John Linn.
In 1835, as war clouds were gathering, Peter Kerr, Fernando De Leon and Jose Maria Jesus Carbajal drove a large herd of horses 500 miles to New Orleans. This "beef trail" between Texas and New Orleans is mostly forgotten today but actually had been long established by 1835. As early as the 1780's San Antonio-area Vaqueros were driving cattle down it to provision the Spanish garrisons at New Orleans. This tradition would continue through the Republic of Texas era with increasing Anglo participation, switching easily to the well-known drives north to Kansas after the Civil War.
The $35,000 in proceeds (!) from this drive were used to purchase supplies and munitions for the Texian war effort.
Unfortunately it weren't always that easy to be a Tejano, or to closely associate with the same around the droves of Americans arriving to fight in Texas (not all these volunteers were nice folks, Susannah Dickinson herself had been brought by her husband Almeron to the Alamo for safety after she had been roughed up and her house plundered in Gonzales by some of those people).
Peter Kerr was the guy who first brought the news of the Massacre at Goliad to Houston at Gonzales, but was arrested on suspicion of associating with the enemy by Houston for his trouble, tho' later after his release he became Houston's interpreter after San Jacinto.
Nothwithstanding their good works, the De Leons were later driven out. Ironically it turns out Fernando De Leon and Martin Benavides evacuated their families to Louisiana not only for fear of Urrea, but for fear of the arriving Americans.
Peter Kerr went on to be Justice of the Peace in Travis County (Austin) and a major rancher/land owner/speculator in the Texas Hill Country, founding the town of Burnett. Apparently he never married and left his fortune upon his death in '61 to a nephew with the stipulation that land be set aside for a Peter Kerr University.
Didn't happen, the ingrate challenged the will, the town of Burnett ended up with just two acres for a schoolhouse.
Birdwatcher
