Still meandering around Texas history, coming up with new (to me) stuff all the time. Here's an incident of outright theft, vandalism and thuggery: Laucelot Smithers, soundly beaten for coming to a distressed woman's defense.
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fsm87 On November 2, 1835, Smither was severely beaten by a group of volunteers who passed through Gonzales robbing houses and terrorizing the town. He was trying to aid Susanna W. Dickinson, who had been driven from her home by the vandals. One month later, the provisional government of Texas authorized payment of $270 to Smither to cover property lost to Casta�eda and the vandals at Gonzales. Mrs Dickinson of course would famously survive the Alamo, her life reading like a character from Lonesome Dove.
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fdi06 Susanna tried matrimony three more times before settling into a stable relationship. She wed Francis P. Herring on December 20, 1838, in Houston. Herring, formerly from Georgia, had come to Texas after October 20, 1837. He died on September 15, 1843. On December 15, 1847,
Susanna married Pennsylvania drayman Peter Bellows (also known as Bellis or Belles) before an Episcopalian minister. In 1850 the couple had sixteen-year-old Angelina living with them. But by 1854 Susanna had left Bellows, who charged her with adultery and prostitution when he filed for divorce in 1857. Susanna may have lived in the Mansion House Hotel of Pamelia Mann, which was known as a brothel, before marrying Bellows. The divorce petition accuses her of taking up residence in a "house of ill fame." Nevertheless, Susanna received praise from the Baptist minister Rufus C. Burleson for her work nursing cholera victims in Houston, where he baptized her in Buffalo Bayou in 1849.
Susanna's fifth marriage was long-lasting. She married Joseph William Hannig (or Hannag), a native of Germany living in Lockhart, in 1857. They soon moved to Austin, where Hannig became prosperous with a cabinet shop and later a furniture store and undertaking parlor; he also owned a store in San Antonio. Susanna became ill in February 1883 and died on October 7 of that year. Hannig buried her in Oakwood Cemetery, and even though he married again, he was buried next to Susanna after his death in 1890.
Birdwatcher
