Frank W. Johnson

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fjo10

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_W._Johnson

Francis White "Frank" Johnson (October 3, 1799 – April 8, 1884) was a co-commander of the Texian Army from December 1835 through February 1836, during the Texas Revolution. Johnson arrived in Texas in 1826 and worked as a surveyor for several empresarios, including Stephen F. Austin. One of his first activities was to plot the new town of Harrisburg. Johnson unsuccessfully tried to prevent the Fredonian Rebellion and served as a delegate to the Convention of 1832.

During the early part of the Texas Revolution, Johnson served as the adjutant and inspector general of the Texian Army. During the final assault of the siege of Bexar, Johnson led one of the two divisions which fought Mexican troops in San Antonio de Bexar and was a member of the committee which negotiated the Mexican surrender. Following the battle, Johnson became commander of the volunteers. In late December 1835, the Texas provisional government named him as a co-commander of an expedition to invade Mexico. By late January, the provisional government had named several other people as heads of the Texian Army, and there was much confusion within the army and within the general public as to who was actually in charge.

Johnson and his men were surprised at the Battle of San Patricio on February 27, 1836; although most of his men perished, Johnson escaped. For the next three decades, Johnson alternately lived in Texas or traveled the United States. He settled permanently in the area around Austin, Texas in 1871 and spent the rest of his life researching Texas history. In 1914, thirty years after Johnson's death, historian Eugene C. Barker edited Johnson's manuscripts into a book, A History of Texas and Texans.

Early years

Francis White Johnson was born October 3, 1799 near Leesburg, Virginia. In 1812, Johnson moved with his parents, Henson and Jane, to Tennessee. Although Johnson was trained as a surveyor, he returned down a job that would have sent him to what is now Alabama. Instead, he lived in various places in Illinois and Missouri, supporting himself by teaching, serving as constable, or working in a lead mine. He also briefly ran a grocery store and then a lumber mill.

Establishment in Texas

Johnson contracted malaria in 1826. A doctor advised him to find a more healthful environment, so he and his cousin, Wiley B. White, immigrated to Texas, then a part of Mexico. There, Johnson put his surveying education to use. In 1826 he plotted the new town of Harrisburg. He quickly earned the trust of empresario Stephen F. Austin. When another empresario, Haden Edwards, showed signs of revolting against the Mexican government, Austin asked Johnson and two other men to try to prevent a disturbance. They were unsuccessful, and Edwards soon launched the Fredonian Rebellion, which was quickly put down.

By 1832, Johnson had become the surveyor-general of Austin's colony, and briefly served as alcade. In late May, Johnson became one of the instigators of the first of the Anahuac Disturbances. He joined a group of citizens protesting military commander Juan Davis Bradburn's arrest of William Barret Travis and Patrick Jack. The settlers were outraged that the arrests did not require a warrant, a statement of charges, or trial by jury. Most were unfamiliar with Mexican law and assumed that the United States Bill of Rights still applied to them. The civilians congregated several miles from the military post at Anahuac and elected Johnson as their commander. The group soon captured Bradburn's 19 cavalry officers, who had been trying to reconnoiter the Texian position. On June 10, Johnson led the men into Anahuac, where they occupied several buildings. After negotiation with Mexican officers, Johnson agreed to release his prisoners and withdraw from the town; Travis and Jack would then be freed. Although most of the rebels left Anahuac, between 15 and 30 of them remained scattered through the town. Bradburn believed this violated their agreement and threatened to fire on the town. The Texians gathered at Turtle Bayou. While they waited for cannon to arrive from Brazoria, the men drafted the Turtle Bayou Resolutions. In this document, they declared themselves federalists who supported rebellious Mexican general Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. They also decried "the present dynasty" which gave them military order instead of civil authority.

Bradburn had dispatched a messenger to Nacogdoches, requesting the assistance of Colonel Piedras. When Piedras was within 30 miles (48 km) of Anahuac, he sent a delegation to Johnson. Johnson provided him with a list of grievances against Bradburn. Piedras agreed to force Bradburn to resign, and to have the civilian prisoners released to civilian authorities.

Shortly after the conflict was resolved, Johnson was elected to the Convention of 1832 as a delegate from San Felipe de Austin, and became the chairman of the Central Standing Committee. In 1835, Johnson, along with Samuel May Williams and Dr. Robert Peebles, were named empresarios for a land grant in Texas. Settlers could claim land if they agreed to serve one year of military service. Johnson did not insist that the settlers actually fulfill their promise, and the land grants were voided in 1837.

Texas Revolution

As relations soured between Texas colonists and the Mexican government, Johnson began to advocate for war. In the summer of 1835, Mexican general Martin Perfecto de Cos issued warrants for the arrest of Johnson and five other men, all accused of land speculation or attacking Anahuac. Local officials refused to enforce the warrants, and the men were never arrested. All of the men were well respected in their communities, and the warrants greatly angered other colonists. This, combined with news that Cos was leading a large military force to Texas, convinced many colonists to embrace the idea of revolt.

Siege of Bexar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Bexar

When the Texas Revolution began in October 1835, Johnson was named the adjutant and inspector general of the volunteer forces, which were led by Austin. Johnson accompanied the army to San Antonio de Bexar, where they initiated a siege. On November 6, Austin reorganized the army, forming a new regiment. Although Johnson ran in the election for commander, he received only 10 votes, putting him fourth. Edward Burleson won, becoming the regiment commander. Two weeks later, Austin resigned as commander of the Texian Army and called an election to appoint the new commander. Burleson won handily.

As the siege progressed, many of the Texians left the army to return to their homes. On December 4, Burleson called a meeting of the troops and suggested that they withdraw to Goliad for the remainder of the winter. As the troops discussed the possibility, a Mexican cavalry officer arrived in their camp and asked to surrender. He explained that Mexican morale inside Bexar was very low. This news boosted the spirits of the Texians, and Ben Milam challenged the men to join him in an assault on the town.

Milam formed the men into two divisions, which would simultaneously attack the empty houses on the outskirts of Bexar. Milam led one division, and Johnson, now a colonel, was appointed commander of the second. Johnson's division numbered 177 men divided into 7 companies. They were guided by Deaf Smith and John W. Smith.

Early on the morning of December 5, Colonel James C. Neill created a distraction by ordering the artillery to fire on the walls of the Alamo Mission. As the artillery boomed, the two attack columns sneaked towards Bexar. Johnson led his men along the San Antonio River, and they quickly charged the Veramendi house. Milam's men took the de la Garza house across the street. Mexican soldiers opened fire, forcing Johnson and his men to take cover behind buildings. Milam's men provided covering fire, allowing Johnson and his men to safely enter the Veramendi house. For the rest of the day, Johnson and his men worked to fortify the Veramendi home, digging trenches and creating earthworks around the yard.

For the next several days, fighting house to house, the Texians gradually closed in on the fortified Mexican positions in Bexar's main plazas. On the afternoon of December 7, Milam came to the Veramendi house to consult with Johnson. As they spoke, a Mexican sharpshooter killed Milam; the sharpshooter was quickly killed by Texian fire. Johnson oversaw Milam's burial in one of the newly dug trenches.

With Milam's death, Johnson assumed command of the battle. He assigned Robert C. Morris to oversee Milam's column of men. The Texians continued to fight their way from house to house, slowly driving back the Mexican troops. The Texian advance had further demoralized the Mexican troops, and a Mexican cavalry company deserted on December 9. Shortly after that, Mexican General Martin Perfecto de Cos sent one of his officers to negotiate a surrender. Johnson served on the negotiating team. The siege of Bexar officially ended when the two sides adopted the surrender agreement on December 11. The Mexican soldiers were set free on the condition that they return to Mexico within six days and not take up arms against the Texians again.

Army command

With Cos's departure, there was no longer an organized garrison of Mexican troops in Texas, and many of the Texians believed that the war was over. Johnson described the battle as "the period put to our present war". Burleson resigned his leadership of the army on December 15 and returned to his home. Many of the men did likewise, and Johnson assumed command of the soldiers who remained. During this time, the provisional government had created a new regular branch of the Texian Army and placed Sam Houston in charge. Houston was given no authority over the volunteers, however, leaving Johnson as their commander.

In the relative quiet after the Mexican garrison left, Dr. James Grant began advocating an attack on Matamoros. Many of the remaining Texian soldiers approved of the mission and clamored for it to begin. On December 25, Grant traveled to Washington on the Brazos to convince the provisional government to support the plan. The Governing Council agreed, but secretly named Johnson and James Fannin co-commanders of the expedition. On January 3, Johnson and Grant left Bexar, taking with them 300 of the 400 men who had been stationed there. This incensed Colonel James C. Neill, who remained at the Alamo to lead the remaining men. On January 6, 1836, Neill wrote to the governing council:

"If there has ever been a dollar here I have no knowledge of it. The clothing sent here by the aid and patriotic exertions of the honorable Council, was taken from us by arbitrary measures of Johnson and Grant, taken from men who endured all the hardships of winter and who were not even sufficiently clad for summer, many of them having but one blanket and one shirt, and what was intended for them given away to men some of whom had not been in the army more than four days, and many not exceeding two weeks."

The Texan provisional governor, Henry Smith, strongly opposed the Matamoros expedition and loudly proclaimed that anyone who supported it was a traitor or an idiot. Smith then dissolved the governing council, which responded by impeaching him. The temporary Texas constitution had given neither Smith nor the council the right to depose the other, and both groups continued to insist that they were the rightful rulers.

On January 10, Johnson issued a call to form a Federal Volunteer Army of Texas which would march on Matamoros. On January 14, Houston arrived in Goliad to take command of the army that Johnson and Grant had gathered. On his arrival he discovered that Grant and Johnson were calling themselves commanders of the army. Houston accompanied the army as it marched to Refugio. Once there, he gave a speech and pointedly asked how this small group of men planned to take a city of 12,000 people. Later that day, Houston received official word that he had been fired and that the council had now placed James Fannin in charge of the army. Houston left in disgust and traveled to East Texas to negotiate a peace treaty with the Cherokee. For the next several months it was unclear who was in charge of the Texian army—Fannin, Johnson, Grant, or Houston.

After Houston's speech, many of the Texian volunteers began to rethink their commitment to the Matamoros Expedition. Many left the army. Others decided to follow the "new" leader of the Texian Army and joined Fannin at Presidio La Bahia in Goliad. Only 70 men remained with Johnson and Grant.

Battle of San Patricio

Main article: Battle of San Patricio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_San_Patricio

Johnson and Grant settled in San Patricio, where they continued to make plans to invade Mexico. In mid-February, Grant took about two dozen men south to catch wild horses. While Grant was gone, Mexican General Jose de Urrea led a surprise attack on San Patricio in the early hours of the morning of February 27. Most of Johnson's men were killed, but Johnson escaped. Grant was also later surprised by Urrea's army, while they camped at Agua Dulce Creek.

When Johnson received word that Houston was retreating towards East Texas, Johnson became disgusted with the revolution and up and quit. He returned to his home for the remainder of the conflict.

Later years

The war ended in April, after Texians defeated General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna at the battle of San Jacinto. For the next three years, Johnson operated a plantation at Johnson's Bluff, along the Trinity River in what is now San Jacinto County. In 1839, facing bankruptcy, Johnson abandoned his family and fled Texas. For the next several years, he wandered the United States, digging for buried treasure or precious metals and trying to sell lands in Texas. His wife, Rozelia, divorced him in 1842. In 1847, he returned to Texas and wooed his former wife again. Her new husband granted her a divorce and Rozelia moved in with Johnson again. They lived together until she died in 1850.

In 1853, Johnson moved to Ellis County. He left Texas in 1860 and spent most of the American Civil War living in Indianapolis, Indiana. He returned to Texas in 1871, living in Austin and Round Rock. For the remainder of his life, Johnson lived as a virtual recluse and spent most of his time researching Texas history. In 1873 he helped found the Texas Veterans Association, and he served as its president until his death.

Johnson died of cancer in Aguascalientes, Mexico about April 8, 1884. The Texas Veterans Association lobbied for funding to have his remains moved to Texas, and Johnson was eventually reburied in the Texas State Cemetery.

In 1912, historian Eugene C. Barker collected Johnson's manuscripts and edited them into a book, A History of Texas and Texans. The book was published in 1914 and republished in 1916.

Francis (Frank) White Johnson, leader in the Texas Revolution and historian, son of Henson and Jane Johnson, was born near Leesburg, Virginia, on October 3, 1799. His family moved in 1812 to Tennessee, where he was educated as a surveyor, but he rejected a government surveying position in what is now Alabama to pursue vocations in Illinois and Missouri, where he taught school, ran a grocery, operated a lumber mill, was a constable, organized a local militia, worked in a lead mine, and occasionally surveyed.

In 1826 he carried a cargo of produce down the Mississippi and became ill with malaria. On advice of a doctor he and his cousin, Wiley B. White, sailed from New Orleans to Texas for his health on the schooner Augusta. He traveled extensively in several Texas colonies, including the colony of Green DeWitt, and became well known almost immediately. That year he laid out the town of Harrisburg, and Stephen F. Austin sent him and two others to Nacogdoches to try to prevent the Fredonian Rebellion. Johnson was employed as a surveyor in the Ayish District in 1829. On January 1, 1831, he became alcalde at San Felipe de Austin, where he was part of a close-knit group of Austin supporters that included Samuel May Williams, Robert M. Williamson, Luke Lesassier, and Dr. Robert Peebles. In 1832 he was surveyor-general of Austin's colony. The hot-tempered Johnson was considered a "firebrand" in favor of war with Mexico; in 1835 he was indicted for treason but was never arrested.

Johnson was captain of his company at the battle of Anahuac in 1832. At the Convention of 1832 he was a delegate from San Felipe and served as chairman of the Central Standing Committee of the state. In early 1835, while in Monclova to observe the state legislature in session, he, Peebles, and Williams were named empresarios for several hundred leagues of land to be granted to settlers in return for a year of military service from each grantee, a condition that was never carried out. After 1837 most of the grants were voided, and Johnson and the others were denounced for involvement in this land scandal.

In 1835 Johnson and Moseley Baker were sent to East Texas to appraise the political feelings of colonists and to stir up support for the war cause. Johnson was appointed adjutant and inspector general under Stephen F. Austin and Edward Burleson. At the siege of Bexar he led a column of Texans into San Antonio, and after Benjamin R. Milam's death he was in command at the Mexicans' capitulation.

In January 1836 Johnson and Dr. James Grant started to lay plans to invade Mexico at Matamoros, despite opposition from Sam Houston and Governor Henry Smith, who were powerless to intervene because the General Council had already ratified the plan. Johnson and a detachment of fifty men were surprised by the Mexicans under José de Urrea at San Patricio on February 27, 1836, and all except Johnson and four of his companions were killed or captured. Hearing of Houston's retreat, Johnson returned home, quitting the revolution in disgust.

After Texas independence he settled at Johnson's Bluff, on the Trinity River in what is now San Jacinto County. There he was a planter until 1839, when he fled from his family, Texas, and creditors. His wife had been recorded in Austin's register of families as an abandoned woman named Rozelia (also Rozella or Rosalie) Hammer when she and a son named Nicholas came to Austin's colony from Louisiana in 1830. She and Johnson had two daughters. By 1842 she had divorced him, and in 1846 she remarried.

Johnson traveled throughout the United States, attempted to sell Texas lands, explored for precious metals in the West, and tried digging for buried treasure on Galveston Island, all unsuccessfully. He returned to Johnson's Bluff in 1847 and reclaimed his former wife; her new husband, Ralph McGee, subsequently divorced her. She remained with Johnson until her death in August 1850. In 1853 Johnson moved to Ellis County to run a livestock operation. He returned to the East in 1860 to try again to sell Texas lands; by 1861 he had arrived penniless in Indianapolis, Indiana, where he remained through the Civil War.

By 1871 he had returned to Texas, where he spent most of his declining years in Austin and Round Rock. During that period he was considered a recluse with few close friends, although he had prestige and respect. From 1873 to the end of his life he was founding president of the Texas Veterans Association. He spent much time researching Texas history, particularly the Texas Revolution. The project was financed by subscribers headed up by Gov. E. M. Pease. On his last research trip, Johnson was ill; he had already lost part of his right hand to cancer when he died in a hotel in Aguascalientes, Mexico, about April 8, 1884. It took several years for the Texas Veterans Association to get legislative financing for the return of his remains to Texas, where he received a state funeral and was buried in the State Cemetery. Johnson's manuscripts were left to several literary executors, including Alexander W. Terrell. In 1912 Eugene C. Barker, assisted by Ernest W. Winkler, used Terrell's materials and other documents as a basis for Frank Johnson's A History of Texas and Texans, published in 1914 and again in 1916.