Adam (Ad or Add) Lawrence (Laurence) 1799-1878

of New Year Creek

Historical narrative by JOHN P. LANDERS
from the Southwestern Historical Quarterly

Adam (Ad) Lawrence (Laurence) was born in Logan County, Kentucky, on October 16, 1799, [1] the son of Joseph Lawrence and the grandson of Adam Lawrence, [2] a North Carolinian, who was one of the first settlers of Kentucky during the late eighteenth century. This elder Adam Lawrence had participated in the Amer­ican Revolution during his residence in North Carolina. The Lawrence family had immigrated to America from Saint Albans, England, during the seventeenth century and had settled on Long Island. Distinguished members of this line were William Law­rence, a prominent landowner and patentee of Flushing in the seventeenth century, and Adam Lawrence, high sheriff of the Queens and member of the New York legislature in the eighteenth century. [3] Joseph Lawrence began the North Carolina branch of the family in the eighteenth century.

According to family tradition, Adam Lawrence was dissatisfied with the second marriage of his father, Joseph Lawrence. As a result, it is thought that he left his Kentucky home with the connivance of his sisters in 1815, going at the age of fifteen to live with his uncle, Adam Lawrence, at the point where Jonesboro later developed on the Red River. [4] Adam Lawrence, the uncle, was definitely in residence there as early as the winter of 1815, being the first Anglo-Saxon settler to move across the Red River into the present area of Texas.

Because there was a danger that the United States government might give the land to the Cherokee Indians, the settlers of the area sent various petitions to Congress requesting the right of preemption. On Cum appeared the names of many early Arkansas and Texas pioneers, including that of Lawrence. [6] Numbers of these people later became acquainted with the plans of Moses and Stephen F. Austin, likewise residents of the region, for a colony in Spanish (later Mexican) Texas. Lawrence attached himself to the family of Simon Miller, one of Austin's Old Three Hundred Colonists, and traveled with him to the area of present Washing­ton County, Texas, in December 1821. [7] Lawrence and Miller camped on New Year Creek with Austin on the last day of 1821. Adam spent some time at the Miller home in Fort Bend County on the San Bernard River and was listed in the census of 1825 as a farmworker in Miller's household. [8]

As was his won't go because of a restless spirit, Adam Lawrence made a trip to North Texas to visit his uncle Adam in the spring of 1826. While they were hunting wild horses with relatives and friends along the Washita River on April 17, they were attacked by a large body of Indians, supposed to be Osages, dressed in soldiers' clothing and armed with bows and arrows and shotguns. Adam Lawrence and his son John Lawrence were in company with young Adam Lawrence, a nephew of the former. They were attacked on horseback and pursued a considerable distance before the two formers were overtaken and killed. The latter, with great difficulty, made his escape, after a long pursuit, in the course of which he received six-shot holes through his hunting shirt, but fortunately sustained no other injury. Henry Lawrence, son of George Lawrence, was killed about the same time, while in another direction, in company with Mr. Dewall. [9]

In about 1830, at San Felipe, Lawrence married Sarah Lucinda Miller, the daughter of his old friend Simon Miller, then re­turned to Washington County and obtained on February 25, 1831, the grant of a quarter of a league of land from the Mexican government. [10] This land was located near the Brazos River on New Year and Cedar creeks adjacent to the lands of Samuel Miller, a brother-in-law of Simon Miller, who also had removed to Washington County by that time, and Gibson Kuykendall.

Thus the two families, often connected by marriage, had lived in the same communities for over two hundred years. Adam Lawrence, like his forbears, was every inch the classic American pioneer. His name is frequently mentioned as being at the head of a group of Indian fighters in the colonial days of Texas and later during the republic. In 1823 and 1824, a severe drought prevailed over much of Texas, and it was Lawrence who was instrumental in organizing hunting parties to range towards the northeast in search of game to supply the grievous deficiencies in the colony. [11] In 1828, he engaged in a battle with Comanche Indians about two miles below the present site of Taylor. [12] Again in 1830, he was the leader of a group of eleven men organized in the neighborhood of San Felipe to pursue a band of Waco Indians. The eyewitness account of one of the participants paints the encounter in vivid colors:

In the month of November 1830, a Chickasaw Indian brought in­telligence from the frontier that a party of eleven Wacoes was on their way to the neighborhood in which I resided (22 miles northwest from San Felipe) for the purpose of stealing horses. ... We learned late in the evening, [that they] were encamped near the residence of James Stephenson, on Caney creek [within the present limits of Austin County]. ... At the dawn of next day, with a force of eleven men, precisely that of the Indians—we stole upon their camp. ... The Indians ran and were pursued a short distance by our leader, Adam Lawrence, who reloaded and fired at them again—but fur­ther pursuit was prevented by the fall of Young Cooper. ...

Of the eleven men engaged in this affair, only the following names are recollected, viz.: Adam Lawrence, Thomas Stevens, [13] Adam Kuy­kendall, Charles Gates, George Robinson, William Cooper, B. Kuykendall. [14]

In 1832, there occurred an exploit for which Lawrence is more widely known than for any other in his long career. He was again hunting mustangs in East Texas near the Trinity River when he and his group were astounded to see the "prairie become alive with Indians" who had concealed themselves behind the apparently grazing wild horses. Surprised, the white men took to flight, but soon Lawrence, who was ahead of the others, looked back to see that all his companions were down and in the process of being "finished." With an arrow in his own shirt and one in his horse's neck, Lawrence spurred his mare towards the timber of the Trinity three miles distant. Stopping to let his horse breathe, he killed one attacking Indian with his only remaining weapon, a butcher knife. The others continued in hot pursuit until Law­rence had reached the high banks of the Trinity. His own words best describe the rest of the story.

I knew that for miles, up and down, the banks were bluffs and fifteen or twenty feet high. Where I struck the river, they were fifteen. I knew if my mare wouldn't take the leap, I had to do it without her. She stopped an instant and snorted once or twice, but, hearing the savages yell dose behind, she took the jump. Down, down we went, full fifteen feet, plump into the deep water. We both went under for a second, then she rose and struck out for the opposite bank with me on her back. Poor creature, she got about two-thirds across and then gave out under me with a groan. I tell you, I fairly loved that animal at that moment and hated to leave her as bad as if she had been human.
I swam the rest of the way and crawled out on the bank pretty well used up. But I was safe. I saw the howling and disappointed savages come to the bank I had left. But not one of them dared to take the leap. And the distance was too great for them to shoot. So I rested awhile and then made the best of my way to the settlement. [15]

A unique experience is attributed to Lawrence in 1833. An old Spaniard came to the Lawrence home stating that he was sick and asking to rest there a few days. After a month of somewhat wary hospitality on the part of the family, the partially recovered Spaniard informed his host that he had been one of Lafitte's buc­caneers. He explained further that, during Lafitte's "capture on Galveston Island by the U. S. Marines," he and two companions, who had been guarding the treasure, had escaped notice and had subsequently hidden the spoils in two old cannons, one for gold, and the other for silver, which they then buried under a hack-berry tree.

The old Spaniard, being the sole survivor, offered to divide the loot with "Senor Lawrence" and eventually make him his heir if Lawrence would provide his home until his death. The journey in search of the treasure, to which Lawrence agreed, commenced soon thereafter, but on the second night "Senor Adam," after gazing upon the sinister, scarred visage of his sleep­ing companion and hearing the howling of wolves and the hoot­ing of an owl, looked heavenward and saw the "stars falling in showers." This phenomenon of November 3, 1833, convinced him that his companion was a diabolical visitant, leading him to de­struction; consequently, he fled in terror.