Bird Holland | |
---|---|
Secretary of State of Texas | |
In office March 16, 1861 –November 7, 1861 | |
Governor | Edward Clark |
Preceded by | E. W. Cave |
Succeeded by | Charles S. West |
Personal details | |
Born | March 23,1815 |
Died | April 9,1864 49) Battle of Pleasant Hill,Louisiana,U.S. | (aged
Bird Holland (March 23,1815 [1] - April 9,1864) was a soldier,legislator,and civil servant in Texas. [1] He served as Texas Secretary of State from March 16,1861 to November 1861. [2] He immigrated to the Republic of Texas in 1837,and by 1840 was living in Travis County. [3] [4]
In 1846,at the beginning of the Mexican War,Holland was named Captain of the 17th Ranger Company of the 2nd Regiment of Texas Mounted Volunteers. [5] He only served briefly due to disability from illness at Matamoros. [4]
He was elected Assistant Secretary of the Senate during the Third Texas Legislature in 1850 and was a member of the House during the Fifth Texas Legislature,representing the counties of Jefferson and Orange. He was on the Finance,Enrolled Bills,and Education committees. His dates of service were November 7,1853 to November 5,1855. [1]
He became Secretary of State after Texas seceded from the Union in 1861. One of his duties was to certify the results of the Texas Secession Convention. [6] His predecessor,E. W. Cave,was opposed to secession and resigned. [7]
During the Civil War,Holland served as adjutant in Col. Richard B. Hubbard's 22nd Texas Infantry Regiment. [3] He was killed in action at the Battle of Pleasant Hill in Louisiana,April 8,1864. [8]
Bird Holland is believed to be the father of Medal of Honor recipient Milton M. Holland,Texas legislator William H. Holland,and possibly up to five additional children through his relationship with an African-American slave named Matilda who was owned by his brother,plantation owner Spearman Holland. In the 1850s he purchased the freedom of William,Milton,and another brother,and sent them to a school in Ohio run by abolitionists,the Albany Manual Labor Academy. [3] [9] [10] [11] A few years later,he married Matilda Rust,daughter of William Rust. She died in 1858. They were married less than a year. They had one child,who died as an infant. [12] [13]
About a year after his death,his body was returned to Austin,where he was buried in Oakwood Cemetery. [4] [8] His son William and William's mother Matilda are buried in a different part of the same cemetery. [8]
Very little is known about Bird Holland outside of official records. The Rust family had possession of some of Holland's personal papers after his death but did not preserve them. A daughter,Eliza,and a son,John,siblings of William and Milton,were included in his will. [12]
Salmon Portland Chase was an American politician and jurist who served as the sixth chief justice of the United States from 1864 to his death in 1873. Chase served as the 23rd governor of Ohio from 1856 to 1860,represented Ohio in the United States Senate from 1849 to 1855 and again in 1861,and served as the 25th United States Secretary of the Treasury from 1861 to 1864 during the administration of Abraham Lincoln. Chase is therefore one of the few American politicians who have served in the highest levels of all three branches of the federal government,in addition to serving in the highest state-level office. Prior to his Supreme Court appointment,Chase was widely seen as a potential president.
John Milton was governor of Florida through most of the American Civil War. A lawyer who served in the Florida Legislature,he supported the secession of Florida from the Union and became governor in October 1861. In that post,he turned the state into a major supplier of food for the Confederacy. In his final message to the state legislature as the war was ending,he declared that death would be preferable to reunion with the North. When he killed himself,his son Jefferson Davis Milton was a toddler.
William Beck Ochiltree,was a settler,judge,and legislator in Texas. In 1963,Recorded Texas Historic Landmark Number 967,honoring Colonel Ochiltree,was placed at the courthouse in Perryton.
The Knights of the Golden Circle (KGC) was a secret society founded in 1854 by American George W. L. Bickley,the objective of which was to create a new country,known as the Golden Circle,where slavery would be legal. The country would have been centered in Havana and would have consisted of the Southern United States and a "golden circle" of territories in Mexico,Central America,northern parts of South America,and Cuba,Haiti,Dominican Republic,and most other islands in the Caribbean,about 2,400 miles (3,900 km) in diameter.
LeRoy Pope Walker was the first Confederate States Secretary of War.
David Emanuel Twiggs was an American career army officer,who served during the War of 1812,the Black Hawk War,and Mexican–American War.
John Gregg was an American politician who served as a deputy from Texas to the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1862. He served as a brigade commander officer of the Confederate States Army and was killed in action during the Siege of Petersburg.
George Washington Lafayette Bickley was the founder of the Knights of the Golden Circle,a Civil War era secret society used to promote the interests of the Southern United States by preparing the way for annexation of a "golden circle" of territories in Mexico,Central America,and the Caribbean which would be included into the United States as southern or slave states. Bickley was arrested by the United States government and it was during this time he wrote a letter to Abraham Lincoln expressing his distaste for Lincoln's handling of the government.
Thomas Overton Moore was an attorney and politician who was the 16th Governor of Louisiana from 1860 until 1864 during the American Civil War. Anticipating that Louisiana's Ordinance of Secession would be passed in January 1861,he ordered the state militia to seize all U.S. military posts.
William Tatum Wofford was an officer during the Mexican–American War and a general in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War.
Florida participated in the American Civil War as a member of the Confederate States of America. It had been admitted to the United States as a slave state in 1845. In January 1861,Florida became the third Southern state to secede from the Union after the November 1860 presidential election victory of Abraham Lincoln. It was one of the initial seven slave states which formed the Confederacy on February 8,1861,in advance of the American Civil War.
Alabama was central to the Civil War,with the secession convention at Montgomery,the birthplace of the Confederacy,inviting other slaveholding states to form a southern republic,during January–March 1861,and to develop new state constitutions. The 1861 Alabaman constitution granted citizenship to current U.S. residents,but prohibited import duties (tariffs) on foreign goods,limited a standing military,and as a final issue,opposed emancipation by any nation,but urged protection of African-American slaves with trials by jury,and reserved the power to regulate or prohibit the African slave trade. The secession convention invited all slaveholding states to secede,but only 7 Cotton States of the Lower South formed the Confederacy with Alabama,while the majority of slave states were in the Union at the time of the founding of the Confederacy. Congress had voted to protect the institution of slavery by passing the Corwin Amendment on March 4,1861,but it was never ratified.
James Patton Anderson was an American slave owner,physician,lawyer,and politician,most notably serving as a United States Congressman from the Washington Territory,a Mississippi state legislator,and a delegate at the Florida state secession convention to withdraw from the United States. He also served in the American Civil War as a general in the Confederate States Army,serving in the Army of Tennessee.
John Allen Wilcox was a politician from Mississippi and Texas who served in the United States House of Representatives in the early 1850s and then in the Confederate Congress during the American Civil War.
Milton Murray Holland was a Union Army soldier during the American Civil War and a recipient of America's highest military decoration—the Medal of Honor—for his actions at the Battle of Chaffin's Farm.
William Henry Wallace was a Confederate States Army brigadier general during the American Civil War. Before the Civil War,he was a planter,newspaper publisher,lawyer and South Carolina legislator in 1860 who supported the state calling a secession convention. He served in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War,including service as a brigade commander in the Army of Northern Virginia. After the Civil War,he was a lawyer,planter,South Carolina legislator and circuit judge.
William H. Holland was an educator who served one term in the Texas Legislature. He was the brother of Medal of Honor recipient Milton M. Holland.
George Whitfield Terrell was an attorney general,judge,and diplomat in the Republic of Texas.
Eber Worthington Cave was a journalist,civic promoter,and politician in Texas. He was born in Philadelphia,Pennsylvania,and began working as a printer in New Jersey. He moved to Texas in 1853 and bought the Nacogdoches Chronicle in 1854. As editor of this newspaper,he opposed re-opening the African slave trade and supported Sam Houston in his effort to become Governor in the late 1850s. Houston made Cave his Secretary of State in late 1859. An opponent of secession,Cave resigned in early 1861. He did later materially support the Confederacy and served as a Confederate officer with the rank of Major. In 1864 he sold what was later known as the Mrs. Sam Houston House to his friend Margaret Lea Houston.
John Files Tom,a descendant of Irish immigrants moved as a boy with his family from Tennessee to Texas to impact Texas history with his involvement in many key roles that shaped Texas including but not limited to:Texas Revolutionary War Veteran,Sheriff of Guadalupe County,Texas,Texas Ranger Captain during the Civil War and a Representative in the 13th Texas State Legislature,was born on April 22,1818,in Cathey's Creek in Maury County,Tennessee to William Tom and Mary Susan Files Tom.
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