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Originally both from Georgia, the Standifers and Youngs traveled together from Alabama to Texas.
They arrived in a caravan of ox teams in what later became Hogeye. This was in 1828. The area in which they settled was in Austin’s Little Colony. Stephen F. Austin, the son and heir of Moses Austin, had settled his first group, the “Old Three Hundred,” on the rich bottomlands of theBrazos, Colorado, and San Bernard rivers, extending from the Brenham area, Navasota, and La Grange to the Gulf of Mexico according to Christoper Long in the Texas State Historical Association. The Texas Historian Fehrenhach described them as “the first Anglo planter-gentry in the province.” It became the heart of the slave empire in antebellum Texas. They developed rich pre-Civil War cash-crop plantations growing cotton and sugarcane primarily.
The Little Colony was Austin’s later colony calling for a hundred settlers in what became the Bastrop County area. It was dated 1827. Austin had originally planned to bring in German settlers, but that did not materialize.
The city of Bastrop was founded at that time and named for Baron de Bastrop, who had become the friend and partner of Stephen F. Austin. The “baron” had made the venture of Moses Austin and Stephen F. Austin possible.
As for the settlement of the Little Colony, among the settlers was Elizabeth Standifer. She was a widow who obtained the grant in Austin’s Little Colony in her own name. With her when she arrived in the wagon train in 1828 was her daughter, Sarah, who later married John Litton, and three of her sons. The oldest son, J.W. (James Williamson) arrived in the Little Colony after his marriage to Sarah King. His descendants would include Richard Vaughn Standifer, who married a Gatlin connected with Post Oak Island, a settlement at the edge of the prairie. He was wounded during the Civil War at Yellow Bayou, a wound which was fatal many years later. He had been a merchant in Elgin and his was a huge Masonic funeral there in 1889.
The other two Standifer sons were William Bailey Standife, 1815-1876, and Jacob Littleton Standifer, 1820-1876. Both of them married and had large families with many descendants in the Elgin area.
Sarah and John Litton held the dances at their home, which became a stage stop making it necessary for it to have a name, which became “Hogeye.”
The Young family was headed by Michael Young, the subject of the next article.
Charlene Hanson Jordan wrote the above narrative as a weekly column. Her newest book, "NOTES & RECOLLECTIONS, Post Oak Island & Elgin, Texas” is available at the Elgin Depot Museum where exhibits, photographs, and books on local history are also available. The museum is open on Fridays and Saturdays from noon to 4 p.m. with extended hours starting in mid-January. Book signings are scheduled for the afternoons of Jan. 27-28, provided there is no blizzard. The book may be purchased during business hours at the Elgin Courier office, 105 N. Main St. in Elgin with the phone number 512-285-333, or from her directly at [email protected] or 512-856-2562.
