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Elizabeth James Standifer married Leman Barker, 1783-1847, in Brazoria. It was a second marriage for each of them. Elizabeth’s husband, Anderson Standifer, had died in about 1821 in Union County, Illinois,’ American Bottoms. Leman’s wife, Sarah Forehand Barker, born in 1791,died in about 1828 in Bastrop County.
Settlement in Bastrop County at that time was described by Jack Miller in the Handbook of Texas’ Online article about Jesse Cornelius Tannehill, buried in the Texas State Cemetery. Miller wrote “with the pioneer families of Stephen F. Austin’s ‘little colony,’ they lived for a time in tent structures of pine poles and buffalo skins.”
Leman Barker and his first wife, Sarah, had arrived in Matagorda County on Dec. 26, 1827, with their daughter, Margaret Ann, who was born on Oct. 20, 1810, in North Carolina. She had married Josiah Pugh Wilbarger, 1801-1844, in Lincoln, Missouri, in September 1827. Their honeymoon was in a covered wagon accompanied by not only her parents but her grandmother. According to Margaret’s daughter, Fenora Chambers, they lived for a year in Matagorda County where Mr. Wilbarger taught school. Then they moved to Barton’s Prairie, about 25 miles below where Austin would be established. That would have been in late 1828 or 1829. This was according to an article by Nathe P. Bagby in the Tulia Herald and provided by Michael Bailey from the Brazoria Museum.
The Standifer-Barker marriage took place in Brazoria on Jan. 11,1830. It was a civil marriage sealed with a bond according to Mr. Bailey. It is likely that Elizabeth Standifer was living in the Brazoria area at that time and that she never lived on her grant at Hogeye because she would have gone to live with Leman Barker on his grant.
Brazoria is about 160 miles from Elgin. It is located between the Brazos and the San Bernard Rivers, eight miles southwest of Angleton and a little less than five miles west of Lake Jackson. The county was on the prairie of the Gulf Coast at the mouth of the Brazos. It had a long growing season average of 309 days per year with fertile soils, but with occasional hurricanes and floods.
Texas was part of Catholic Mexico at that time and other religious worship was not tolerated. Weddings were civil or were improvised in different ways. Austin’s priest and friend, Michael Muldoon, wasn’t yet in Texas. He arrived in April 1831. Had he been there, he would happily have married them along with a large number of other couples. They would have been charged 25 cents and there would have been a huge barbecue feast with copious alcohol consumption. They were known as Muldoon Catholics.
Muldoon was born at Kilmore in County Cavan, Ireland, in about 1780. He was educated in the Irish College in Seville and was ordained a priest in Spain.
Well-connected in Mexico, he was Santa Anna’s Chaplain.
Future articles will be more about Michael Muldoon, the rich plantations of Austin’s Old Three Hundred, Leman Barker, and Margaret Barker Wilbarger Chambers.
Charlene Hanson Jordan wrote the above narrative as the fifth of 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. Watch for notices. Every Thursday from 4 to 7 p.m., “Notes & Recollections” may be purchased from the Niswanders at the Elgin Farmers Market, Veterans Memorial Park. The book is also available at the Elgin Courier office, 105 N. Main Street in Elgin, 512-285-3333, during business hours all week or from Charlene directly at [email protected] or 512-856-2562.
