Part III - Morse-Bragg Cemetery

Part III. A portfolio of western Harris County/west Houston pioneers
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The photographic age did not come early enough to capture all of the pioneers of this area, but here are a few images of
early area settlers, with their stories.
Allen Chapman Reynolds (1786-1837)
and his wife Harriet Baisley moved
from New York to Galveston in 1826.
That same year he applied for a league
of land along Buffalo Bayou, which
Stephen F. Austin granted in 1831. He
built a sawmill and gristmill there, on
the modern-day property of the River
Oaks Country Club.
Carl Julius Kolbe (1819-1894) arrived
from Germany in 1846, purchasing
James Crawford’s farm in the western
part of modern Memorial Park, across
the Bayou from Pleasant Bend. In 1852
he moved to Spring Branch Creek,
joining the Bauer, Rummel and other
families there, but he continued to work
the gardens at his former Buffalo Bayou
home.
John Wesley Thornton’s ox wagon
laden with Buffalo Bayou timber,
ca. 1890s.
Mary Jarvis Silliman (c 1833-1871)
came to San Felipe town as a young
girl. Her mother Mary Frisbee
Silliman (1808-1864) bought the inn
and farm at Wheaton’s ford - in
operation since 1831 - from Elizabeth
Wheaton in 1853, and the Silliman
family operated it through the Civil
War. That inn on the San Felipe
wagon road was located where
modern Highway 6 crosses Buffalo
Bayou. Mary Jarvis Silliman lived
there with her husband until 1868.
Mary’s husband, John Wesley
Thornton (1832-1918) moved to
Texas from Georgia sometime after
1842, and had a timber operation
along the upper reaches of Buffalo
Bayou, south of modern Katy, Texas.
Their daughter Mary Luna Thornton
married George Edward Morse
(1853-1901), son of Rev. John Morse
(1808-1863), buried at the MorseBragg Cemetery.
Mae (Mary Ann) Habermacher, b. 1846,
was a grand-daughter of pioneer Thomas
Habermacher (1777-1848), a German
immigrant who settled in 1841 along the
southern bank of Buffalo Bayou, three
miles east of Wheaton’s ford. Mae was
friends with Mary Jarvis Silliman, who
saved the portrait. Mae’s uncles founded
the Habermacher Settlement in 1850, in
present day George Bush Park.
Dan M Worrall, 10-2014
Harriet Putnam George (1810-1892) was
the wife of settler and Republic of Texas
soldier Buckman Canfield (1796-1848).
They moved from New York State to settle
in frontier Piney Point in 1838. After
Buckman was murdered, and a second
husband died, Harriet took an ox team and
wagon, by herself, to Alabama to buy the
mechanics of a Hotchkiss water wheelpowered sawmill, in order to provide for
her family. She then married Benjamin
George, who died some time after 1870.
Harriet was the master of the Piney Point
property until her death in 1892.
Gideon Hotchkiss invented a “reacting
water wheel” in 1837 that allowed twice the
output of water-powered sawmills. He sold
them in 1847 in Alabama, where Harriet
George went in about 1849 to pick one up.
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Hannah Canfield (1835-1891) was
the daughter of Buckman Canfield and
Harriet Canfield (later Harriet George).
Hannah’s first husband was William A
Morse (1831-1866), son of Agur T.
Morse; they raised a family at the
Pleasant Bend Plantation. William and
Agur are buried at the Morse-Bragg
Cemetery. After William’s death, she
married twice more, the final time to
Abram Frisby Silliman (1825-1891); the
photo was taken at their wedding in
1874. Abram Silliman was the son of
Mary Frisbee Silliman (1808-1864),
operator of the inn at Wheaton’s ford,
and sister of Mary Jarvis Silliman
(previous page).
William Canfield (1832-1862), was the
son of Buckman Canfield and Harriet
Putman George of Piney Point. After
her mother purchased sawmill
machinery, William built and operated a
sawmill there in the late 1840s and
1850s. The millpond still exists,
surrounded by condominiums. He and
his brother John both died at the siege of
Vicksburg in 1862-63.
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James McFee (1815-1803) and his wife Cassandra Hough (18241890) moved to Texas from Delaware in 1848 and purchased a part
of the McGowen farm near Pleasant Bend. James became a carriagemaker,
using lumber from the nearby Morse sawmill, and his son John worked at the
mill. His son Louis Lum McFee (1861-1947) and daughter Annie Cecelia
McFee (1863-1941), both pictured at left, grew up at James McFee’s last home
in Piney Point. James and Cassandra McFee and five of their children are buried
at the Morse-Bragg Cemetery.
Louis McFee’s wife, Cecelia Walker Crump (1865-1930), see left, was raised at
a farm near Pleasant Bend owned by her grandfather Dabney Walker (1800-ca
1856) and grandmother Mary Binkley (1799-ca 1856), who arrived from North
Carolina in 1847, and her mother, Amy Walker (1833-1885). Dabney and Mary
Walker are buried at the Morse-Bragg Cemetery.
Louis Lum McFee & Cecelia
Walker Crump McFee
Annie Cecelia McFee Morton
and Berry Buchanan Morton
Cassie McFee Reeder (1886-1979) was the daughter of Louis and Cecelia
McFee, and was raised in Piney Point at the home of her grandparents, James
and Cassandra McFee. She was the family historian, and in her autobiography
chronicled the McFee family’s life and times, as well as their deaths and burials
at the Morse-Bragg Cemetery. She buried her infant son, Aaron Truitt Reeder at
the Cemetery in 1915.
From Cassie’s autobiography:
July 20, 1887. My uncle Hugh McFee, 32 years old and single, living with his
mother and father in the big house at Piney Point, had many friends [and
would] go out of his way to make more friends. He drove a good horse and
buggy and came to Houston often, liked by everyone. He and the negro hand
were going to kill a beef at 5 a.m. and his pistol jammed and did not fire. He
threw the pistol down and it turned over and fired, hitting Hugh in the side.
They were in the lot adjoining the yard. [They] sent for a Doctor.
Cassie McFee Reeder’s
sketch of their L-shaped
home in Piney Point in the
1880s
Cassie McFee Reeder
He lived until 3 a.m. next morning. My mother said that it was a moonshiny
night, and that the night he was sick every post around the place had a buggy
and horse tied to it, many from Houston 10 miles away. But no one could save
him; his last words were "I hate to leave my mother." He was buried by his
brother Joe and [my] grandparents in Morse cemetery, 6 miles west of Houston.
They sold one of his horses and bought a nice tombstone; it is there now.
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Charles Canfield Morse (1855-1895), was born to
William Morse and Hannah Canfield Morse at
Pleasant Bend Plantation, and was the grandson of
Harriet George as well as of Agur T. Morse.
Following the breakup of the plantation after the Civil
War, he moved to Piney Point. His wife Abby Ivie
(Joy) Beeler (1861-1896) was born in Kentucky. Her
parents were early settlers in the former Beeler
neighborhood in the modern Energy Corridor.
George Lovett Taft (18651932) was born in the
waning days of the Pleasant
Bend Plantation to Lovett
Taft Jr. (1828-1864) and his
wife Elizabeth Morse Taft
(1838-1920). Elizabeth was
Agur Morse’s daughter.
George’s father, Lovett Taft,
was an early merchant in
Houston, and is buried at the
Morse-Bragg cemetery; an
existing tombstone
memorializes him. George
Taft was in the mercantile
business and was a cousin of
President William H Taft.
George Edward Morse (1853-1901) came to Texas as an
infant in the 1850s. His parents, Rev. John Kell Morse (18081863) and Caroline A Jones (1820-1864) settled at Pleasant
Bend Plantation, where John was a Methodist preacher; both
are buried at the Morse-Bragg Cemetery. Orphaned at a young
age when his parents died of yellow fever, George was
adopted by Theodore Bering and his wife, of Houston sawmill
and hardware fame. George’s wife Mollie Luna Thornton
(1861-1898), pictured above, was born at her grandmother
Mary Jarvis Silliman’s home and inn at Wheaton’s ford.
Henry D. Morse, Sr. (1872-1938) and Robert Emmett Morse (1896-1957)
were the son and grandson of Henry A. Morse (1840-1876), who operated
the sawmill at the Morse plantation into the 1870s. Henry A. Morse was
buried at the Morse-Bragg Cemetery, and was Agur Morse’s son.
Henry D. Morse was born at the Pleasant Bend Plantation, and had a real
estate business in Houston.
Robert Emmett Morse was a former Speaker of the House in the Texas
Legislature, and authored many bills, including the bill creating the Harris
County Flood Control District, and a bill providing for state land along the
Ship Channel to be donated to the Harris County Navigation District.
Annie Maie Morse Worrall
(1884-1960) was born at
Piney Point to George
Edward Morse and Caroline
A. Jones Morse (see photos
at left). She was the first
woman member of the
Houston Business League
(later the Houston Chamber
of Commerce), and became
its Secretary during the
period of formation of the
Houston Ship Channel.
Thaddeus Constantine Bell (1822-1871), an Old 300 settler, was the first male child born in Stephen F.
Austin’s colony (Jane Long's daughter, Mary James Long, was born slightly earlier on Bolivar Island in
December 1821). He is buried at the Morse-Bragg Cemetery.
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Thaddeus was the third of eight children of Josiah Hughes Bell (1791-1838) and Mary Evaline McKenzie Bell
(1799-1856), who had married in Kentucky in 1818. Josiah Bell brought his family and slaves with him in 1821,
and settled on New Year Creek, near old Washington, where Thaddeus was born. From 1822 to 1823, Josiah Bell
was Austin's alcalde at San Felipe, when Austin was in Mexico. Josiah and his family moved downriver on the
Brazos in 1824 to what is now Brazoria County, and over the next few years founded what became the towns of
East Columbia and West Columbia, where Josiah died in 1838. Thaddeus assumed operation of the family
plantation in 1848, and performed that role until the Civil War intervened.
According to his son-in-law, Andrew Phelps McCormick (1832-1916), Bell:
... voted against the ordinance of secession. He believed that it was impolitic to the degree of madness and
unpatriotic in the highest degree. He, however, submitted to the powers that be and rendered such service as was
required of him by the Confederate and State authorities.
Thaddeus Bell's first wife died in 1864, during the War. In 1867, he moved with some of his children to
Huntsville, where he was Superintendant of the State Penitentiary. While there, he married Cornelia McKinney
(1844-c 1900). After his term finished, he moved to the Pleasant Bend neighborhood along Buffalo Bayou, where
he bought a 300 acre farm and lived with his new wife and a daughter by his previous marriage, Sophronia
Lucinda Bell (1855-1925). They joined the First Presbyterian Church in Houston, the records of which show that
Grace Morse and her daughter Elizabeth Taft had also joined, in 1868, following the deaths of their respective
husbands. The Bell’s new farm was not to last, as Thaddeus died of kidney cancer on May 22, 1871.
The Bell homestead in Columbia, Texas.
Drawing by George Schackleford.
Records of the First Presbyterian Church (see below) show that Thaddeus Bell was buried nearby in the Morse
family graveyard, which was later to be dedicated by deed by Grace Morse in 1874.

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