EDITOR’S CORNER
Milam, we have a mystery. It’s not likely to be solved anytime soon because it references an event which happened 177 years ago.
Or 178 years ago.
One of the many feathers in our county’s historical cap, so to speak, is George Campbell Childress, the man credited with writing all, or most, of the Texas Declaration of Independence.
He’s often cited as representing Milam County at the gathering at Washington-on-the-Brazos, not too far from here, which produced that famous document.
There’s a bit more to it than that. Childress and his uncle, Sterling C. Robertson, were certainly named as delegates from “Milam Municipality” to the convention but, remember, Texas wasn’t yet a state and when it later became a state Milam County was a huge chunk of land that encompassed many present-day counties.
Childress met a tragic end at age 37. The Handbook of Texas, and several other sources, say he committed suicide in 1841 in Galveston by stabbing himself in the abdomen with a Bowie knife.
Except. In the Feb. 28, 1918, Rockdale Reporter, Mrs. Jeff T. Kemp, wife of the man who later served as Milam County Judge for 26 years, wrote an article which contained a different story.
(I would like to apologize to one-half the human race for calling her “Mrs. Jeff T.” Kemp. That’s the way they said things 100 years ago and I have not been able to locate her first name.
(I would also caution against calling my wife Mrs. Mike Brown. You are welcome to use what I call her instead of her name, which is “yes, dear, I was wrong”).
Mrs. Kemp, quoting a historian named H. S. Thrall, puts the site of Childress’s suicide as Nashville on the Milam County side of the Brazos River and has the year as 1840, not 1841.
She said the incident happened where Childress boarded, the home of “Mrs. Crittenden,” and quoted Thrall as saying Childress presented himself at her door “begged her in a piteous tone to ‘save him from himself’ and stabbed himself.”
She said Childress was able to say he was despondent over his brother’s gambling losses.
A little investigation shows the source of Mrs. Kemp’s, and Mr. Thrall’s, version of events was almost certainly a document titled “Judge Fulmer’s Sketch of Childress,” which contains several obvious mistakes.
It says Childress never married. He was actually married twice and had a son and two daughters. Mrs. Kemp also said Childress was buried in Nashville Cemetery and the grave marker had been lost.
He is buried, well marked, in Trinity Episcopal Cemetery in Galveston.
The definitive document on Childress’s death was a letter by Ashbel Smith who actually was with Childress those final hours in—no surprise—Galveston.
Smith said Childress was despondent over not being able to bring his wife to Texas (from Tennessee) or to visit her there.
That seems to be conclusive to me. Smith even gave instructions on how to break the news to Mrs. Childress.
I know her first name. It was Rebecca.
And what do I get out of this long-gone history? I wonder what Childress’s son was named.
Wouldn’t it be something if it had been Brock?
Brock Childress. That combines the names of the teams the Rockdale Tigers defeated for our two state football championships.
- Log in or Subscribe to post comments.