John Wheeler Bunton

John Wheeler Bunton (born February 22, 1807 in Sumner County , Tennessee , † August 24, 1879 in Mountain City , Texas ) was an American lawyer , settler, officer and politician .

Career

John Wheeler Bunton, son of Phoebe Desha and Joseph Robert Bunton, was born in Sumner County in 1807. Nothing is known about his youth. He attended Princeton College in Kentucky and studied law in Gallatin, Tennessee. In 1833 he moved to Texas, which was still part of Mexico was, and at first settled in San Felipe ( Austin County down). Soon afterwards he moved to Mina, today's Bastrop ( Bastrop County ), where he was elected Secretary of the local Committee of Safety on May 17, 1835 . Such committees, recently formed to protect against Indians, were the first step towards independence from Texas. Bunton took Mina in the Convention of 1836 in Washington , where he Declaration of Independence of Texas co-signed, and was a member of the committee that drafted the constitution of the new republic.

He was first sergeant in the company of the Mina Volunteers under Robert M. Coleman . For the siege of Bexar between December 5 and 10, 1835, Bunton was assigned to Captain John York's company. After his honorable discharge, he joined the Texas Army on March 28, 1836. At the Battle of San Jacinto he served on the staff of General Sam Houston in the company of the Mina Volunteers under Captain Jesse Billingsley . Then he returned to his home. From October 3 to December 21, 1836 he then represented Bastrop County in the House of Representatives of the first Congress of the Republic of Texas .

In the spring of 1836 he returned to Gallatin (Tennessee), where he married his childhood sweetheart Mary Howell (1816-1862). In April 1836, the Buntons, accompanied by 140 friends and slaves , moved to Texas. In New Orleans ( Louisiana ) they boarded the Julius Caesar with a cargo worth 30,000  dollars . Near the coast of Texas, the ship was captured by the Mexicans on April 12, 1836 and taken to Matamoros ( Coahuila ) in Mexico, where all passengers were detained for three months. After their release, the Buntons and other passengers returned to Tennessee. Bunton soon led another group to Texas. They reached Indianola in Matagorda Bay by ship. While living in Austin County, he was elected to the House of Representatives of the Third Congress of the Republic of Texas. He is credited with bills related to the creation of the Texas Rangers , the establishment of the postal service, and the judicial system. In 1840 he settled on a farm on Cedar Creek in Bastrop County, where he lived for 17 years. He then moved to Mountain City in 1857, where he went into the cattle business. From Bunton came the famous turkey foot trade mark, which was registered in Hays County .

Bunton entered the First Christian Church in Lockhart and was baptized in Walnut Creek , Caldwell County . He was a very big man. His family members said it was necessary to dam Walnut Creek in order to get enough water to submerge it. Bunton was a member of the Texas Veterans Association and a founding member of the Philosophical Society of Texas. The Buntons had five sons and a daughter. His wife Mary died on September 16, 1862. After her death, he married Hermione C. Duval on July 26, 1865 in Bastrop County. He died at his home on August 24, 1879 and was then buried in Robinson Cemetery next to his first wife. In recognition of his service to Texas March 2, 1932. Independence Day of Texas, the remains of John Wheeler and Mary Howell Bunton exhumed and under the auspices of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas in the State Cemetery in Austin buried.

Web links

• John Wheeler Bunton in the database of Find a Grave (English)
• John Wheeler Bunton on the Texas State Historical Association website

Individual evidence

1. ^ Mary Howell Bunton in the Find a Grave database . Retrieved April 5, 2016.