James Hope married first Mary England in 1797 in St. Mary's Chapel, London, England. He married second Mrs. Elizabeth Bowering Jack 04 Jan 1822 in St. Francisville, W. Feliciana Parish, La. James married third Aletha H. Sorrels 10 Mar 1824 in Natchitoches Parish, La.
James and Mary (England) Hope had the following children:
Prosper Hope; Amanda Hope; Augusta Ann Hope; Adolphus Hope; Eleanor Hope; Richard Hope; Mary Hope; Jane Hope; and Ann Hope.
James and Alethea H. Sorrels Hope had the following children:
Mary Hope and Margaret "Jane" Hope
James Hope and his family came to Texas from Louisiana before July 10, 1824, when , as one of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists, he received title to one and one-half leagued and two labors of land in present Austin County. By March 26, 1825, he had exchanged his league for that of Bluford Brooks and was trying to secure vacant land on Mill Creek. Hope's daughter, Augusta, married Horatio Chriesman in 1825. The March, 1826, census listed Hope as a farmer and stock raiser aged between forty and fifty. His household included his wife, Althea, three sons (Prosper, Adolphes, and Richard), six daughters, and one servent. At Mina, in January, 1827, Hope signed a declaration of loyalty to the Mexican government and a protest against the Fredonian Rebellion. He bought garden lots in 1829 and in May 1830 advertised his Connectcut gardan seed and fruit trees for sale at San Felipe. In August, 1830, he and Gail Borden, Jr.. were nominated commissioners to superintend surveying of town lots at /San Felipe. In December,1831, Hope advertised that he was leaving for England and leaving his son Richard in charge of his 15,000 to 20,000 peach and nectarine trees. According to Worth S. Ray's "Austin Colony Pioneers", the tax rolls of 1840 indicated that James Hope died about 1836. His sons took part in the battle of San Jacinto and later had a saddle shop at Washington-on-the-Brazos.
See: E.C. Barker (ed.). "Austin Papers, 1 (1924); Lester G. Bugbee, "The Old Three Hundred". Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, 1 (1897-1898). Abigail Curlee, "The History of Texas Slave Plantations." Southwestern Historical Quarterly,XXVI (1922-1923); Worth S. Ray, Austin Colony Pioneers (1949); Texas Gazette, May 29, 1830, and January 10, 1832.
See 1820 Census, Louisiana, Feliciana Par., page 046; James Hope
See 1826 Census, Texas, Texas Terr., Austin Colony, 1826.
See 1826 Census, Texas, Bastrop Co.,, Austin, Mexico Terr., 1826
Notes from Janice Sperling: "James Hope was born in England about 1775 and died about 1833 on his second voyage from England to America. He was at the time of his death a resident of the town of San Felipe de Austin (near present day San Felipe, Austin Co., Texas.) He was married three times. His first marriage was about 1797 in London, England to Mary England, with whom he immigrated to the United States around 1800, who died in 1821 in St. Francisville, Louisiana. His second wife, he married November 5, 1822, in St Francisville, Mrs. Elizabeth Jack, who died in the same town on January 10, 1823, his third wife was Alethea Sorrels who he married either 1823 or 1824 probably in St. Francisville. This marriage produced a daughter Jane Hope who married Ferdinand C. Booker in 1843 in Harris Co., Texas (Houston). James also had other children by his other wives. James Hope was one of the 'Old Three Hundred'. They were the first three hundred Anglo Americans to receive land grants in Austin's Colony, Texas. After some years in Texas, he went back to England on business. He didn't return. His family doesn't know if he died in England or was lost at sea.
As to the kind of man he was, he ruled his family with the English firmness, but was a good provider.
One of the first things he did after locating here was to plant an orchard of 300 fruit trees.
Notes from Ken and Nancy Black, "James Hope was born about 1775 in England. He married Miss Mary England in St. Mary's Chapel, London. Of his early years little is known. He probably came of a family of yeoman and trade-folk and was trained and educated accordingly. The facts of his later history suggest a rural or village background-familiarity with stockraisng, horticulture, and all facets of the leather industry (tanning, shoemaking, saddlery, and even the vending of leather goods.) He received a fail education in English grammar and, no doubt, in arithmetic, and probably spent his adolescent years as a cordwainer's apprentice. He was a slipper maker by trade and owned a tannery in London.
We do not know the circumstances of their voyage to America but they left their native land around 1801. In 1802 they were living in New York state; in 1804, in Massachusetts; in 1806, Pennsylvania; in 1808 Kentucky or Tennessee. In 1811, the year the Territory of Orleans was organized as the State of Louisiana, the Hopes had settled in the western section of what was then Feliciana Parish, Louisiana (now and since 1824, the Parish of West Feliciana). The Texas records indicate that the Hopes came from Louisiana having come there from Alabama.
War with England during the years 1812-1815 substantially diminished trade between the Mississippi River area and the eastern seaboard states. The economic depression which began in 1815 led to the Panic of 1819 and continued into the 1820's. It contributed greatly to the "Texas fever" of the 1820s.
The actions of James Hope during the period 1815-1828 can only be understood in the light of his seemingly endless troubles with creditors. During those years he employed some interesting survival techniques, thanks to good legal help and the sympathy of Stephen F. Austin for debtors. James Hope during those years controlled real property but did not retain title to it in his own name. Soon after his arrival in Louisiana James Hope had purchased of one James McWaters a 125-acre farm on the main Bayou Sara in Feliciana Parish. This land was probably in danger of attachment for debt before July 5, 1815 when Hope sold in to Robert Percy.
On February 4, 1818 Richard England (a brother-in-law) and James Hope signed an agreement regarding the operation of a boot and shoemaking shop in the town of Bayou Sara, in Feliciana Parish. England agreed to finance the enterprise-or so the deed states-and Hope, for a salary of $50 a month, agreed to act as foreman. (Articles of Agreement, Notarial Record Book H, 1811-1818, Feliciana Parish, Louisiana)
On New Years Day, 1822, James Hope conveyed all his share in the community estate of himself and his deceased wife-in other words, all the property which he had acquired in America-to their nine children. In his deed he stipulated that in return for his conveyance the children were to assume liability for all the "community" debts. Such an exchange seemed fair-provided the evaluation of the assets of the state at $6962.75 was realistic-for the debts amounted to less than $2000.
James did not remain a widower long for we find a marriage bond in marriage certificate book 6 of Feliciana Parish dated November 4, 1822. He obtained a license to marry Elizabeth B. Jack. On November 5 the Rev. Thomas Savage, a circuit riding Presbyterian minister performed the ceremony. Elizabeth B. Jack was an English immigrant, probably the widow of James Jack who had died in Feliciana Parish about 1817, and the mother of an only daughter, Elizabeth B. Jack, Jr., who was then seven years of age. This second marriage was of brief duration for "after a short illness" she died on January 10, 1823 in St. Francisville. A notice in the St. Francisville Asylum newspaper, dated February 6, 1823 carried a report of the death of Mrs. Elizabeth Hope in January that year. Elizabeth Bowering Jack, Jr. remained with James Hope's family and was reared in Texas as one of the family. (Much of the information contained in this paper is the result of the research of George William Glass as preserved in his papers at the Clayton Genealogy Library in Houston, Texas, and hereinafter referenced as George W. Glass papers. Some of the early information on the family was compiled by Glen and Mary Hahn. The chance discovery that Jack and Colleen Hightower's friend of many years, Morris Cobb, was also a descendant of James Hope resulted in the addition to our records of George W. Glass' exhaustive research.)
He may have been outfitting for his first trip to Texas when he bought in Bayou Sara on June 16, 1824, articles for which he signed a note for $306.41.
Business was evidently not going well for the Hopes. The principal sources of information on James Hope in Louisiana after the death of his second wife are the papers of two lawsuits instituted by his creditors. The first suit, based on a promissory note signed by Prosper Hope and James Hope at St. Francisville on August 22, 1823, was pending in the District Court of West Francisville from June 8 to December 14, 1824. Earlier on May 25, 1824, James Hope had filed a claim in probate to collect $18.77 owed him by one Samuel Bates who had died. The next suit, for payment of a note signed by James Hope at Bayou Sara, the port of St. Francisville, on June 16, 1824, was instituted on November 8, 1824 in the District Court of Natchitoches Parish in the town of Natchitoches, but the Plaintiff's petition was for some reason invalidated and a new suit, instituted on December 3, 1824, was pending in the same court until May 3, 1825. Insofar as Hope's itinerary is concerned, these papers tell us little more than that James Hope was present in St. Francisville on August 11, 1823; June 8 and June 16, 1824; and that he left St. Francisville while the earlier suit was pending trial; and that as of November 8 and December 3, 1824 his place of residence was Natchitoches Parish. A sheriff's deed recorded December 25, 1824, sold their property.
Evidence of his immigration to Austin's colony, Texas, prior to March 26, 1825 and the subsequent statements of his sons Prosper and Richard Hope that they came to Texas from Louisiana in the year 1825 tell us that he left Natchitoches Parish while the second suit was pending trial. It therefore appears that on two occasions shortly before his immigration to Texas he escaped attachment of his movable property by not standing trial. It would seem likely that bad business conditions in Louisiana at the time as well as reports of opportunity in Texas may have prompted their decision to move to Texas.
By November 1824 James Hope had visited Austin's Colony and had purchased of John P. Coles a tract of six labors (1062 acres) near the present town of Independence, Texas known in the colonial days as Bravo. He had not arrived in time to receive a grant-or so he must have thought until circumstances permitted Austin to issue him a Mexican grant at a later date.
At some time around March 26, 1825 James Hope acquired title to a Mexican grant of one and one-quarter league (5535 acres) and two labors (354 acres) situated on the east bank of the Brazos River in what is now Brazos County, Texas. The exact date of the grant will probably never be known, for Hope received what may best be described as a "probated substitute grant." The empresario, Stephen F. Austin, in cooperation with the Mexican land Commissioner-his good friend, Baron de Bastrop, issued numerous grants during the period September 1824 through June 1825, all of which were pre-dated to July or August 1824, the brief period when the Baron de Bastrop had been on hand in Austin's Colony to sign the grants and surveys.
Many such grants were not "substitute grants." They were predated only in the sense that the recipients had been away from the colony during the brief period when the land commissioner had been present. In such cases Austin had simply executed all the appropriate documents, leaving blank the places where the recipient would sign. Others who had received their grants at the proper time but had been disqualified by Austin before delivery of the duplicate "originals" of their documents, were replaced by substitutes of Austin's choosing.
James Hope's lands were originally surveyed in the name of King, a subsequently disqualified colonist. It may therefore be assumed that the original grantee and not James Hope was the person who on July 7, 1824 signed the petition as a "vicino actual" (actual resident" of Austin's Colony; on July 9, 1824, was issued a concession by the Baron de Bastrop; and on July 9, 1824 signed the survey for is grant-notwithstanding the fact that James Hope's name and signature appear on these documents under these dates. A new survey made by Barlett Sims, who was not appointed a surveyor until October 1824, was substituted for the earlier survey, through the date of the earlier survey was retained.
So long as Austin could count on the cooperation of a land commissioner who was also a trusted friend, he not only coped with the Spanish system of keeping duplicate origiinals of documents filed as loose papers in the pertinent repositories, but turned the system to the advantage of the colonists. This was especially true because of the circumstances connected with the land commissioner's brief stay in the colony in July and August 1824. Two factors interrupted his official visit-first, his need to repair to Saltillo to the August session of the Legislature of the newly created State of Coahuila and Texas; and , second, the passage by the Mexican Congress in the same month of a law regulating the administration of land to the various states. Thus, until the new state congress could get around to passing its own land administration law-which it did in Marcy, 1825-the land commissioner was not empowered to issue grants. And even after March 1825 the Baron de Bastrop was committed to his responsibilities in Saltillo and did not have the opportunity to visit the colony.
With Bastrop's death on February 23, 1827, and the appointment of a new land commissioner, Austin must have realized that the advantage of the Spanish filing system were no longer of any consequence. He accordingly, on May 5, 1827, addressed to the Governor at Saltillo a request for permission to keep a systematic register into which the grants could be copied as they were issued; and on may 31, 1827, the Governor approved this request. Thus, except for the volume of Old Three Hundred grants (acturally a stack fo separate documents sewn together as a volume), the grants authorized by Austin were systematically and contemporaneously recorded.
Austin therefore, with Bastorp's approval, found a solution to his dilemma as an empresario either by signing Bastrop's name for him or by retaining for use as needed a stack of bland or incomplete documents already signed by Bastrop.
On May 19, 1825, in anticipation of the declaration of indigence to be required for the bankruptcy proceedings which he would institute, James Hope conveyed to the heirs of his deceased first wife, all his lands in Texas. The two Spanish deeds drawn up for this purpose were worded as deeds of sale, but notes for the purchase amounts were evidently drawn up simultaneously and signed by the heirs in James Hope's favor. He then filed a petition against his creditors in the Office of the Clerk of the Louisiana Third District Court in St. Francisville, instituting bankruptcy proceeding which were still pending in 1828. Though held in a Louisiana court, such proceedings were then effective both in Louisiana and Texas.
During the period 1825-1828 James Hope's control of the property in Texas was granted by both the good will of his children and by the rights vested in him as administrator of his deceased first wife's estate and guardian to those among their children who were still minors.
He was the first colonist in the area to receive his title. He located property at or near the site of today's Millican, on Hope's Creek and the Brazos River. This was in the northeastern extremity of teh young colony in what is now Brazos County, an area most vulnerable to attacks of Indian tribes.
By March 26, 1825, he had exchanged his league for that of Bluford Brooks and was trying to secure vacant land on Mill Creek. On March 26, 1825, John P. Coles, alcalade of the Brazos (later the Bravo) District of Texas, wrote to the empresario Stephen F. Austin re question that deeds be issued to legalize a transfer between the colonists Hope and Brooks. "Inclosed you will find the plat of Mr. James Hopes Tract of Land", writes Coles. "He has exchanged the Tract of Land which was Intended for him above to Mr. Beauford Brooks League adjoining the town Tract as you will preceive..." There is no evidence that the trade was ever approved by Austin.
In May 1825 James Hope was party to four conveyances of land, records of which are the only deed under his name preserved in the files of Spanish documents in Austin County Court House, Bellville, Texas. On May 18, 1825, Hope sold to John P. Coles for 100 pesos his two labors of land on the east bank of the Brazos River, granted him on July 9, 1824 by the Mexican Government. On the same date he purchased of Coles for 702 pesos a tract of 6,000,000 square varas (a Labor) on the west side of the Brazos at the mouth of Yegua Creek. On the same date he conveyed to the heirs of Mary Hope for 712 pesos the lot which he had purchased the day before of Coles. The heirs of Mary Hope named in the two instruments are Prosper, Amanda, Augusta, Adolphus, Eleanor, Richard, and Ann Hope. Two other children by the first marriage, Mary Hope and Jane Hope, had died sometime between January 1, 1822 and May 18, 1825. In their memory or in the memory of their namesakes James Hope named his two daughters by the third marriage Mary and Jane.
The John P. Coles census made in the midsummer of 1825 enumerated twelve members of the Hope household. Of these only James Hope, aged, 40-50, farmer and stockraiser, and "Aletha, su mujer," aged, 16-25, are named; the nine children (including Elizabeth B. Jack, Hope's stepdaughter) are designated only by sex and age group. Included in the enumeration is one slave, doubtless Rachel listed in the 1821 inventory of Mary Hope's estate and in the 1820 census of Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, as the Hopes' only slave, a female.
In 1825 some time after the execution of the Hope deed and the visit for the census-taker, Augusta Hope, the second daughter of James and Mary England Hope, was married to Capt. Horatio Chriesman (1797-1878), then chief surveyor and later (1832) "constitutional alcalde" (or chief executive) of Austin's Colony. As early as June 1826 the Indian troubles in John P. Coles' district was causing residents to move south. James Hope was arranging to buy out the improvement of one of the Castlemens, probably in Mina District (embracing all or part of the present counties of Matagorda, Jackson, Fayette, Wharton, and possibly Colorado-not to be confused with the later Municipality of Mina, now Bastrop).
On July 17, 1826 James Hope wrote to Austin: "I have sent my son and Capt. Chriesman down to meet you and Mr. Castleman at your office in respect of Mr. Castlemen's Improvement I wish to leave it to yourself, Capt. Chriesman and Mr. Castleman and whatever you agree on will satisfy me, paying him in cattle or any kind of Merchandise that I have. I understood your Brother Brown that you were wanting Beeves. I have two, one of them Being a very Excellent one. If you can make any arrangement with Castleman I will drive them down to you. Wr are all alarmed here on account of Indians and have moved down to Milicans, But as yet we have seen no Indians. I should take it a favor of Mr. Castleman, as I am now on way down if I could at any leisure time I have be moving part of my Property on the ground."
Hope's son-in-law, Horatio Chriesman, in a letter to Stepehn F. Austin dated November 13, 1826, gives us a brief glimpse of the Hope household: "I am sorry to inform you that it is out of my power to start below as soon as I expected Owing to the ill health of my Family my Wife and children are all unwell but not so much as Miss Hope she was taken with the influenza an Saturday night and has been very bad she appears better this morning I hope I shall be able to get of [i.e. off] in three or four days..." The Miss Hope named in his letter was probably Augusta Ann Hope Chriesman, daughter of James Hope.
By January 4, 1827, James Hope was established in the Mina District, for on this date he and his son Prosper, along with Thomas M. Duke, that alclade, joined forty-six other Mina residents in signing a resolution to support the Mexican Constitution and to offer their services to suppress the Fredonian Rebellion at Nacogdoches. They convened at the house of Bartlett Simms. On March 21, 1829, Prosper Hope was named as sub-lieutenant of the 4th Company of Militia in Austin's Colony, a group recruited from a military precinct including most of the District of Mina.
As early as December 1829 James Hope was negotiating for the purchase of two garden lots in San Felipe, the young capital of Austin's Colony. In May, 1830, as a "gardener and seedsman," advertised his Connecticut garden seed and his fruit trees at San Felipe. He had evidently moved to town by August 4, 1830, when he and Gail Borden, Jr. were nominated by the Ayuntamiento of San Felipe to superintend surveying of town lots at San Felipe.
News reached the Hopes about 1831 that young Elizabeth B. Jack, stepdaughter of James Hope, had fallen heir to an estate in England. James was given power of attorney to represent Mill Jack and began making plans for his voyage. Hope ran an advertisement in the Texas Gazette for January 10, 1832 that he was leaving for England and leaving his son Richard in charge of his 15,000 to 20,000 peach and nectarine trees. In a letter from Stephen F. Austin to James Hope dated December 5, 1831 (reprinted below) Austin states that the letter was for Hope to carry with him of a trip to his native England. Austin enclosed a memorandum on colonization laws.
An almost contemporary account of Hope's voyage is contained in a letter of January 5, 1835 from the merchant, Nicholas Clopper of the San Jacinto District of Austin's Colony to his children in Cincinnati, Ohio:
Your letter dated 27 September. enclosing one from Mrs. Bowering came duly to hand, inclosing a Letter to Miss Elizabeth B. Jack at Mr. T. Hopes [i.e. J. Hope's] informing her of a legacy left her in England. This information they received long since, and Mr. Hope her Step-Father, went from here to England some 18 Mo since, as I understand with power, to receive the same, and had not yet returned, and it is thought will not again return. When I was last in San Felipe, I saw Capt Christman, who married a daughter of old Mr. Hope. I asked him about Miss Jack. He said she was living in his family and was well, and has had the benefit of schooling etc., and that she was a fine girl, etc.
On December 4, 1849, Richard and Adolphus Hope filed a partition of the heirs of James Hope in the Burleson County, Texas land records, film #09565444. On December 4, 1849, in Washington County, Texas, Amanda Wilkerson, Richard Hope, Augusta Chriesman and husband, Horatio Chriesman, Eleanor Roberts, and husband, Luke Roberts, Prosper Hope, Adolphus Hope, Ann Shepard and Husband, Tho. P. Shapard signed a petition as heirs of James Hope, to partition certain land in Brazos County. This is evidence of the death of James Hope sometime prior to this date. According to Worth S. Ray's Austin Colony Pioneers, the tax rolls of 1840 indicate that James Hope died about 1836. We are unable to locate any other records.
Alethea Sorrels Hope, widow of James Hope, was married to her second husband, James Freel on April 28, 1834 at San Felipe de Austin. On January 2, 1836 James Freel made a bond for $260 to keep the ferry which crossed the Brazos River at San Felipe de Austin and Prosper Hope, Alethea's stepson, signed as security on this bond. Later in 1836 or early 1837 the Freels moved to the area which is now Houston where James Freel died and Alethea later married a Mr. Brooks.
The Second Generation
The Coles census of 1825 named James Hope, 40-50, farmer and stockraiser, Aletha (his third wife), 16-25, and nine children which included a step-daughter. The children of James and Mary England Hope were: Prosper, Amanda, Augusta, Adolphus, Eleanor, Richard Hope, Mary Hope, Jane Hope, and Ann Hope. James Had no issue by his second marriage. Two children were born to the third marriage: Mary and Jane Hope.
Prosper Hope
Prosper Hope was born about 1802 in New York. (In the 1880 census of Burleson County, Texas, Prosper Hope's daughter, Mary Elizabeth Hope Ridgeway reported that her father was a native of England and her mother a native of Tennessee. George W. Glass gives his birthplace as New York.) When He was about ten years old the family arrived in Louisiana.
On may 17, 1820, James Hope took his son, Prosper Hope, age 18, before the District Judge of Feliciana Parish and declared that he had emancipated and liberated him. Such act gave Prosper the legal rights of manhood and entitled him to take property and do business in his own name. Two days later Prosper was grantee in a purchase of two adjoining lots on Ferdinand Street in St. Francisville and signed notes for a mortgage of $1025 in favor of the grantor, Joseph E. Johnson.
Another item in the same St. Francisville paper read:
Notice: The Copartnership heretofore existing under the firm of SWIFT & HOPE, is this day dissolved, by mutual consent - John Swift is alone authorized to settle the business relating to the concern. All those having claims against the said firm for settlement and those indebted are requested to make payment by the last day of January, 1824 - preparatory to a final settlement of the concern.
John Swift
Prosper Hope
January 1st, 1823
Prosper Hope married twice. His first marriage was to Julia Roberts, August 19, 1837, according to the Washington County, Texas marriage records for 1837-1858. George W. Glass said in his paper on Hope family: "I'm now pretty certain that Prosper Hope and Julia Roberts were married in the summer or early fall of the year 1836 while the Hopes were living in or near San Augustine in East Texas. They were evidently married by bond - the custom in Texas prior to July 1837. The marriage law of July, 1837 required couples who were previously married by bond to be married again by license. Once they had been married by license the marriage was considered legal back to the date of the original bond marriage. And that is why Prosper Hope obtained a license to marry Julia Roberts on August 1857 in Washington County, though their real date of marriage was evidently 1836." The Washington County Tax Rolls of 1837 and 1840 list the name Prosper Hope as a tax payer. In February 1838 he received a land grant for service in the Texas Revolution.
In the 1880 census for Burleson County, Texas, Mary Ridgway, wife of Lee Ridgway, reports that her father (Prosper Hope) was born in England. It would therefore seem that the Hope family (with at least one child, Prosper) arrived from England sometime after 1800. On several occasions, however, Prosper listed his birthplace in New York.
Julia Ann Roberts was the daughter of William and Elizabeth Roberts, and the sister of Luke Roberts who married Prosper Hopes' sister, Eleanor. (For additional information see The Roberts family.)
Stephen F. Austin's Register of Families, lists Prosper Hope, age 26, single farmer, emigrated from Louisiana in 1825, with 3/4 league of land in Washington County. The same list names Richard Hope (no age or other information) as owning 1/3 league of and in 1825 in Washington County.
Prosper Hope affirmed that he was a Texas citizen at the date of the Declaration of Independence and has remained in the Country ever since his marriage according to an affidavit in The Texas Land Grants, 1832-1840, at page 358. He also affirmed that he had contributed to the support and defense of the country ever since; and that he emigrated in the year 1825. He therefore obtained a certificate for three fourths of a league and one labor of land.
The land grants for 1832-1840, recorded that Richard, Adolphus, and Prosper Hope, obtained their land grants in February 1838. At that time Richard Hope was still single, but Adolphus Hope and Prosper Hope had married.
In 1839 Prosper Hope was Clerk of the Board of Land Commissioners of Washington County. In the General Land Office in Austin there are hundred's of certificates in Prosper Hopes' handwriting, issued to early settlers who proved their eligibility for land grants. He issued to early settlers who proved their eligibility for land grants. He probably served from time to time as a teacher as there are references to money due him for teaching in the probate records of Austin County.
Prosper Hope is listed in Washington County in the 1840 census. The Sheriff's returns for 1840 in Washington County list Prosper Hope as a landowner. Prosper Hope was elected Justice of the Peace for the Liberty Precinct of Washington County, February 27, 1841.
On july 31, 1848, Prosper Hope acted as one of the trustee for the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, receiving a deed of land in Washington County.
A letter dated December 7, 1848 written from Brenham, Washington County, by Henry G. Anderson to his mother-in-law announced the death of his wife Drusilla on November 25 and that she had a daughter, Julia on August 11. He said "Julia Hope sends her love," and "4 of the 5 children are girls." Written in the margin of this letter is: "Prosper Hope, Given under my hand, May 23, 1850." On October 30, 1849, Henry Anderson married Mrs. Caroline Holt. He does not appear in the 1850 census.
HOPES CREEK. Hopes Creek rises a mile southwest of College Station in southern Burleson Co.
James and Mary (England) Hope had the following children:
Prosper Hope; Amanda Hope; Augusta Ann Hope; Adolphus Hope; Eleanor Hope; Richard Hope; Mary Hope; Jane Hope; and Ann Hope.
James and Alethea H. Sorrels Hope had the following children:
Mary Hope and Margaret "Jane" Hope
James Hope and his family came to Texas from Louisiana before July 10, 1824, when , as one of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists, he received title to one and one-half leagued and two labors of land in present Austin County. By March 26, 1825, he had exchanged his league for that of Bluford Brooks and was trying to secure vacant land on Mill Creek. Hope's daughter, Augusta, married Horatio Chriesman in 1825. The March, 1826, census listed Hope as a farmer and stock raiser aged between forty and fifty. His household included his wife, Althea, three sons (Prosper, Adolphes, and Richard), six daughters, and one servent. At Mina, in January, 1827, Hope signed a declaration of loyalty to the Mexican government and a protest against the Fredonian Rebellion. He bought garden lots in 1829 and in May 1830 advertised his Connectcut gardan seed and fruit trees for sale at San Felipe. In August, 1830, he and Gail Borden, Jr.. were nominated commissioners to superintend surveying of town lots at /San Felipe. In December,1831, Hope advertised that he was leaving for England and leaving his son Richard in charge of his 15,000 to 20,000 peach and nectarine trees. According to Worth S. Ray's "Austin Colony Pioneers", the tax rolls of 1840 indicated that James Hope died about 1836. His sons took part in the battle of San Jacinto and later had a saddle shop at Washington-on-the-Brazos.
See: E.C. Barker (ed.). "Austin Papers, 1 (1924); Lester G. Bugbee, "The Old Three Hundred". Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, 1 (1897-1898). Abigail Curlee, "The History of Texas Slave Plantations." Southwestern Historical Quarterly,XXVI (1922-1923); Worth S. Ray, Austin Colony Pioneers (1949); Texas Gazette, May 29, 1830, and January 10, 1832.
See 1820 Census, Louisiana, Feliciana Par., page 046; James Hope
See 1826 Census, Texas, Texas Terr., Austin Colony, 1826.
See 1826 Census, Texas, Bastrop Co.,, Austin, Mexico Terr., 1826
Notes from Janice Sperling: "James Hope was born in England about 1775 and died about 1833 on his second voyage from England to America. He was at the time of his death a resident of the town of San Felipe de Austin (near present day San Felipe, Austin Co., Texas.) He was married three times. His first marriage was about 1797 in London, England to Mary England, with whom he immigrated to the United States around 1800, who died in 1821 in St. Francisville, Louisiana. His second wife, he married November 5, 1822, in St Francisville, Mrs. Elizabeth Jack, who died in the same town on January 10, 1823, his third wife was Alethea Sorrels who he married either 1823 or 1824 probably in St. Francisville. This marriage produced a daughter Jane Hope who married Ferdinand C. Booker in 1843 in Harris Co., Texas (Houston). James also had other children by his other wives. James Hope was one of the 'Old Three Hundred'. They were the first three hundred Anglo Americans to receive land grants in Austin's Colony, Texas. After some years in Texas, he went back to England on business. He didn't return. His family doesn't know if he died in England or was lost at sea.
As to the kind of man he was, he ruled his family with the English firmness, but was a good provider.
One of the first things he did after locating here was to plant an orchard of 300 fruit trees.
Notes from Ken and Nancy Black, "James Hope was born about 1775 in England. He married Miss Mary England in St. Mary's Chapel, London. Of his early years little is known. He probably came of a family of yeoman and trade-folk and was trained and educated accordingly. The facts of his later history suggest a rural or village background-familiarity with stockraisng, horticulture, and all facets of the leather industry (tanning, shoemaking, saddlery, and even the vending of leather goods.) He received a fail education in English grammar and, no doubt, in arithmetic, and probably spent his adolescent years as a cordwainer's apprentice. He was a slipper maker by trade and owned a tannery in London.
We do not know the circumstances of their voyage to America but they left their native land around 1801. In 1802 they were living in New York state; in 1804, in Massachusetts; in 1806, Pennsylvania; in 1808 Kentucky or Tennessee. In 1811, the year the Territory of Orleans was organized as the State of Louisiana, the Hopes had settled in the western section of what was then Feliciana Parish, Louisiana (now and since 1824, the Parish of West Feliciana). The Texas records indicate that the Hopes came from Louisiana having come there from Alabama.
War with England during the years 1812-1815 substantially diminished trade between the Mississippi River area and the eastern seaboard states. The economic depression which began in 1815 led to the Panic of 1819 and continued into the 1820's. It contributed greatly to the "Texas fever" of the 1820s.
The actions of James Hope during the period 1815-1828 can only be understood in the light of his seemingly endless troubles with creditors. During those years he employed some interesting survival techniques, thanks to good legal help and the sympathy of Stephen F. Austin for debtors. James Hope during those years controlled real property but did not retain title to it in his own name. Soon after his arrival in Louisiana James Hope had purchased of one James McWaters a 125-acre farm on the main Bayou Sara in Feliciana Parish. This land was probably in danger of attachment for debt before July 5, 1815 when Hope sold in to Robert Percy.
On February 4, 1818 Richard England (a brother-in-law) and James Hope signed an agreement regarding the operation of a boot and shoemaking shop in the town of Bayou Sara, in Feliciana Parish. England agreed to finance the enterprise-or so the deed states-and Hope, for a salary of $50 a month, agreed to act as foreman. (Articles of Agreement, Notarial Record Book H, 1811-1818, Feliciana Parish, Louisiana)
On New Years Day, 1822, James Hope conveyed all his share in the community estate of himself and his deceased wife-in other words, all the property which he had acquired in America-to their nine children. In his deed he stipulated that in return for his conveyance the children were to assume liability for all the "community" debts. Such an exchange seemed fair-provided the evaluation of the assets of the state at $6962.75 was realistic-for the debts amounted to less than $2000.
James did not remain a widower long for we find a marriage bond in marriage certificate book 6 of Feliciana Parish dated November 4, 1822. He obtained a license to marry Elizabeth B. Jack. On November 5 the Rev. Thomas Savage, a circuit riding Presbyterian minister performed the ceremony. Elizabeth B. Jack was an English immigrant, probably the widow of James Jack who had died in Feliciana Parish about 1817, and the mother of an only daughter, Elizabeth B. Jack, Jr., who was then seven years of age. This second marriage was of brief duration for "after a short illness" she died on January 10, 1823 in St. Francisville. A notice in the St. Francisville Asylum newspaper, dated February 6, 1823 carried a report of the death of Mrs. Elizabeth Hope in January that year. Elizabeth Bowering Jack, Jr. remained with James Hope's family and was reared in Texas as one of the family. (Much of the information contained in this paper is the result of the research of George William Glass as preserved in his papers at the Clayton Genealogy Library in Houston, Texas, and hereinafter referenced as George W. Glass papers. Some of the early information on the family was compiled by Glen and Mary Hahn. The chance discovery that Jack and Colleen Hightower's friend of many years, Morris Cobb, was also a descendant of James Hope resulted in the addition to our records of George W. Glass' exhaustive research.)
He may have been outfitting for his first trip to Texas when he bought in Bayou Sara on June 16, 1824, articles for which he signed a note for $306.41.
Business was evidently not going well for the Hopes. The principal sources of information on James Hope in Louisiana after the death of his second wife are the papers of two lawsuits instituted by his creditors. The first suit, based on a promissory note signed by Prosper Hope and James Hope at St. Francisville on August 22, 1823, was pending in the District Court of West Francisville from June 8 to December 14, 1824. Earlier on May 25, 1824, James Hope had filed a claim in probate to collect $18.77 owed him by one Samuel Bates who had died. The next suit, for payment of a note signed by James Hope at Bayou Sara, the port of St. Francisville, on June 16, 1824, was instituted on November 8, 1824 in the District Court of Natchitoches Parish in the town of Natchitoches, but the Plaintiff's petition was for some reason invalidated and a new suit, instituted on December 3, 1824, was pending in the same court until May 3, 1825. Insofar as Hope's itinerary is concerned, these papers tell us little more than that James Hope was present in St. Francisville on August 11, 1823; June 8 and June 16, 1824; and that he left St. Francisville while the earlier suit was pending trial; and that as of November 8 and December 3, 1824 his place of residence was Natchitoches Parish. A sheriff's deed recorded December 25, 1824, sold their property.
Evidence of his immigration to Austin's colony, Texas, prior to March 26, 1825 and the subsequent statements of his sons Prosper and Richard Hope that they came to Texas from Louisiana in the year 1825 tell us that he left Natchitoches Parish while the second suit was pending trial. It therefore appears that on two occasions shortly before his immigration to Texas he escaped attachment of his movable property by not standing trial. It would seem likely that bad business conditions in Louisiana at the time as well as reports of opportunity in Texas may have prompted their decision to move to Texas.
By November 1824 James Hope had visited Austin's Colony and had purchased of John P. Coles a tract of six labors (1062 acres) near the present town of Independence, Texas known in the colonial days as Bravo. He had not arrived in time to receive a grant-or so he must have thought until circumstances permitted Austin to issue him a Mexican grant at a later date.
At some time around March 26, 1825 James Hope acquired title to a Mexican grant of one and one-quarter league (5535 acres) and two labors (354 acres) situated on the east bank of the Brazos River in what is now Brazos County, Texas. The exact date of the grant will probably never be known, for Hope received what may best be described as a "probated substitute grant." The empresario, Stephen F. Austin, in cooperation with the Mexican land Commissioner-his good friend, Baron de Bastrop, issued numerous grants during the period September 1824 through June 1825, all of which were pre-dated to July or August 1824, the brief period when the Baron de Bastrop had been on hand in Austin's Colony to sign the grants and surveys.
Many such grants were not "substitute grants." They were predated only in the sense that the recipients had been away from the colony during the brief period when the land commissioner had been present. In such cases Austin had simply executed all the appropriate documents, leaving blank the places where the recipient would sign. Others who had received their grants at the proper time but had been disqualified by Austin before delivery of the duplicate "originals" of their documents, were replaced by substitutes of Austin's choosing.
James Hope's lands were originally surveyed in the name of King, a subsequently disqualified colonist. It may therefore be assumed that the original grantee and not James Hope was the person who on July 7, 1824 signed the petition as a "vicino actual" (actual resident" of Austin's Colony; on July 9, 1824, was issued a concession by the Baron de Bastrop; and on July 9, 1824 signed the survey for is grant-notwithstanding the fact that James Hope's name and signature appear on these documents under these dates. A new survey made by Barlett Sims, who was not appointed a surveyor until October 1824, was substituted for the earlier survey, through the date of the earlier survey was retained.
So long as Austin could count on the cooperation of a land commissioner who was also a trusted friend, he not only coped with the Spanish system of keeping duplicate origiinals of documents filed as loose papers in the pertinent repositories, but turned the system to the advantage of the colonists. This was especially true because of the circumstances connected with the land commissioner's brief stay in the colony in July and August 1824. Two factors interrupted his official visit-first, his need to repair to Saltillo to the August session of the Legislature of the newly created State of Coahuila and Texas; and , second, the passage by the Mexican Congress in the same month of a law regulating the administration of land to the various states. Thus, until the new state congress could get around to passing its own land administration law-which it did in Marcy, 1825-the land commissioner was not empowered to issue grants. And even after March 1825 the Baron de Bastrop was committed to his responsibilities in Saltillo and did not have the opportunity to visit the colony.
With Bastrop's death on February 23, 1827, and the appointment of a new land commissioner, Austin must have realized that the advantage of the Spanish filing system were no longer of any consequence. He accordingly, on May 5, 1827, addressed to the Governor at Saltillo a request for permission to keep a systematic register into which the grants could be copied as they were issued; and on may 31, 1827, the Governor approved this request. Thus, except for the volume of Old Three Hundred grants (acturally a stack fo separate documents sewn together as a volume), the grants authorized by Austin were systematically and contemporaneously recorded.
Austin therefore, with Bastorp's approval, found a solution to his dilemma as an empresario either by signing Bastrop's name for him or by retaining for use as needed a stack of bland or incomplete documents already signed by Bastrop.
On May 19, 1825, in anticipation of the declaration of indigence to be required for the bankruptcy proceedings which he would institute, James Hope conveyed to the heirs of his deceased first wife, all his lands in Texas. The two Spanish deeds drawn up for this purpose were worded as deeds of sale, but notes for the purchase amounts were evidently drawn up simultaneously and signed by the heirs in James Hope's favor. He then filed a petition against his creditors in the Office of the Clerk of the Louisiana Third District Court in St. Francisville, instituting bankruptcy proceeding which were still pending in 1828. Though held in a Louisiana court, such proceedings were then effective both in Louisiana and Texas.
During the period 1825-1828 James Hope's control of the property in Texas was granted by both the good will of his children and by the rights vested in him as administrator of his deceased first wife's estate and guardian to those among their children who were still minors.
He was the first colonist in the area to receive his title. He located property at or near the site of today's Millican, on Hope's Creek and the Brazos River. This was in the northeastern extremity of teh young colony in what is now Brazos County, an area most vulnerable to attacks of Indian tribes.
By March 26, 1825, he had exchanged his league for that of Bluford Brooks and was trying to secure vacant land on Mill Creek. On March 26, 1825, John P. Coles, alcalade of the Brazos (later the Bravo) District of Texas, wrote to the empresario Stephen F. Austin re question that deeds be issued to legalize a transfer between the colonists Hope and Brooks. "Inclosed you will find the plat of Mr. James Hopes Tract of Land", writes Coles. "He has exchanged the Tract of Land which was Intended for him above to Mr. Beauford Brooks League adjoining the town Tract as you will preceive..." There is no evidence that the trade was ever approved by Austin.
In May 1825 James Hope was party to four conveyances of land, records of which are the only deed under his name preserved in the files of Spanish documents in Austin County Court House, Bellville, Texas. On May 18, 1825, Hope sold to John P. Coles for 100 pesos his two labors of land on the east bank of the Brazos River, granted him on July 9, 1824 by the Mexican Government. On the same date he purchased of Coles for 702 pesos a tract of 6,000,000 square varas (a Labor) on the west side of the Brazos at the mouth of Yegua Creek. On the same date he conveyed to the heirs of Mary Hope for 712 pesos the lot which he had purchased the day before of Coles. The heirs of Mary Hope named in the two instruments are Prosper, Amanda, Augusta, Adolphus, Eleanor, Richard, and Ann Hope. Two other children by the first marriage, Mary Hope and Jane Hope, had died sometime between January 1, 1822 and May 18, 1825. In their memory or in the memory of their namesakes James Hope named his two daughters by the third marriage Mary and Jane.
The John P. Coles census made in the midsummer of 1825 enumerated twelve members of the Hope household. Of these only James Hope, aged, 40-50, farmer and stockraiser, and "Aletha, su mujer," aged, 16-25, are named; the nine children (including Elizabeth B. Jack, Hope's stepdaughter) are designated only by sex and age group. Included in the enumeration is one slave, doubtless Rachel listed in the 1821 inventory of Mary Hope's estate and in the 1820 census of Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, as the Hopes' only slave, a female.
In 1825 some time after the execution of the Hope deed and the visit for the census-taker, Augusta Hope, the second daughter of James and Mary England Hope, was married to Capt. Horatio Chriesman (1797-1878), then chief surveyor and later (1832) "constitutional alcalde" (or chief executive) of Austin's Colony. As early as June 1826 the Indian troubles in John P. Coles' district was causing residents to move south. James Hope was arranging to buy out the improvement of one of the Castlemens, probably in Mina District (embracing all or part of the present counties of Matagorda, Jackson, Fayette, Wharton, and possibly Colorado-not to be confused with the later Municipality of Mina, now Bastrop).
On July 17, 1826 James Hope wrote to Austin: "I have sent my son and Capt. Chriesman down to meet you and Mr. Castleman at your office in respect of Mr. Castlemen's Improvement I wish to leave it to yourself, Capt. Chriesman and Mr. Castleman and whatever you agree on will satisfy me, paying him in cattle or any kind of Merchandise that I have. I understood your Brother Brown that you were wanting Beeves. I have two, one of them Being a very Excellent one. If you can make any arrangement with Castleman I will drive them down to you. Wr are all alarmed here on account of Indians and have moved down to Milicans, But as yet we have seen no Indians. I should take it a favor of Mr. Castleman, as I am now on way down if I could at any leisure time I have be moving part of my Property on the ground."
Hope's son-in-law, Horatio Chriesman, in a letter to Stepehn F. Austin dated November 13, 1826, gives us a brief glimpse of the Hope household: "I am sorry to inform you that it is out of my power to start below as soon as I expected Owing to the ill health of my Family my Wife and children are all unwell but not so much as Miss Hope she was taken with the influenza an Saturday night and has been very bad she appears better this morning I hope I shall be able to get of [i.e. off] in three or four days..." The Miss Hope named in his letter was probably Augusta Ann Hope Chriesman, daughter of James Hope.
By January 4, 1827, James Hope was established in the Mina District, for on this date he and his son Prosper, along with Thomas M. Duke, that alclade, joined forty-six other Mina residents in signing a resolution to support the Mexican Constitution and to offer their services to suppress the Fredonian Rebellion at Nacogdoches. They convened at the house of Bartlett Simms. On March 21, 1829, Prosper Hope was named as sub-lieutenant of the 4th Company of Militia in Austin's Colony, a group recruited from a military precinct including most of the District of Mina.
As early as December 1829 James Hope was negotiating for the purchase of two garden lots in San Felipe, the young capital of Austin's Colony. In May, 1830, as a "gardener and seedsman," advertised his Connecticut garden seed and his fruit trees at San Felipe. He had evidently moved to town by August 4, 1830, when he and Gail Borden, Jr. were nominated by the Ayuntamiento of San Felipe to superintend surveying of town lots at San Felipe.
News reached the Hopes about 1831 that young Elizabeth B. Jack, stepdaughter of James Hope, had fallen heir to an estate in England. James was given power of attorney to represent Mill Jack and began making plans for his voyage. Hope ran an advertisement in the Texas Gazette for January 10, 1832 that he was leaving for England and leaving his son Richard in charge of his 15,000 to 20,000 peach and nectarine trees. In a letter from Stephen F. Austin to James Hope dated December 5, 1831 (reprinted below) Austin states that the letter was for Hope to carry with him of a trip to his native England. Austin enclosed a memorandum on colonization laws.
An almost contemporary account of Hope's voyage is contained in a letter of January 5, 1835 from the merchant, Nicholas Clopper of the San Jacinto District of Austin's Colony to his children in Cincinnati, Ohio:
Your letter dated 27 September. enclosing one from Mrs. Bowering came duly to hand, inclosing a Letter to Miss Elizabeth B. Jack at Mr. T. Hopes [i.e. J. Hope's] informing her of a legacy left her in England. This information they received long since, and Mr. Hope her Step-Father, went from here to England some 18 Mo since, as I understand with power, to receive the same, and had not yet returned, and it is thought will not again return. When I was last in San Felipe, I saw Capt Christman, who married a daughter of old Mr. Hope. I asked him about Miss Jack. He said she was living in his family and was well, and has had the benefit of schooling etc., and that she was a fine girl, etc.
On December 4, 1849, Richard and Adolphus Hope filed a partition of the heirs of James Hope in the Burleson County, Texas land records, film #09565444. On December 4, 1849, in Washington County, Texas, Amanda Wilkerson, Richard Hope, Augusta Chriesman and husband, Horatio Chriesman, Eleanor Roberts, and husband, Luke Roberts, Prosper Hope, Adolphus Hope, Ann Shepard and Husband, Tho. P. Shapard signed a petition as heirs of James Hope, to partition certain land in Brazos County. This is evidence of the death of James Hope sometime prior to this date. According to Worth S. Ray's Austin Colony Pioneers, the tax rolls of 1840 indicate that James Hope died about 1836. We are unable to locate any other records.
Alethea Sorrels Hope, widow of James Hope, was married to her second husband, James Freel on April 28, 1834 at San Felipe de Austin. On January 2, 1836 James Freel made a bond for $260 to keep the ferry which crossed the Brazos River at San Felipe de Austin and Prosper Hope, Alethea's stepson, signed as security on this bond. Later in 1836 or early 1837 the Freels moved to the area which is now Houston where James Freel died and Alethea later married a Mr. Brooks.
The Second Generation
The Coles census of 1825 named James Hope, 40-50, farmer and stockraiser, Aletha (his third wife), 16-25, and nine children which included a step-daughter. The children of James and Mary England Hope were: Prosper, Amanda, Augusta, Adolphus, Eleanor, Richard Hope, Mary Hope, Jane Hope, and Ann Hope. James Had no issue by his second marriage. Two children were born to the third marriage: Mary and Jane Hope.
Prosper Hope
Prosper Hope was born about 1802 in New York. (In the 1880 census of Burleson County, Texas, Prosper Hope's daughter, Mary Elizabeth Hope Ridgeway reported that her father was a native of England and her mother a native of Tennessee. George W. Glass gives his birthplace as New York.) When He was about ten years old the family arrived in Louisiana.
On may 17, 1820, James Hope took his son, Prosper Hope, age 18, before the District Judge of Feliciana Parish and declared that he had emancipated and liberated him. Such act gave Prosper the legal rights of manhood and entitled him to take property and do business in his own name. Two days later Prosper was grantee in a purchase of two adjoining lots on Ferdinand Street in St. Francisville and signed notes for a mortgage of $1025 in favor of the grantor, Joseph E. Johnson.
Another item in the same St. Francisville paper read:
Notice: The Copartnership heretofore existing under the firm of SWIFT & HOPE, is this day dissolved, by mutual consent - John Swift is alone authorized to settle the business relating to the concern. All those having claims against the said firm for settlement and those indebted are requested to make payment by the last day of January, 1824 - preparatory to a final settlement of the concern.
John Swift
Prosper Hope
January 1st, 1823
Prosper Hope married twice. His first marriage was to Julia Roberts, August 19, 1837, according to the Washington County, Texas marriage records for 1837-1858. George W. Glass said in his paper on Hope family: "I'm now pretty certain that Prosper Hope and Julia Roberts were married in the summer or early fall of the year 1836 while the Hopes were living in or near San Augustine in East Texas. They were evidently married by bond - the custom in Texas prior to July 1837. The marriage law of July, 1837 required couples who were previously married by bond to be married again by license. Once they had been married by license the marriage was considered legal back to the date of the original bond marriage. And that is why Prosper Hope obtained a license to marry Julia Roberts on August 1857 in Washington County, though their real date of marriage was evidently 1836." The Washington County Tax Rolls of 1837 and 1840 list the name Prosper Hope as a tax payer. In February 1838 he received a land grant for service in the Texas Revolution.
In the 1880 census for Burleson County, Texas, Mary Ridgway, wife of Lee Ridgway, reports that her father (Prosper Hope) was born in England. It would therefore seem that the Hope family (with at least one child, Prosper) arrived from England sometime after 1800. On several occasions, however, Prosper listed his birthplace in New York.
Julia Ann Roberts was the daughter of William and Elizabeth Roberts, and the sister of Luke Roberts who married Prosper Hopes' sister, Eleanor. (For additional information see The Roberts family.)
Stephen F. Austin's Register of Families, lists Prosper Hope, age 26, single farmer, emigrated from Louisiana in 1825, with 3/4 league of land in Washington County. The same list names Richard Hope (no age or other information) as owning 1/3 league of and in 1825 in Washington County.
Prosper Hope affirmed that he was a Texas citizen at the date of the Declaration of Independence and has remained in the Country ever since his marriage according to an affidavit in The Texas Land Grants, 1832-1840, at page 358. He also affirmed that he had contributed to the support and defense of the country ever since; and that he emigrated in the year 1825. He therefore obtained a certificate for three fourths of a league and one labor of land.
The land grants for 1832-1840, recorded that Richard, Adolphus, and Prosper Hope, obtained their land grants in February 1838. At that time Richard Hope was still single, but Adolphus Hope and Prosper Hope had married.
In 1839 Prosper Hope was Clerk of the Board of Land Commissioners of Washington County. In the General Land Office in Austin there are hundred's of certificates in Prosper Hopes' handwriting, issued to early settlers who proved their eligibility for land grants. He issued to early settlers who proved their eligibility for land grants. He probably served from time to time as a teacher as there are references to money due him for teaching in the probate records of Austin County.
Prosper Hope is listed in Washington County in the 1840 census. The Sheriff's returns for 1840 in Washington County list Prosper Hope as a landowner. Prosper Hope was elected Justice of the Peace for the Liberty Precinct of Washington County, February 27, 1841.
On july 31, 1848, Prosper Hope acted as one of the trustee for the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, receiving a deed of land in Washington County.
A letter dated December 7, 1848 written from Brenham, Washington County, by Henry G. Anderson to his mother-in-law announced the death of his wife Drusilla on November 25 and that she had a daughter, Julia on August 11. He said "Julia Hope sends her love," and "4 of the 5 children are girls." Written in the margin of this letter is: "Prosper Hope, Given under my hand, May 23, 1850." On October 30, 1849, Henry Anderson married Mrs. Caroline Holt. He does not appear in the 1850 census.
HOPES CREEK. Hopes Creek rises a mile southwest of College Station in southern Burleson Co.
James Hope married first Mary England in 1797 in St. Mary's Chapel, London, England. He married second Mrs. Elizabeth Bowering Jack 04 Jan 1822 in St. Francisville, W. Feliciana Parish, La. James married third Aletha H. Sorrels 10 Mar 1824 in Natchitoches Parish, La.
James and Mary (England) Hope had the following children:
Prosper Hope; Amanda Hope; Augusta Ann Hope; Adolphus Hope; Eleanor Hope; Richard Hope; Mary Hope; Jane Hope; and Ann Hope.
James and Alethea H. Sorrels Hope had the following children:
Mary Hope and Margaret "Jane" Hope
James Hope and his family came to Texas from Louisiana before July 10, 1824, when , as one of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists, he received title to one and one-half leagued and two labors of land in present Austin County. By March 26, 1825, he had exchanged his league for that of Bluford Brooks and was trying to secure vacant land on Mill Creek. Hope's daughter, Augusta, married Horatio Chriesman in 1825. The March, 1826, census listed Hope as a farmer and stock raiser aged between forty and fifty. His household included his wife, Althea, three sons (Prosper, Adolphes, and Richard), six daughters, and one servent. At Mina, in January, 1827, Hope signed a declaration of loyalty to the Mexican government and a protest against the Fredonian Rebellion. He bought garden lots in 1829 and in May 1830 advertised his Connectcut gardan seed and fruit trees for sale at San Felipe. In August, 1830, he and Gail Borden, Jr.. were nominated commissioners to superintend surveying of town lots at /San Felipe. In December,1831, Hope advertised that he was leaving for England and leaving his son Richard in charge of his 15,000 to 20,000 peach and nectarine trees. According to Worth S. Ray's "Austin Colony Pioneers", the tax rolls of 1840 indicated that James Hope died about 1836. His sons took part in the battle of San Jacinto and later had a saddle shop at Washington-on-the-Brazos.
See: E.C. Barker (ed.). "Austin Papers, 1 (1924); Lester G. Bugbee, "The Old Three Hundred". Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, 1 (1897-1898). Abigail Curlee, "The History of Texas Slave Plantations." Southwestern Historical Quarterly,XXVI (1922-1923); Worth S. Ray, Austin Colony Pioneers (1949); Texas Gazette, May 29, 1830, and January 10, 1832.
See 1820 Census, Louisiana, Feliciana Par., page 046; James Hope
See 1826 Census, Texas, Texas Terr., Austin Colony, 1826.
See 1826 Census, Texas, Bastrop Co.,, Austin, Mexico Terr., 1826
Notes from Janice Sperling: "James Hope was born in England about 1775 and died about 1833 on his second voyage from England to America. He was at the time of his death a resident of the town of San Felipe de Austin (near present day San Felipe, Austin Co., Texas.) He was married three times. His first marriage was about 1797 in London, England to Mary England, with whom he immigrated to the United States around 1800, who died in 1821 in St. Francisville, Louisiana. His second wife, he married November 5, 1822, in St Francisville, Mrs. Elizabeth Jack, who died in the same town on January 10, 1823, his third wife was Alethea Sorrels who he married either 1823 or 1824 probably in St. Francisville. This marriage produced a daughter Jane Hope who married Ferdinand C. Booker in 1843 in Harris Co., Texas (Houston). James also had other children by his other wives. James Hope was one of the 'Old Three Hundred'. They were the first three hundred Anglo Americans to receive land grants in Austin's Colony, Texas. After some years in Texas, he went back to England on business. He didn't return. His family doesn't know if he died in England or was lost at sea.
As to the kind of man he was, he ruled his family with the English firmness, but was a good provider.
One of the first things he did after locating here was to plant an orchard of 300 fruit trees.
Notes from Ken and Nancy Black, "James Hope was born about 1775 in England. He married Miss Mary England in St. Mary's Chapel, London. Of his early years little is known. He probably came of a family of yeoman and trade-folk and was trained and educated accordingly. The facts of his later history suggest a rural or village background-familiarity with stockraisng, horticulture, and all facets of the leather industry (tanning, shoemaking, saddlery, and even the vending of leather goods.) He received a fail education in English grammar and, no doubt, in arithmetic, and probably spent his adolescent years as a cordwainer's apprentice. He was a slipper maker by trade and owned a tannery in London.
We do not know the circumstances of their voyage to America but they left their native land around 1801. In 1802 they were living in New York state; in 1804, in Massachusetts; in 1806, Pennsylvania; in 1808 Kentucky or Tennessee. In 1811, the year the Territory of Orleans was organized as the State of Louisiana, the Hopes had settled in the western section of what was then Feliciana Parish, Louisiana (now and since 1824, the Parish of West Feliciana). The Texas records indicate that the Hopes came from Louisiana having come there from Alabama.
War with England during the years 1812-1815 substantially diminished trade between the Mississippi River area and the eastern seaboard states. The economic depression which began in 1815 led to the Panic of 1819 and continued into the 1820's. It contributed greatly to the "Texas fever" of the 1820s.
The actions of James Hope during the period 1815-1828 can only be understood in the light of his seemingly endless troubles with creditors. During those years he employed some interesting survival techniques, thanks to good legal help and the sympathy of Stephen F. Austin for debtors. James Hope during those years controlled real property but did not retain title to it in his own name. Soon after his arrival in Louisiana James Hope had purchased of one James McWaters a 125-acre farm on the main Bayou Sara in Feliciana Parish. This land was probably in danger of attachment for debt before July 5, 1815 when Hope sold in to Robert Percy.
On February 4, 1818 Richard England (a brother-in-law) and James Hope signed an agreement regarding the operation of a boot and shoemaking shop in the town of Bayou Sara, in Feliciana Parish. England agreed to finance the enterprise-or so the deed states-and Hope, for a salary of $50 a month, agreed to act as foreman. (Articles of Agreement, Notarial Record Book H, 1811-1818, Feliciana Parish, Louisiana)
On New Years Day, 1822, James Hope conveyed all his share in the community estate of himself and his deceased wife-in other words, all the property which he had acquired in America-to their nine children. In his deed he stipulated that in return for his conveyance the children were to assume liability for all the "community" debts. Such an exchange seemed fair-provided the evaluation of the assets of the state at $6962.75 was realistic-for the debts amounted to less than $2000.
James did not remain a widower long for we find a marriage bond in marriage certificate book 6 of Feliciana Parish dated November 4, 1822. He obtained a license to marry Elizabeth B. Jack. On November 5 the Rev. Thomas Savage, a circuit riding Presbyterian minister performed the ceremony. Elizabeth B. Jack was an English immigrant, probably the widow of James Jack who had died in Feliciana Parish about 1817, and the mother of an only daughter, Elizabeth B. Jack, Jr., who was then seven years of age. This second marriage was of brief duration for "after a short illness" she died on January 10, 1823 in St. Francisville. A notice in the St. Francisville Asylum newspaper, dated February 6, 1823 carried a report of the death of Mrs. Elizabeth Hope in January that year. Elizabeth Bowering Jack, Jr. remained with James Hope's family and was reared in Texas as one of the family. (Much of the information contained in this paper is the result of the research of George William Glass as preserved in his papers at the Clayton Genealogy Library in Houston, Texas, and hereinafter referenced as George W. Glass papers. Some of the early information on the family was compiled by Glen and Mary Hahn. The chance discovery that Jack and Colleen Hightower's friend of many years, Morris Cobb, was also a descendant of James Hope resulted in the addition to our records of George W. Glass' exhaustive research.)
He may have been outfitting for his first trip to Texas when he bought in Bayou Sara on June 16, 1824, articles for which he signed a note for $306.41.
Business was evidently not going well for the Hopes. The principal sources of information on James Hope in Louisiana after the death of his second wife are the papers of two lawsuits instituted by his creditors. The first suit, based on a promissory note signed by Prosper Hope and James Hope at St. Francisville on August 22, 1823, was pending in the District Court of West Francisville from June 8 to December 14, 1824. Earlier on May 25, 1824, James Hope had filed a claim in probate to collect $18.77 owed him by one Samuel Bates who had died. The next suit, for payment of a note signed by James Hope at Bayou Sara, the port of St. Francisville, on June 16, 1824, was instituted on November 8, 1824 in the District Court of Natchitoches Parish in the town of Natchitoches, but the Plaintiff's petition was for some reason invalidated and a new suit, instituted on December 3, 1824, was pending in the same court until May 3, 1825. Insofar as Hope's itinerary is concerned, these papers tell us little more than that James Hope was present in St. Francisville on August 11, 1823; June 8 and June 16, 1824; and that he left St. Francisville while the earlier suit was pending trial; and that as of November 8 and December 3, 1824 his place of residence was Natchitoches Parish. A sheriff's deed recorded December 25, 1824, sold their property.
Evidence of his immigration to Austin's colony, Texas, prior to March 26, 1825 and the subsequent statements of his sons Prosper and Richard Hope that they came to Texas from Louisiana in the year 1825 tell us that he left Natchitoches Parish while the second suit was pending trial. It therefore appears that on two occasions shortly before his immigration to Texas he escaped attachment of his movable property by not standing trial. It would seem likely that bad business conditions in Louisiana at the time as well as reports of opportunity in Texas may have prompted their decision to move to Texas.
By November 1824 James Hope had visited Austin's Colony and had purchased of John P. Coles a tract of six labors (1062 acres) near the present town of Independence, Texas known in the colonial days as Bravo. He had not arrived in time to receive a grant-or so he must have thought until circumstances permitted Austin to issue him a Mexican grant at a later date.
At some time around March 26, 1825 James Hope acquired title to a Mexican grant of one and one-quarter league (5535 acres) and two labors (354 acres) situated on the east bank of the Brazos River in what is now Brazos County, Texas. The exact date of the grant will probably never be known, for Hope received what may best be described as a "probated substitute grant." The empresario, Stephen F. Austin, in cooperation with the Mexican land Commissioner-his good friend, Baron de Bastrop, issued numerous grants during the period September 1824 through June 1825, all of which were pre-dated to July or August 1824, the brief period when the Baron de Bastrop had been on hand in Austin's Colony to sign the grants and surveys.
Many such grants were not "substitute grants." They were predated only in the sense that the recipients had been away from the colony during the brief period when the land commissioner had been present. In such cases Austin had simply executed all the appropriate documents, leaving blank the places where the recipient would sign. Others who had received their grants at the proper time but had been disqualified by Austin before delivery of the duplicate "originals" of their documents, were replaced by substitutes of Austin's choosing.
James Hope's lands were originally surveyed in the name of King, a subsequently disqualified colonist. It may therefore be assumed that the original grantee and not James Hope was the person who on July 7, 1824 signed the petition as a "vicino actual" (actual resident" of Austin's Colony; on July 9, 1824, was issued a concession by the Baron de Bastrop; and on July 9, 1824 signed the survey for is grant-notwithstanding the fact that James Hope's name and signature appear on these documents under these dates. A new survey made by Barlett Sims, who was not appointed a surveyor until October 1824, was substituted for the earlier survey, through the date of the earlier survey was retained.
So long as Austin could count on the cooperation of a land commissioner who was also a trusted friend, he not only coped with the Spanish system of keeping duplicate origiinals of documents filed as loose papers in the pertinent repositories, but turned the system to the advantage of the colonists. This was especially true because of the circumstances connected with the land commissioner's brief stay in the colony in July and August 1824. Two factors interrupted his official visit-first, his need to repair to Saltillo to the August session of the Legislature of the newly created State of Coahuila and Texas; and , second, the passage by the Mexican Congress in the same month of a law regulating the administration of land to the various states. Thus, until the new state congress could get around to passing its own land administration law-which it did in Marcy, 1825-the land commissioner was not empowered to issue grants. And even after March 1825 the Baron de Bastrop was committed to his responsibilities in Saltillo and did not have the opportunity to visit the colony.
With Bastrop's death on February 23, 1827, and the appointment of a new land commissioner, Austin must have realized that the advantage of the Spanish filing system were no longer of any consequence. He accordingly, on May 5, 1827, addressed to the Governor at Saltillo a request for permission to keep a systematic register into which the grants could be copied as they were issued; and on may 31, 1827, the Governor approved this request. Thus, except for the volume of Old Three Hundred grants (acturally a stack fo separate documents sewn together as a volume), the grants authorized by Austin were systematically and contemporaneously recorded.
Austin therefore, with Bastorp's approval, found a solution to his dilemma as an empresario either by signing Bastrop's name for him or by retaining for use as needed a stack of bland or incomplete documents already signed by Bastrop.
On May 19, 1825, in anticipation of the declaration of indigence to be required for the bankruptcy proceedings which he would institute, James Hope conveyed to the heirs of his deceased first wife, all his lands in Texas. The two Spanish deeds drawn up for this purpose were worded as deeds of sale, but notes for the purchase amounts were evidently drawn up simultaneously and signed by the heirs in James Hope's favor. He then filed a petition against his creditors in the Office of the Clerk of the Louisiana Third District Court in St. Francisville, instituting bankruptcy proceeding which were still pending in 1828. Though held in a Louisiana court, such proceedings were then effective both in Louisiana and Texas.
During the period 1825-1828 James Hope's control of the property in Texas was granted by both the good will of his children and by the rights vested in him as administrator of his deceased first wife's estate and guardian to those among their children who were still minors.
He was the first colonist in the area to receive his title. He located property at or near the site of today's Millican, on Hope's Creek and the Brazos River. This was in the northeastern extremity of teh young colony in what is now Brazos County, an area most vulnerable to attacks of Indian tribes.
By March 26, 1825, he had exchanged his league for that of Bluford Brooks and was trying to secure vacant land on Mill Creek. On March 26, 1825, John P. Coles, alcalade of the Brazos (later the Bravo) District of Texas, wrote to the empresario Stephen F. Austin re question that deeds be issued to legalize a transfer between the colonists Hope and Brooks. "Inclosed you will find the plat of Mr. James Hopes Tract of Land", writes Coles. "He has exchanged the Tract of Land which was Intended for him above to Mr. Beauford Brooks League adjoining the town Tract as you will preceive..." There is no evidence that the trade was ever approved by Austin.
In May 1825 James Hope was party to four conveyances of land, records of which are the only deed under his name preserved in the files of Spanish documents in Austin County Court House, Bellville, Texas. On May 18, 1825, Hope sold to John P. Coles for 100 pesos his two labors of land on the east bank of the Brazos River, granted him on July 9, 1824 by the Mexican Government. On the same date he purchased of Coles for 702 pesos a tract of 6,000,000 square varas (a Labor) on the west side of the Brazos at the mouth of Yegua Creek. On the same date he conveyed to the heirs of Mary Hope for 712 pesos the lot which he had purchased the day before of Coles. The heirs of Mary Hope named in the two instruments are Prosper, Amanda, Augusta, Adolphus, Eleanor, Richard, and Ann Hope. Two other children by the first marriage, Mary Hope and Jane Hope, had died sometime between January 1, 1822 and May 18, 1825. In their memory or in the memory of their namesakes James Hope named his two daughters by the third marriage Mary and Jane.
The John P. Coles census made in the midsummer of 1825 enumerated twelve members of the Hope household. Of these only James Hope, aged, 40-50, farmer and stockraiser, and "Aletha, su mujer," aged, 16-25, are named; the nine children (including Elizabeth B. Jack, Hope's stepdaughter) are designated only by sex and age group. Included in the enumeration is one slave, doubtless Rachel listed in the 1821 inventory of Mary Hope's estate and in the 1820 census of Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, as the Hopes' only slave, a female.
In 1825 some time after the execution of the Hope deed and the visit for the census-taker, Augusta Hope, the second daughter of James and Mary England Hope, was married to Capt. Horatio Chriesman (1797-1878), then chief surveyor and later (1832) "constitutional alcalde" (or chief executive) of Austin's Colony. As early as June 1826 the Indian troubles in John P. Coles' district was causing residents to move south. James Hope was arranging to buy out the improvement of one of the Castlemens, probably in Mina District (embracing all or part of the present counties of Matagorda, Jackson, Fayette, Wharton, and possibly Colorado-not to be confused with the later Municipality of Mina, now Bastrop).
On July 17, 1826 James Hope wrote to Austin: "I have sent my son and Capt. Chriesman down to meet you and Mr. Castleman at your office in respect of Mr. Castlemen's Improvement I wish to leave it to yourself, Capt. Chriesman and Mr. Castleman and whatever you agree on will satisfy me, paying him in cattle or any kind of Merchandise that I have. I understood your Brother Brown that you were wanting Beeves. I have two, one of them Being a very Excellent one. If you can make any arrangement with Castleman I will drive them down to you. Wr are all alarmed here on account of Indians and have moved down to Milicans, But as yet we have seen no Indians. I should take it a favor of Mr. Castleman, as I am now on way down if I could at any leisure time I have be moving part of my Property on the ground."
Hope's son-in-law, Horatio Chriesman, in a letter to Stepehn F. Austin dated November 13, 1826, gives us a brief glimpse of the Hope household: "I am sorry to inform you that it is out of my power to start below as soon as I expected Owing to the ill health of my Family my Wife and children are all unwell but not so much as Miss Hope she was taken with the influenza an Saturday night and has been very bad she appears better this morning I hope I shall be able to get of [i.e. off] in three or four days..." The Miss Hope named in his letter was probably Augusta Ann Hope Chriesman, daughter of James Hope.
By January 4, 1827, James Hope was established in the Mina District, for on this date he and his son Prosper, along with Thomas M. Duke, that alclade, joined forty-six other Mina residents in signing a resolution to support the Mexican Constitution and to offer their services to suppress the Fredonian Rebellion at Nacogdoches. They convened at the house of Bartlett Simms. On March 21, 1829, Prosper Hope was named as sub-lieutenant of the 4th Company of Militia in Austin's Colony, a group recruited from a military precinct including most of the District of Mina.
As early as December 1829 James Hope was negotiating for the purchase of two garden lots in San Felipe, the young capital of Austin's Colony. In May, 1830, as a "gardener and seedsman," advertised his Connecticut garden seed and his fruit trees at San Felipe. He had evidently moved to town by August 4, 1830, when he and Gail Borden, Jr. were nominated by the Ayuntamiento of San Felipe to superintend surveying of town lots at San Felipe.
News reached the Hopes about 1831 that young Elizabeth B. Jack, stepdaughter of James Hope, had fallen heir to an estate in England. James was given power of attorney to represent Mill Jack and began making plans for his voyage. Hope ran an advertisement in the Texas Gazette for January 10, 1832 that he was leaving for England and leaving his son Richard in charge of his 15,000 to 20,000 peach and nectarine trees. In a letter from Stephen F. Austin to James Hope dated December 5, 1831 (reprinted below) Austin states that the letter was for Hope to carry with him of a trip to his native England. Austin enclosed a memorandum on colonization laws.
An almost contemporary account of Hope's voyage is contained in a letter of January 5, 1835 from the merchant, Nicholas Clopper of the San Jacinto District of Austin's Colony to his children in Cincinnati, Ohio:
Your letter dated 27 September. enclosing one from Mrs. Bowering came duly to hand, inclosing a Letter to Miss Elizabeth B. Jack at Mr. T. Hopes [i.e. J. Hope's] informing her of a legacy left her in England. This information they received long since, and Mr. Hope her Step-Father, went from here to England some 18 Mo since, as I understand with power, to receive the same, and had not yet returned, and it is thought will not again return. When I was last in San Felipe, I saw Capt Christman, who married a daughter of old Mr. Hope. I asked him about Miss Jack. He said she was living in his family and was well, and has had the benefit of schooling etc., and that she was a fine girl, etc.
On December 4, 1849, Richard and Adolphus Hope filed a partition of the heirs of James Hope in the Burleson County, Texas land records, film #09565444. On December 4, 1849, in Washington County, Texas, Amanda Wilkerson, Richard Hope, Augusta Chriesman and husband, Horatio Chriesman, Eleanor Roberts, and husband, Luke Roberts, Prosper Hope, Adolphus Hope, Ann Shepard and Husband, Tho. P. Shapard signed a petition as heirs of James Hope, to partition certain land in Brazos County. This is evidence of the death of James Hope sometime prior to this date. According to Worth S. Ray's Austin Colony Pioneers, the tax rolls of 1840 indicate that James Hope died about 1836. We are unable to locate any other records.
Alethea Sorrels Hope, widow of James Hope, was married to her second husband, James Freel on April 28, 1834 at San Felipe de Austin. On January 2, 1836 James Freel made a bond for $260 to keep the ferry which crossed the Brazos River at San Felipe de Austin and Prosper Hope, Alethea's stepson, signed as security on this bond. Later in 1836 or early 1837 the Freels moved to the area which is now Houston where James Freel died and Alethea later married a Mr. Brooks.
The Second Generation
The Coles census of 1825 named James Hope, 40-50, farmer and stockraiser, Aletha (his third wife), 16-25, and nine children which included a step-daughter. The children of James and Mary England Hope were: Prosper, Amanda, Augusta, Adolphus, Eleanor, Richard Hope, Mary Hope, Jane Hope, and Ann Hope. James Had no issue by his second marriage. Two children were born to the third marriage: Mary and Jane Hope.
Prosper Hope
Prosper Hope was born about 1802 in New York. (In the 1880 census of Burleson County, Texas, Prosper Hope's daughter, Mary Elizabeth Hope Ridgeway reported that her father was a native of England and her mother a native of Tennessee. George W. Glass gives his birthplace as New York.) When He was about ten years old the family arrived in Louisiana.
On may 17, 1820, James Hope took his son, Prosper Hope, age 18, before the District Judge of Feliciana Parish and declared that he had emancipated and liberated him. Such act gave Prosper the legal rights of manhood and entitled him to take property and do business in his own name. Two days later Prosper was grantee in a purchase of two adjoining lots on Ferdinand Street in St. Francisville and signed notes for a mortgage of $1025 in favor of the grantor, Joseph E. Johnson.
Another item in the same St. Francisville paper read:
Notice: The Copartnership heretofore existing under the firm of SWIFT & HOPE, is this day dissolved, by mutual consent - John Swift is alone authorized to settle the business relating to the concern. All those having claims against the said firm for settlement and those indebted are requested to make payment by the last day of January, 1824 - preparatory to a final settlement of the concern.
John Swift
Prosper Hope
January 1st, 1823
Prosper Hope married twice. His first marriage was to Julia Roberts, August 19, 1837, according to the Washington County, Texas marriage records for 1837-1858. George W. Glass said in his paper on Hope family: "I'm now pretty certain that Prosper Hope and Julia Roberts were married in the summer or early fall of the year 1836 while the Hopes were living in or near San Augustine in East Texas. They were evidently married by bond - the custom in Texas prior to July 1837. The marriage law of July, 1837 required couples who were previously married by bond to be married again by license. Once they had been married by license the marriage was considered legal back to the date of the original bond marriage. And that is why Prosper Hope obtained a license to marry Julia Roberts on August 1857 in Washington County, though their real date of marriage was evidently 1836." The Washington County Tax Rolls of 1837 and 1840 list the name Prosper Hope as a tax payer. In February 1838 he received a land grant for service in the Texas Revolution.
In the 1880 census for Burleson County, Texas, Mary Ridgway, wife of Lee Ridgway, reports that her father (Prosper Hope) was born in England. It would therefore seem that the Hope family (with at least one child, Prosper) arrived from England sometime after 1800. On several occasions, however, Prosper listed his birthplace in New York.
Julia Ann Roberts was the daughter of William and Elizabeth Roberts, and the sister of Luke Roberts who married Prosper Hopes' sister, Eleanor. (For additional information see The Roberts family.)
Stephen F. Austin's Register of Families, lists Prosper Hope, age 26, single farmer, emigrated from Louisiana in 1825, with 3/4 league of land in Washington County. The same list names Richard Hope (no age or other information) as owning 1/3 league of and in 1825 in Washington County.
Prosper Hope affirmed that he was a Texas citizen at the date of the Declaration of Independence and has remained in the Country ever since his marriage according to an affidavit in The Texas Land Grants, 1832-1840, at page 358. He also affirmed that he had contributed to the support and defense of the country ever since; and that he emigrated in the year 1825. He therefore obtained a certificate for three fourths of a league and one labor of land.
The land grants for 1832-1840, recorded that Richard, Adolphus, and Prosper Hope, obtained their land grants in February 1838. At that time Richard Hope was still single, but Adolphus Hope and Prosper Hope had married.
In 1839 Prosper Hope was Clerk of the Board of Land Commissioners of Washington County. In the General Land Office in Austin there are hundred's of certificates in Prosper Hopes' handwriting, issued to early settlers who proved their eligibility for land grants. He issued to early settlers who proved their eligibility for land grants. He probably served from time to time as a teacher as there are references to money due him for teaching in the probate records of Austin County.
Prosper Hope is listed in Washington County in the 1840 census. The Sheriff's returns for 1840 in Washington County list Prosper Hope as a landowner. Prosper Hope was elected Justice of the Peace for the Liberty Precinct of Washington County, February 27, 1841.
On july 31, 1848, Prosper Hope acted as one of the trustee for the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, receiving a deed of land in Washington County.
A letter dated December 7, 1848 written from Brenham, Washington County, by Henry G. Anderson to his mother-in-law announced the death of his wife Drusilla on November 25 and that she had a daughter, Julia on August 11. He said "Julia Hope sends her love," and "4 of the 5 children are girls." Written in the margin of this letter is: "Prosper Hope, Given under my hand, May 23, 1850." On October 30, 1849, Henry Anderson married Mrs. Caroline Holt. He does not appear in the 1850 census.
HOPES CREEK. Hopes Creek rises a mile southwest of College Station in southern Burleson Co.
James and Mary (England) Hope had the following children:
Prosper Hope; Amanda Hope; Augusta Ann Hope; Adolphus Hope; Eleanor Hope; Richard Hope; Mary Hope; Jane Hope; and Ann Hope.
James and Alethea H. Sorrels Hope had the following children:
Mary Hope and Margaret "Jane" Hope
James Hope and his family came to Texas from Louisiana before July 10, 1824, when , as one of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists, he received title to one and one-half leagued and two labors of land in present Austin County. By March 26, 1825, he had exchanged his league for that of Bluford Brooks and was trying to secure vacant land on Mill Creek. Hope's daughter, Augusta, married Horatio Chriesman in 1825. The March, 1826, census listed Hope as a farmer and stock raiser aged between forty and fifty. His household included his wife, Althea, three sons (Prosper, Adolphes, and Richard), six daughters, and one servent. At Mina, in January, 1827, Hope signed a declaration of loyalty to the Mexican government and a protest against the Fredonian Rebellion. He bought garden lots in 1829 and in May 1830 advertised his Connectcut gardan seed and fruit trees for sale at San Felipe. In August, 1830, he and Gail Borden, Jr.. were nominated commissioners to superintend surveying of town lots at /San Felipe. In December,1831, Hope advertised that he was leaving for England and leaving his son Richard in charge of his 15,000 to 20,000 peach and nectarine trees. According to Worth S. Ray's "Austin Colony Pioneers", the tax rolls of 1840 indicated that James Hope died about 1836. His sons took part in the battle of San Jacinto and later had a saddle shop at Washington-on-the-Brazos.
See: E.C. Barker (ed.). "Austin Papers, 1 (1924); Lester G. Bugbee, "The Old Three Hundred". Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, 1 (1897-1898). Abigail Curlee, "The History of Texas Slave Plantations." Southwestern Historical Quarterly,XXVI (1922-1923); Worth S. Ray, Austin Colony Pioneers (1949); Texas Gazette, May 29, 1830, and January 10, 1832.
See 1820 Census, Louisiana, Feliciana Par., page 046; James Hope
See 1826 Census, Texas, Texas Terr., Austin Colony, 1826.
See 1826 Census, Texas, Bastrop Co.,, Austin, Mexico Terr., 1826
Notes from Janice Sperling: "James Hope was born in England about 1775 and died about 1833 on his second voyage from England to America. He was at the time of his death a resident of the town of San Felipe de Austin (near present day San Felipe, Austin Co., Texas.) He was married three times. His first marriage was about 1797 in London, England to Mary England, with whom he immigrated to the United States around 1800, who died in 1821 in St. Francisville, Louisiana. His second wife, he married November 5, 1822, in St Francisville, Mrs. Elizabeth Jack, who died in the same town on January 10, 1823, his third wife was Alethea Sorrels who he married either 1823 or 1824 probably in St. Francisville. This marriage produced a daughter Jane Hope who married Ferdinand C. Booker in 1843 in Harris Co., Texas (Houston). James also had other children by his other wives. James Hope was one of the 'Old Three Hundred'. They were the first three hundred Anglo Americans to receive land grants in Austin's Colony, Texas. After some years in Texas, he went back to England on business. He didn't return. His family doesn't know if he died in England or was lost at sea.
As to the kind of man he was, he ruled his family with the English firmness, but was a good provider.
One of the first things he did after locating here was to plant an orchard of 300 fruit trees.
Notes from Ken and Nancy Black, "James Hope was born about 1775 in England. He married Miss Mary England in St. Mary's Chapel, London. Of his early years little is known. He probably came of a family of yeoman and trade-folk and was trained and educated accordingly. The facts of his later history suggest a rural or village background-familiarity with stockraisng, horticulture, and all facets of the leather industry (tanning, shoemaking, saddlery, and even the vending of leather goods.) He received a fail education in English grammar and, no doubt, in arithmetic, and probably spent his adolescent years as a cordwainer's apprentice. He was a slipper maker by trade and owned a tannery in London.
We do not know the circumstances of their voyage to America but they left their native land around 1801. In 1802 they were living in New York state; in 1804, in Massachusetts; in 1806, Pennsylvania; in 1808 Kentucky or Tennessee. In 1811, the year the Territory of Orleans was organized as the State of Louisiana, the Hopes had settled in the western section of what was then Feliciana Parish, Louisiana (now and since 1824, the Parish of West Feliciana). The Texas records indicate that the Hopes came from Louisiana having come there from Alabama.
War with England during the years 1812-1815 substantially diminished trade between the Mississippi River area and the eastern seaboard states. The economic depression which began in 1815 led to the Panic of 1819 and continued into the 1820's. It contributed greatly to the "Texas fever" of the 1820s.
The actions of James Hope during the period 1815-1828 can only be understood in the light of his seemingly endless troubles with creditors. During those years he employed some interesting survival techniques, thanks to good legal help and the sympathy of Stephen F. Austin for debtors. James Hope during those years controlled real property but did not retain title to it in his own name. Soon after his arrival in Louisiana James Hope had purchased of one James McWaters a 125-acre farm on the main Bayou Sara in Feliciana Parish. This land was probably in danger of attachment for debt before July 5, 1815 when Hope sold in to Robert Percy.
On February 4, 1818 Richard England (a brother-in-law) and James Hope signed an agreement regarding the operation of a boot and shoemaking shop in the town of Bayou Sara, in Feliciana Parish. England agreed to finance the enterprise-or so the deed states-and Hope, for a salary of $50 a month, agreed to act as foreman. (Articles of Agreement, Notarial Record Book H, 1811-1818, Feliciana Parish, Louisiana)
On New Years Day, 1822, James Hope conveyed all his share in the community estate of himself and his deceased wife-in other words, all the property which he had acquired in America-to their nine children. In his deed he stipulated that in return for his conveyance the children were to assume liability for all the "community" debts. Such an exchange seemed fair-provided the evaluation of the assets of the state at $6962.75 was realistic-for the debts amounted to less than $2000.
James did not remain a widower long for we find a marriage bond in marriage certificate book 6 of Feliciana Parish dated November 4, 1822. He obtained a license to marry Elizabeth B. Jack. On November 5 the Rev. Thomas Savage, a circuit riding Presbyterian minister performed the ceremony. Elizabeth B. Jack was an English immigrant, probably the widow of James Jack who had died in Feliciana Parish about 1817, and the mother of an only daughter, Elizabeth B. Jack, Jr., who was then seven years of age. This second marriage was of brief duration for "after a short illness" she died on January 10, 1823 in St. Francisville. A notice in the St. Francisville Asylum newspaper, dated February 6, 1823 carried a report of the death of Mrs. Elizabeth Hope in January that year. Elizabeth Bowering Jack, Jr. remained with James Hope's family and was reared in Texas as one of the family. (Much of the information contained in this paper is the result of the research of George William Glass as preserved in his papers at the Clayton Genealogy Library in Houston, Texas, and hereinafter referenced as George W. Glass papers. Some of the early information on the family was compiled by Glen and Mary Hahn. The chance discovery that Jack and Colleen Hightower's friend of many years, Morris Cobb, was also a descendant of James Hope resulted in the addition to our records of George W. Glass' exhaustive research.)
He may have been outfitting for his first trip to Texas when he bought in Bayou Sara on June 16, 1824, articles for which he signed a note for $306.41.
Business was evidently not going well for the Hopes. The principal sources of information on James Hope in Louisiana after the death of his second wife are the papers of two lawsuits instituted by his creditors. The first suit, based on a promissory note signed by Prosper Hope and James Hope at St. Francisville on August 22, 1823, was pending in the District Court of West Francisville from June 8 to December 14, 1824. Earlier on May 25, 1824, James Hope had filed a claim in probate to collect $18.77 owed him by one Samuel Bates who had died. The next suit, for payment of a note signed by James Hope at Bayou Sara, the port of St. Francisville, on June 16, 1824, was instituted on November 8, 1824 in the District Court of Natchitoches Parish in the town of Natchitoches, but the Plaintiff's petition was for some reason invalidated and a new suit, instituted on December 3, 1824, was pending in the same court until May 3, 1825. Insofar as Hope's itinerary is concerned, these papers tell us little more than that James Hope was present in St. Francisville on August 11, 1823; June 8 and June 16, 1824; and that he left St. Francisville while the earlier suit was pending trial; and that as of November 8 and December 3, 1824 his place of residence was Natchitoches Parish. A sheriff's deed recorded December 25, 1824, sold their property.
Evidence of his immigration to Austin's colony, Texas, prior to March 26, 1825 and the subsequent statements of his sons Prosper and Richard Hope that they came to Texas from Louisiana in the year 1825 tell us that he left Natchitoches Parish while the second suit was pending trial. It therefore appears that on two occasions shortly before his immigration to Texas he escaped attachment of his movable property by not standing trial. It would seem likely that bad business conditions in Louisiana at the time as well as reports of opportunity in Texas may have prompted their decision to move to Texas.
By November 1824 James Hope had visited Austin's Colony and had purchased of John P. Coles a tract of six labors (1062 acres) near the present town of Independence, Texas known in the colonial days as Bravo. He had not arrived in time to receive a grant-or so he must have thought until circumstances permitted Austin to issue him a Mexican grant at a later date.
At some time around March 26, 1825 James Hope acquired title to a Mexican grant of one and one-quarter league (5535 acres) and two labors (354 acres) situated on the east bank of the Brazos River in what is now Brazos County, Texas. The exact date of the grant will probably never be known, for Hope received what may best be described as a "probated substitute grant." The empresario, Stephen F. Austin, in cooperation with the Mexican land Commissioner-his good friend, Baron de Bastrop, issued numerous grants during the period September 1824 through June 1825, all of which were pre-dated to July or August 1824, the brief period when the Baron de Bastrop had been on hand in Austin's Colony to sign the grants and surveys.
Many such grants were not "substitute grants." They were predated only in the sense that the recipients had been away from the colony during the brief period when the land commissioner had been present. In such cases Austin had simply executed all the appropriate documents, leaving blank the places where the recipient would sign. Others who had received their grants at the proper time but had been disqualified by Austin before delivery of the duplicate "originals" of their documents, were replaced by substitutes of Austin's choosing.
James Hope's lands were originally surveyed in the name of King, a subsequently disqualified colonist. It may therefore be assumed that the original grantee and not James Hope was the person who on July 7, 1824 signed the petition as a "vicino actual" (actual resident" of Austin's Colony; on July 9, 1824, was issued a concession by the Baron de Bastrop; and on July 9, 1824 signed the survey for is grant-notwithstanding the fact that James Hope's name and signature appear on these documents under these dates. A new survey made by Barlett Sims, who was not appointed a surveyor until October 1824, was substituted for the earlier survey, through the date of the earlier survey was retained.
So long as Austin could count on the cooperation of a land commissioner who was also a trusted friend, he not only coped with the Spanish system of keeping duplicate origiinals of documents filed as loose papers in the pertinent repositories, but turned the system to the advantage of the colonists. This was especially true because of the circumstances connected with the land commissioner's brief stay in the colony in July and August 1824. Two factors interrupted his official visit-first, his need to repair to Saltillo to the August session of the Legislature of the newly created State of Coahuila and Texas; and , second, the passage by the Mexican Congress in the same month of a law regulating the administration of land to the various states. Thus, until the new state congress could get around to passing its own land administration law-which it did in Marcy, 1825-the land commissioner was not empowered to issue grants. And even after March 1825 the Baron de Bastrop was committed to his responsibilities in Saltillo and did not have the opportunity to visit the colony.
With Bastrop's death on February 23, 1827, and the appointment of a new land commissioner, Austin must have realized that the advantage of the Spanish filing system were no longer of any consequence. He accordingly, on May 5, 1827, addressed to the Governor at Saltillo a request for permission to keep a systematic register into which the grants could be copied as they were issued; and on may 31, 1827, the Governor approved this request. Thus, except for the volume of Old Three Hundred grants (acturally a stack fo separate documents sewn together as a volume), the grants authorized by Austin were systematically and contemporaneously recorded.
Austin therefore, with Bastorp's approval, found a solution to his dilemma as an empresario either by signing Bastrop's name for him or by retaining for use as needed a stack of bland or incomplete documents already signed by Bastrop.
On May 19, 1825, in anticipation of the declaration of indigence to be required for the bankruptcy proceedings which he would institute, James Hope conveyed to the heirs of his deceased first wife, all his lands in Texas. The two Spanish deeds drawn up for this purpose were worded as deeds of sale, but notes for the purchase amounts were evidently drawn up simultaneously and signed by the heirs in James Hope's favor. He then filed a petition against his creditors in the Office of the Clerk of the Louisiana Third District Court in St. Francisville, instituting bankruptcy proceeding which were still pending in 1828. Though held in a Louisiana court, such proceedings were then effective both in Louisiana and Texas.
During the period 1825-1828 James Hope's control of the property in Texas was granted by both the good will of his children and by the rights vested in him as administrator of his deceased first wife's estate and guardian to those among their children who were still minors.
He was the first colonist in the area to receive his title. He located property at or near the site of today's Millican, on Hope's Creek and the Brazos River. This was in the northeastern extremity of teh young colony in what is now Brazos County, an area most vulnerable to attacks of Indian tribes.
By March 26, 1825, he had exchanged his league for that of Bluford Brooks and was trying to secure vacant land on Mill Creek. On March 26, 1825, John P. Coles, alcalade of the Brazos (later the Bravo) District of Texas, wrote to the empresario Stephen F. Austin re question that deeds be issued to legalize a transfer between the colonists Hope and Brooks. "Inclosed you will find the plat of Mr. James Hopes Tract of Land", writes Coles. "He has exchanged the Tract of Land which was Intended for him above to Mr. Beauford Brooks League adjoining the town Tract as you will preceive..." There is no evidence that the trade was ever approved by Austin.
In May 1825 James Hope was party to four conveyances of land, records of which are the only deed under his name preserved in the files of Spanish documents in Austin County Court House, Bellville, Texas. On May 18, 1825, Hope sold to John P. Coles for 100 pesos his two labors of land on the east bank of the Brazos River, granted him on July 9, 1824 by the Mexican Government. On the same date he purchased of Coles for 702 pesos a tract of 6,000,000 square varas (a Labor) on the west side of the Brazos at the mouth of Yegua Creek. On the same date he conveyed to the heirs of Mary Hope for 712 pesos the lot which he had purchased the day before of Coles. The heirs of Mary Hope named in the two instruments are Prosper, Amanda, Augusta, Adolphus, Eleanor, Richard, and Ann Hope. Two other children by the first marriage, Mary Hope and Jane Hope, had died sometime between January 1, 1822 and May 18, 1825. In their memory or in the memory of their namesakes James Hope named his two daughters by the third marriage Mary and Jane.
The John P. Coles census made in the midsummer of 1825 enumerated twelve members of the Hope household. Of these only James Hope, aged, 40-50, farmer and stockraiser, and "Aletha, su mujer," aged, 16-25, are named; the nine children (including Elizabeth B. Jack, Hope's stepdaughter) are designated only by sex and age group. Included in the enumeration is one slave, doubtless Rachel listed in the 1821 inventory of Mary Hope's estate and in the 1820 census of Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, as the Hopes' only slave, a female.
In 1825 some time after the execution of the Hope deed and the visit for the census-taker, Augusta Hope, the second daughter of James and Mary England Hope, was married to Capt. Horatio Chriesman (1797-1878), then chief surveyor and later (1832) "constitutional alcalde" (or chief executive) of Austin's Colony. As early as June 1826 the Indian troubles in John P. Coles' district was causing residents to move south. James Hope was arranging to buy out the improvement of one of the Castlemens, probably in Mina District (embracing all or part of the present counties of Matagorda, Jackson, Fayette, Wharton, and possibly Colorado-not to be confused with the later Municipality of Mina, now Bastrop).
On July 17, 1826 James Hope wrote to Austin: "I have sent my son and Capt. Chriesman down to meet you and Mr. Castleman at your office in respect of Mr. Castlemen's Improvement I wish to leave it to yourself, Capt. Chriesman and Mr. Castleman and whatever you agree on will satisfy me, paying him in cattle or any kind of Merchandise that I have. I understood your Brother Brown that you were wanting Beeves. I have two, one of them Being a very Excellent one. If you can make any arrangement with Castleman I will drive them down to you. Wr are all alarmed here on account of Indians and have moved down to Milicans, But as yet we have seen no Indians. I should take it a favor of Mr. Castleman, as I am now on way down if I could at any leisure time I have be moving part of my Property on the ground."
Hope's son-in-law, Horatio Chriesman, in a letter to Stepehn F. Austin dated November 13, 1826, gives us a brief glimpse of the Hope household: "I am sorry to inform you that it is out of my power to start below as soon as I expected Owing to the ill health of my Family my Wife and children are all unwell but not so much as Miss Hope she was taken with the influenza an Saturday night and has been very bad she appears better this morning I hope I shall be able to get of [i.e. off] in three or four days..." The Miss Hope named in his letter was probably Augusta Ann Hope Chriesman, daughter of James Hope.
By January 4, 1827, James Hope was established in the Mina District, for on this date he and his son Prosper, along with Thomas M. Duke, that alclade, joined forty-six other Mina residents in signing a resolution to support the Mexican Constitution and to offer their services to suppress the Fredonian Rebellion at Nacogdoches. They convened at the house of Bartlett Simms. On March 21, 1829, Prosper Hope was named as sub-lieutenant of the 4th Company of Militia in Austin's Colony, a group recruited from a military precinct including most of the District of Mina.
As early as December 1829 James Hope was negotiating for the purchase of two garden lots in San Felipe, the young capital of Austin's Colony. In May, 1830, as a "gardener and seedsman," advertised his Connecticut garden seed and his fruit trees at San Felipe. He had evidently moved to town by August 4, 1830, when he and Gail Borden, Jr. were nominated by the Ayuntamiento of San Felipe to superintend surveying of town lots at San Felipe.
News reached the Hopes about 1831 that young Elizabeth B. Jack, stepdaughter of James Hope, had fallen heir to an estate in England. James was given power of attorney to represent Mill Jack and began making plans for his voyage. Hope ran an advertisement in the Texas Gazette for January 10, 1832 that he was leaving for England and leaving his son Richard in charge of his 15,000 to 20,000 peach and nectarine trees. In a letter from Stephen F. Austin to James Hope dated December 5, 1831 (reprinted below) Austin states that the letter was for Hope to carry with him of a trip to his native England. Austin enclosed a memorandum on colonization laws.
An almost contemporary account of Hope's voyage is contained in a letter of January 5, 1835 from the merchant, Nicholas Clopper of the San Jacinto District of Austin's Colony to his children in Cincinnati, Ohio:
Your letter dated 27 September. enclosing one from Mrs. Bowering came duly to hand, inclosing a Letter to Miss Elizabeth B. Jack at Mr. T. Hopes [i.e. J. Hope's] informing her of a legacy left her in England. This information they received long since, and Mr. Hope her Step-Father, went from here to England some 18 Mo since, as I understand with power, to receive the same, and had not yet returned, and it is thought will not again return. When I was last in San Felipe, I saw Capt Christman, who married a daughter of old Mr. Hope. I asked him about Miss Jack. He said she was living in his family and was well, and has had the benefit of schooling etc., and that she was a fine girl, etc.
On December 4, 1849, Richard and Adolphus Hope filed a partition of the heirs of James Hope in the Burleson County, Texas land records, film #09565444. On December 4, 1849, in Washington County, Texas, Amanda Wilkerson, Richard Hope, Augusta Chriesman and husband, Horatio Chriesman, Eleanor Roberts, and husband, Luke Roberts, Prosper Hope, Adolphus Hope, Ann Shepard and Husband, Tho. P. Shapard signed a petition as heirs of James Hope, to partition certain land in Brazos County. This is evidence of the death of James Hope sometime prior to this date. According to Worth S. Ray's Austin Colony Pioneers, the tax rolls of 1840 indicate that James Hope died about 1836. We are unable to locate any other records.
Alethea Sorrels Hope, widow of James Hope, was married to her second husband, James Freel on April 28, 1834 at San Felipe de Austin. On January 2, 1836 James Freel made a bond for $260 to keep the ferry which crossed the Brazos River at San Felipe de Austin and Prosper Hope, Alethea's stepson, signed as security on this bond. Later in 1836 or early 1837 the Freels moved to the area which is now Houston where James Freel died and Alethea later married a Mr. Brooks.
The Second Generation
The Coles census of 1825 named James Hope, 40-50, farmer and stockraiser, Aletha (his third wife), 16-25, and nine children which included a step-daughter. The children of James and Mary England Hope were: Prosper, Amanda, Augusta, Adolphus, Eleanor, Richard Hope, Mary Hope, Jane Hope, and Ann Hope. James Had no issue by his second marriage. Two children were born to the third marriage: Mary and Jane Hope.
Prosper Hope
Prosper Hope was born about 1802 in New York. (In the 1880 census of Burleson County, Texas, Prosper Hope's daughter, Mary Elizabeth Hope Ridgeway reported that her father was a native of England and her mother a native of Tennessee. George W. Glass gives his birthplace as New York.) When He was about ten years old the family arrived in Louisiana.
On may 17, 1820, James Hope took his son, Prosper Hope, age 18, before the District Judge of Feliciana Parish and declared that he had emancipated and liberated him. Such act gave Prosper the legal rights of manhood and entitled him to take property and do business in his own name. Two days later Prosper was grantee in a purchase of two adjoining lots on Ferdinand Street in St. Francisville and signed notes for a mortgage of $1025 in favor of the grantor, Joseph E. Johnson.
Another item in the same St. Francisville paper read:
Notice: The Copartnership heretofore existing under the firm of SWIFT & HOPE, is this day dissolved, by mutual consent - John Swift is alone authorized to settle the business relating to the concern. All those having claims against the said firm for settlement and those indebted are requested to make payment by the last day of January, 1824 - preparatory to a final settlement of the concern.
John Swift
Prosper Hope
January 1st, 1823
Prosper Hope married twice. His first marriage was to Julia Roberts, August 19, 1837, according to the Washington County, Texas marriage records for 1837-1858. George W. Glass said in his paper on Hope family: "I'm now pretty certain that Prosper Hope and Julia Roberts were married in the summer or early fall of the year 1836 while the Hopes were living in or near San Augustine in East Texas. They were evidently married by bond - the custom in Texas prior to July 1837. The marriage law of July, 1837 required couples who were previously married by bond to be married again by license. Once they had been married by license the marriage was considered legal back to the date of the original bond marriage. And that is why Prosper Hope obtained a license to marry Julia Roberts on August 1857 in Washington County, though their real date of marriage was evidently 1836." The Washington County Tax Rolls of 1837 and 1840 list the name Prosper Hope as a tax payer. In February 1838 he received a land grant for service in the Texas Revolution.
In the 1880 census for Burleson County, Texas, Mary Ridgway, wife of Lee Ridgway, reports that her father (Prosper Hope) was born in England. It would therefore seem that the Hope family (with at least one child, Prosper) arrived from England sometime after 1800. On several occasions, however, Prosper listed his birthplace in New York.
Julia Ann Roberts was the daughter of William and Elizabeth Roberts, and the sister of Luke Roberts who married Prosper Hopes' sister, Eleanor. (For additional information see The Roberts family.)
Stephen F. Austin's Register of Families, lists Prosper Hope, age 26, single farmer, emigrated from Louisiana in 1825, with 3/4 league of land in Washington County. The same list names Richard Hope (no age or other information) as owning 1/3 league of and in 1825 in Washington County.
Prosper Hope affirmed that he was a Texas citizen at the date of the Declaration of Independence and has remained in the Country ever since his marriage according to an affidavit in The Texas Land Grants, 1832-1840, at page 358. He also affirmed that he had contributed to the support and defense of the country ever since; and that he emigrated in the year 1825. He therefore obtained a certificate for three fourths of a league and one labor of land.
The land grants for 1832-1840, recorded that Richard, Adolphus, and Prosper Hope, obtained their land grants in February 1838. At that time Richard Hope was still single, but Adolphus Hope and Prosper Hope had married.
In 1839 Prosper Hope was Clerk of the Board of Land Commissioners of Washington County. In the General Land Office in Austin there are hundred's of certificates in Prosper Hopes' handwriting, issued to early settlers who proved their eligibility for land grants. He issued to early settlers who proved their eligibility for land grants. He probably served from time to time as a teacher as there are references to money due him for teaching in the probate records of Austin County.
Prosper Hope is listed in Washington County in the 1840 census. The Sheriff's returns for 1840 in Washington County list Prosper Hope as a landowner. Prosper Hope was elected Justice of the Peace for the Liberty Precinct of Washington County, February 27, 1841.
On july 31, 1848, Prosper Hope acted as one of the trustee for the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, receiving a deed of land in Washington County.
A letter dated December 7, 1848 written from Brenham, Washington County, by Henry G. Anderson to his mother-in-law announced the death of his wife Drusilla on November 25 and that she had a daughter, Julia on August 11. He said "Julia Hope sends her love," and "4 of the 5 children are girls." Written in the margin of this letter is: "Prosper Hope, Given under my hand, May 23, 1850." On October 30, 1849, Henry Anderson married Mrs. Caroline Holt. He does not appear in the 1850 census.
HOPES CREEK. Hopes Creek rises a mile southwest of College Station in southern Burleson Co.
Family Members
Spouses
Children
-
![]()
Prosper Hope
1802–1863
-
![]()
Amanda Hope Wilkinson
1805–1860
-
![]()
Augusta Ann Hope Chriesman
1806–1850
-
Adolphus Hope
1807–1853
-
Eleanor Hope Roberts
1811–1860
-
![]()
Richard Hope
1814–1887
-
Mary Hope
1816 – unknown
-
Jane Hope
1818 – unknown
-
![]()
Ann Hope Shapard
1821–1870
-
Mary Hope Moffatt
1825–1854
-
![]()
Margaret Jane Hope Booker
1828–1882
