Rosalie Hart Priour Autobiography "Adventures of a Family of Emigrants" with notes and commentary by historian Frank Wagner (indicated in green).
Chapter 12 Oh! The horror of our situation, my dear good mother must have been a woman of iron nerve to bear up against such trouble as she had to go through. We were in a strange country, thousands of miles from our friends and relations, on a sand beach exposed to the burning heat of summer or drenched by rain through the day and at night surrounded by wild animals, not knowing the minute we would be drowned. Then there were thousands of naked savages even more to be dreaded than the wild beasts, and a company of Mexican soldiers on guard for the purpose of preventing us from moving from that place under two weeks time, for fear we would spread the cholera.
When we were allowed to go to the Mission twelve miles farther in the country, there were only four houses or rather huts occupied by white people. Mrs. [James] Brown's was the largest; it contained two rooms. Mr. [Thomas or John] Scott's had one room.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The Scott family are reported later to have been spies for the Mexican authorities.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Both of these families were Irish, one American family named Quirk.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Mrs. Priour's deposition before J.C. Crisp, 7 Feb. 1896, was: "The manner of life of the people in Texas in those early days was very simple and very much the same in all families of my acquaintance. On our arrival at the Mission, a Mr. Quirk had a lumber house of one room which was for many years the only lumber house in the Colony as lumber even could not be procured to make coffins and the dead were buried in blankets."
Further, she said: "Mr Power's family was living in a picket house of two rooms with thatched roof when we arrived there from Ireland. He seemed to own very little property of his own except the land which he expected to receive from the Mexican government for his services in bringing out the colonists; though, the general understanding at that time in the colony seemed to be that Mr. Power's wife was a Mexican woman whose father owned considerable property and that his second wife was the sister of his first wife." Dolores Portilla was his first wife, and Tomasita Portilla his second. Their father owned a house at "The Chimneys", located on the south side of Nueces Bay directly across from White Point.
Mrs. Priour said, "when James Power, the empressario, came to Ireland for colonists, socially and pecuniarily he seemed to be in about the same condition as the colonists who went with him to Texas." In response to another question, she said, "at the time we landed at the Mission or the town of Refugio, Mr. James Power, Sr. owned no other property that I have ever heard of except the house and lot where he lived in that town. His family did not appear to be well off and with reference to comforts of life, lived about as the other colonists did."
Robert Carlisle was not a Power colonist, but one of those brought over by James McGloin and John McMullen. He arranged a grant of land from Power because, owing to the cholera epidemic, Power had much more land than he had qualified colonists.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - I do not know where [they] procured the lumber, but they had a frame house with plank floor. There was only one room in the house, but it was more comfortable than the others, and Mr. Power's house built like Mrs. Brown's, it contained two rooms, one a bedroom, the other answering for kitchen, dining-room and sitting room all in one. Every one had to build in the most primitive style with poles to form the walls and the roofs thatched with palmetto, or coarse grass, a ground floor and no windows, even the doors had to be made of poles.
When we arrived there, we found a Catholic church which had been built by Spain one hundred years before. The walls were of rock and about two feet thick, on one end were two rooms for the use of the priest. The inside was the richest I have ever seen in my travels, the railing in front of the altar had a band of silver all along the bannisters and the altar itself was profusely ornamented with gold and silver. The pulpit was very much decayed, but splendidly carved. I do not think you could find one piece as large as your hand without some device being carved on it. Between the pulpit and the door was a statue of the blessed Virgin with the Infant Jesus in her arms and I think it was of gold, at least it appeared to me to be of that precious metal. It was placed on a pedestal high enough to reach the top of the pulpit. It looked like a shame to see a church like that filled with corn, but the Mexicans had put it to that use, and the whole space formerly used for accommodation of the congregation was full of corn.
We had to camp out. There was no place to shelter even the sick. Mother piled up her trunks and the farming utensils about ten feet from the church and covered overhead with bed clothes, so as to form a tent. It was not very comfortable quarters, but it was the best we could do. No one would build a house for us before they provided for their own families, but promised as soon as that was done to build a house for mother.
In about six weeks from the time of our arrival almost every one was taken sick with flux. Mother and one more lady (I have forgotten her name) were the only ones left in the place to take care of the sick. The other lady would stay, and go from house to house doing what she could to relieve the suffering and mother had a block put in the middle of the river large enough to set her wash out on and she would wash twelve dozen pieces every day. She could not iron them, for it was all she could do to wash for so many sick, besides when it was too late for her to wash she would go around among the sick and help make them comfortable for the night.
My share of work was to cook, and keep the house clean, take care of my sister and carry mother's dinner to her so that she would lose no time from the washing, and as I was not quite eight years old and my sister about a year and a half, I had all I could do and work hard. With all our exertions we could not save all, a great many died. It was dreadful to look at them after death, their eyes were always wide open and as clear as crystal and impossible to close them. As my mother always said, "God always fits the back for the burden." If He had not given her superhuman strength, she must have succumbed under the troubles of that year.
Chapter 11 - Chapter 13