Rosalie Hart Priour Autobiography "Adventures of a Family of Emigrants" with notes and commentary by historian Frank Wagner (indicated in green).
Chapter 13 When the people began to gain strength, they tried to fix their homes as comfortable as circumstances would permit so as to be able to give their whole attention to farming in the spring.
We had no one to fence a field for us, but there was a family named [Isaac] Robinson who had a large house, that is, large for Texas at that time. It was a regular log house with two large rooms and a hall, a front gallery and shed rooms on the back. They also had a large field fenced. This place was situated on Papalote creek about thirty-five miles from the Mission. It was the nearest house to the settlements and about three miles below. On the same creek was a family by the name of [Robert] Carlisle. There was no other house between Mission and San Patricio.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Isaac Robinson seems to have been somewhat younger than Carlisle. He and James Bray were surveyors. Even the approximate location of the homestead is now unknown. The description could fit many plausible sites.
Carlisle afterwards sued a certain Bridget Hart, possibly widow of Tim Hart, that was adjudicated in 1842. He prevailed and obtained a league of land in Judgment. This Bridget Hart was member of a unrelated family in Refugio.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Mr. Robinson came to mother and told her he would give her one-half of the crop raised if she would go out to the farm and hire a man to work the field. He had no children, and as he was a surveyor he said his wife would be too lonesome by herself and the house was large enough for both families.
The situation is one of the finest in Texas. The house was built on the bank of the creek and shaded by live-oaks with tops in the shape of umbrellas. The wild grapevines covered the trees and formed a nice, cool arbor the sun could not penetrate. Wild flowers of every variety and in the greatest profusion covered the plains as far as the eye could reach. To me it seemed like a miniature paradise. That summer was a very happy one, and the remembrance makes me love it better than anything on earth.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Wild flowers in the Papalote Creek region were probably those now known there. They differed markedly from the wild flowers of Ireland. The fragile but long-blooming pink primrose, the gaillardia, and the Texas lupine ("Bluebonnet) were a contrast to any flowers known in Ireland.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - My little sister Mary Ann, the only one left to share my joys and sorrows was now old enough to go around with me, and join in play. I would leave her on the bank of the creek while I would wade into the water to catch crabs and softshell turtles. At other times, we would go hunting turtle eggs along the sand of the creek, or out on the prairie after dewberries, we were so much together that she began to call me mama and my mother, Mrs. Hart. It amused us to hear the little [child] calling us by those names.
Chapter 12 - Chapter 14