Even while establishing his practice, Travis could not help but be engaged by the political swirl around him. Just a month after he opened his office, the convention met in San Felipe to frame its set of resolutions, including the call for Texian separation from Coahuila, and he must at least have followed its progress in the tavern and hotel conversation of an evening, if he did not actually listen to the debates themselves. The conclusion to recognize Santa Anna in preference to Bustamente would have appealed to Travis, who was himself the living embodiment in San Felipe of the abuses of the centralist regime. He would have approved of its creation of a standing committee in San Felipe, with subcommittees in other districts, to maintain correspondence and communication with one another for mutual interest, rather like the Committees of Correspondence in the American colonies before the Revolution. If Travis felt any disappointment at the convention's result, it was that the absence of Béxar representatives, and the reluctance of some others to go too far too fast, meant that the delegates selected to carry the resolutions to Coahuila and Mexico City never went.
Certainly an assertive mood was all around him. The reactivated Texas Gazette moved to Brazoria in July, immediately after the Anahuac uproar, and changed its title to the not insignificant Constitutional Advocate & Texas Public Advertiser. The message was everywhere that Texians wanted the civil rights and guarantees that they had enjoyed at home in the United States, and most of them believed that Santa Anna sympathized in their interest. When Stephen Austin returned to San Felipe in the fall, called there by the turmoil in Texas, he was so disturbed by the situation he found that he decided not to return to his seat in the Saltillo legislature.62 Travis himself stood in the advance guard in his sympathies. Caiaphas Ham, who knew him—but not nearly so well as he knew Bowie—maintained that Buck Travis was an early advocate of separation from Coahuila at least, and perhaps even from Mexico.63 Reuben Potter in Matamoros knew Travis by reputation, if not personally, and found him “not backward in revolutionary movements.”64 And there is no question that Travis enjoyed and cultivated the acquaintance of men who acted as leaders in the march to Anahuac and the October convention. By December, when elections were held for delegates to the April 1833 convention, he actively supported Pat Jack and others who left no doubt of their support for Santa Anna and the secession from Coahuila.65
With the convention and the December election done, the fate of Texas lay in other, distant hands, and Travis could concentrate the bulk of his attention on his practice. He remained in his rented office space at Walter White's store, next door to Dinsmore's, for more than a year.66 With gratifying alacrity, the clients began to come through the door, some of them no doubt to see the center of the Anahuac disturbances, and others referred by Travis's growing network of prominent friends. Not only were there court days in San Felipe to attend, but also in Brazoria, and Travis traveled back and forth to represent briefs at both, drawing and witnessing wills, filing for collection of notes, and even arguing maritime law and the extent of territorial limits at sea.67 Influential men like Eli Holly, a fellow Alabamian émigré, engaged him to administer their estates, and some of Austin's original settlers—called “the Old Three Hundred”—gave him their briefs. After a year of practice in Claiborne he had scarcely half a dozen cases on his desk; after a year in San Felipe there were sixty or more, the number growing steadily.68 In October 1833 Samuel Williams engaged Travis to handle all legal affairs for his land business, and as well to counsel him on colonization law. At the end of the year Travis even did a small job for James Bowie.69
Soon the variety of work expanded even more. He defended in criminal cases of theft, wrote mortgages, accepted debts for clients in every form from cash to oxen, wrote petitions, took depositions in estate settlements, prepared powers of attorney, acted for defendants in civil suits, made out warrants and subpoenas, and even wrote some official papers for the ayuntamiento. Firebrand William Wharton came to him to act on his behalf in a mortgage dispute with the late John Austin, just deceased in the cholera epidemic, and Travis had to make a public speech in the matter, perhaps his first of note in his new home. When he spoke well he took rather a lot of pride in the fact, just as he did not easily forget when an opponent at the bar embarrassed him (the memory of Dellet and the “infancy” fiasco still stung). The volume of business grew to the extent that by late 1833 he was going back and forth to Brazoria once a month, dividing himself between the courts. In Brazoria he generally stayed at the inn kept by Jane Long, widow of James, and became such a regular customer that she commenced charging him the same daily rate paid by her permanent boarders. Indeed, the volume of his Brazoria business grew to the point that in September he actually considered relocating there, and found an office he could rent for five dollars a month.70
He decided instead to stay in San Felipe. Even though more lawyers vied for its business, it was the center of political, social, and legal affairs, and the most logical place for him to be. A move to Brazoria would not have ended his necessity to be in Austin's capital on a regular basis anyhow. Instead, facing his expanding needs, he gave up his office at White's and made a substantial step up in November by renting an entire house and grounds for home and office from Dr. James Miller for one hundred dollars a year, with the proviso that the landlord make some improvements. In an expansive mood in celebration of the event, Travis paid a tejano fifty cents to move his office contents, while he spent the afternoon and early evening playing faro with friends, losing thirty-four dollars. The change in his circumstances over the day seventeen months before when he left Claiborne was intoxicating. Then he could not afford to pay debts as small as thirty-seven dollars for his horse's fodder. Now he could lose that much in an evening's gambling and still feel jolly enough to continue celebrating with something else that may have been in short supply at Claiborne those last days: He spent the night in the arms of a woman named Susana.71
In the days ahead Travis only improved the outlook for his practice. He bought a case to keep his papers organized, though he had to confess that he was not the tidiest of record keepers. While many of his clients paid with promissory notes, which Travis himself often used to make his own purchases from others, still he was getting enough hard currency and banknotes on New Orleans banks and the Bank of the United States that he could actually start to choose his cases rather than take all comers. He did more real estate law, handling house and lot sales, and in something that would have shocked the struggling Claiborne lawyer, he turned down one client's offer of a fifty-dollar-per-year retainer, quite possibly more money than he actually earned in his last year in Alabama.72
In fact Travis had never seen so much money in his life. His business receipts for September were $104.75, and more than double that in October at $260.00. In the last four months of 1833 in all he took in at least $519.25, with some of his relatively simple tasks like preparing a title now bringing him $25 fees.73 One client paid him $210 in cash for a single fee in April 1834.74 With his new-found liquidity, Travis bought more land, including a house and 100 acres a few miles east of San Felipe, though he continued to live in town and must only have rented the place.75 He even became an investor, in his own future and the future prosperity of Texas.
Robert Wilson, one of those who volunteered to help release Travis at Anahuac, was a thirty-nine-year-old steam engineer from Maryland who first came to Texas in 1828. Two years later, in partnership with David Harris, he built and commenced operating a steam saw mill at Harrisburg, forty miles east of San Felipe. He also took an interest in shipping, and it was aboard his own sailing vessel that Bradburn and his garrison first came to Anahuac in 1830.76 Texians thought well of Wilson, calling him “Honest Bob,” and for his part he thought very highly of Travis, in time taking pride in their friendship.77 Their political views certainly brought them together, for Wilson sat in the October 1832 convention and held advanced ideas like those of Wharton and others, and now Travis. He also looked forward commercially. Not conte
nt with running a sailing vessel, he wanted to bring steamboats to Texas and brought Travis into his scheme. On November 27, 1833, a group of subscribers pledged sufficient funds for Wilson and William Harris to purchase a boat in New Orleans and bring it to ply the waters of the Brazos between Velasco and San Felipe. The commercial impact could be enormous, and significantly William B. Travis was one of the three largest subscribers, pledging five hundred acres of land to help fund the project. At the same time he also secured virtually all of Wilson's and the Harrises' legal business.78
With Travis's growing prosperity came a steady maturing in his attitude toward debt. Never would he forget those awful days in Claiborne. He still frequently borrowed small amounts from friends, often to pay an evening's gambling debt when he had no cash, and to be repaid quickly enough in the following days. In that month of September 1833, when his practice really took hold, he borrowed $55.55 from friends, but paid back all but $1.05 that same month, while himself loaning others some $23.00. In the last four months of 1833 he borrowed all told $254.55 and paid back every cent, plus helping others with out-of-pocket loans of $104.00.79 He would always have a carefree attitude toward money, in one case borrowing $5.00 from the desk of his landlord Dr. Miller without asking, but six months later he paid it back. And finally, in September, he decided it was time to erase those other debts from his memory. He engaged a friend who was traveling back to Alabama to go to Claiborne and redeem all those outstanding notes, a step on the road to regaining his reputation. William B. Travis was growing up.80
Yet there was still much of the proud gay youth about him—and no wonder since he was still just twenty-four in 1833. His prosperity allowed him to indulge some of the whims that Claiborne's poverty forbade, and a slight taste for ostentation that made ready employment for spare cash. He liked horses, and in October bought a new one, then soon traded up for a little bay that took his liking.81 While waiting for Dr. Miller to make the improvements in the house he rented, Travis boarded at the widow Jane Wilkins's house, where he could find the company of her two daughters, aged twenty and twenty-nine, entertaining. Both to attract the attention of the less-than-plentiful ladies as well as suiting his own taste, he began spending money on his wardrobe: $30.00 for a frock coat, $7.00 for a hat, $1.00 for stockings, $6.00 for a waistcoat, $9.00 for boots, shoes at $2.25, and even dancing pumps for $2.65. He bought bolt linen to have shirts made and a neck stock to wear for a collar, and in November spent nearly $30.00 on brown linen and black bombazine for a coat and vest. A week later he took a pair of red pants to a tailor and paid him to remake the fabric into a coat with a long hood and a decorative gold braid, beyond question the most colorful attire in San Felipe.82 He now paid a barber twenty-five cents to cut his hair, and bought vials of scents of lavender and bergamot to anoint his hair and clothes. For his correspondence he spent thirty-seven and one-half cents on a quire of “fancy writing paper.”83 In short counsellor Travis was becoming a bit of a fop, and clearly loving it.
Happily, with this new prosperity, there was still enough of the Baptist in him to keep some temptations beyond arm's reach. Travis never had much interest in liquor. Now and then he spent four bits for brandy or wine, but often as not to add spirit to a gathering rather than for his own consumption.84 But he made up for that restraint when it came to gambling, a taste no doubt acquired—to his distress—in Claiborne, and never since lost. In the latter part of 1833 he gambled several times a week, sometimes nightly, and like most players never proved to be as good as he thought. In October he won $88.25, in November he lost $104.31, neither an inconsequential sum. In seven straight months he won more than he lost only in two, and by March 1834 his cumulative losses outweighed his winnings by $53.46.85 It was not a large sum to him now, perhaps, but it was money he could have been sending back to Rosanna in Alabama, but apparently did not. The process of maturing still had some distance to go.
As befitted a man of Buck Travis's new standing in the community, he tried anew to assume the role that eluded him in Claiborne. Despite being a Baptist, he gave $25.00 with others to raise a fund of $300.00 to bring a Methodist, Rev. John Wesley Kenney, and his family, to the Brazos to preach to them in spite of the law authorizing only Catholicism.86 When men with a racing bent established the Planters & Farmers Jockey Club of Mill Creek not far from town, Travis wrote their articles of incorporation.87 He bought a rifle, for every man should have a gun, though he loaned it to others more than he used it himself, and he also kept a slave, a twenty-year-old black named Joe, whom he only rented for the time being.88 He threw himself into what literary society San Felipe offered, and found a surprising variety of books available to borrow and read. Luke Lesassier, newly elected alcalde, lent him a book of anecdotes, and another friend gave him four volumes of The Spectator and one of Bolingbroke's histories. His tastes ran from popular novels like Roderick Ransom to the histories of Herodotus, which he used to pass the hours on Christmas Eve. He borrowed the two volumes of James Kirke Paulding's 1832 novel Westward Ho! to read over the 1834 New Year's holiday, and could not have helped but be amused by its picture of a frontier not unlike his own, where any time three men were seen talking together “it is ten to one the subject is politics, five to one religion, and three to one making a speculation.”89
And the young lawyer about town did more than read for the holidays. Travis partook of every bit of amusement that poor San Felipe could offer, and helped in planning the merriment. He joined Spencer Jack, the lawyer brother of Patrick and William, in making the arrangements for a Christmas subscription ball, and on the evening itself dined first at Thomas Gay's, where he contributed two bottles of wine to the meal, and then went on to the ball for what he called a “fine enjoyment.” The next day he attended a party at the home of Maj. Ira Lewis, and on December 30 he joined others in the mock trial of a fiddler who gave them “much fun,” then went to an auction where he bought a bottle of whiskey that he gave to local natives for their own celebration. New Year's Eve itself he spent attending a wedding celebration. If there was an ounce of fun to be had in San Felipe, Travis was sure to seek it out.90
He did not neglect the ladies. Regardless of what he had told Rosanna, Travis's intentions toward her may have been equivocal at best from the moment he left Claiborne. He promised to come for her or send for her as soon as he established himself and could support his family, now grown by the birth of a daughter, Susan Isabella, born August 4, 1831.91 During the ensuing two years he regularly wrote to Rosanna and her brother William Cato, who looked after her affairs, and during all that time he continued to profess his love and his intentions. It would have been unlike him to conceal his pride in how well his practice progressed, and certainly he could not conceal the fancy paper he used now for his correspondence. Yet he did not send for her. Worse, word of his prosperity undoubtedly got back to Claiborne, especially when Henry Sewell appeared in late September or early October and word got out that he was redeeming all of Travis's debts.
Meanwhile Rosanna's letters betrayed her increasing frustration. Even though he could gamble away more than $30.00 in a day for his own entertainment, he rarely sent her any money to support herself and the children. The entire fall of 1833 he may have sent no more than $10.00. Her friends advised her to petition the legislature for a divorce on grounds of abandonment. They had a daughter that Travis had never even seen. She wanted the family reunited, and her brother William, too, tired of Travis's delays and evasions. Finally that fall, probably after Travis's friend Sewell appeared with evidence that for months now Travis could have sent for them anytime he wanted, William Cato sent him a peremptory demand to state his intentions unequivocally.
At last Travis faced what he had been trying to ignore for so long and replied that he did not want a reunion now or in the future, and that he wished the separation to be permanent. All he wanted was his son and his freedom. Crushed but probably not surprised, Rosanna agreed. At Travis's suggestion, she consented to bring the children to Na
tchez that coming winter, and he would meet them there. But once she was there he did not appear, instead sending word that she should send Charles on to Jane Long's in Brazoria. Then he changed his mind again and asked his friend Monroe Edwards to go to Alabama to get the boy for him. Though he might have redeemed his legal debts, Travis was still too proud and immature to go back to Claiborne in person to pay his moral obligations and meet face to face those whom he had ill used—family, creditors, and Rosanna. In the end Rosanna went to Natchez for nothing, and Edwards never went to Alabama, and Charles for the time being remained with his mother. And Rosanna, mortified that she would have to bear alone the odium of being an abandoned and divorced woman, set about rebuilding her life by learning the millinery trade. Perhaps, too, she still entertained a glimmer of hope, if only she could see Travis in person, for she did nothing about the divorce.92
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