64. J. O. Dyer told a friend that Charles Cronea, supposedly a storekeeper in Laffite's establishment, told him in later years that James Bowie visited Galveston in 1819 and "the two men Lafitte & Bowie could readily have passed for brothers" (J. O. Dyer to Beer, February, n.d., William Beer Papers, Tulane University, New Orleans). Like most of Dyer's stories collected from elderly denizens of Galveston in the 1870s and later, Cronea's was probably imagination. According to the 1850 Census, Jefferson County, p. 249, Cronea was born about 1806, and thus would have been about thirteen in 1819, hardly old enough to be running a store. When he filed a claim for a veteran land bounty in 1884, he was telling friends that he had been an unwilling cabin boy aboard a Laffite ship commanded by Campbell, another of the old Galveston storytellers. (Statement of W. D. Ivey, September 8, 1884, Charles Cronea Application File, RV 1153, Veterans Donation Applications, Texas General Land Office, Austin; W. T. Block, "Uncle Charlie' Cronea: The Last of Lafitte's Pirates," CAHUT). In connection with Laffite, it is interesting to note that a host of preposterous stories about James Bowie's exploits arose after his death at the Alamo, and among them is the one that appeared in the Houston, Democratic Telegraph and Texas Register of June 20, 1850. In it, Bowie was traveling on a steamboat on June 4, 1835, when he challenged a cheating gambler to a duel and killed him, the cheat being the son of Jean Laffite. The story exists in several variants.
65. Statement, December 15, 1821, United States vs. Charles Mulholland, Case #1780; Statement, December 14, United States vs. James Reeves, Case #1781; Statement, December 14, 1821, United States vs. Christopher Adams, Case #1778, NAFW.
66. Crawford to Chew, August 11, 1819, M-178, RG 56, NA.
67. New Orleans, Courier de la Louisiane, October 22, 1819; B[ollaert], "Lafitte," p. 443.
68. No record has been found of James M. Mcintosh serving on the ship Lynx, despite the account he wrote of her visit to Laffite that appeared in the March 1847 Knickerbocker Magazine. This is not conclusive. Documents in the naval records at the National Archives simply do not account for his time immediately after his being detached from New Orleans and given a six-month furlough on October 11, 1819, virtually the same time that the Lynx was preparing for her voyage. This was well in time for his November 1819 visit to Galveston, which must have been in an unofficial capacity. "Mystery of 'LYNX' Visit," Laffite Study Group Newsletter.; II (Spring 1982), p. 1.
69. J. R. Madison to John Rodgers, November 1, 1818, Area 8, M-625, NA.
70. [James M. Mcintosh], "A Visit to Lafitte," Knickerbocker Magazine, XXIX (March 1847), pp. 254–55; B[ollaert], "Lafitte," p. 443. Some have questioned the authenticity of the Mcintosh article. Certainly it is inaccurate in some particulars, and it may have been heavily influenced by Ingraham's novel Lafitte, the Pirate of the Gulf. However, it otherwise agrees overall with contemporary sources. Interestingly, it also agrees with the early 1840s accounts gleaned by Bollaert. Bancroft, North Mexican States, II, pp. 43–44n, also accepts it as genuine.
71. Jean Laffite to Madison, November 7, 8, 1819, copy in French in File SG-Pirates, RG 45, NA. Dyer gave a fanciful account of the trial and hanging, maintaining that he had seen a transcript of the trial that was subsequently lost in the great Galveston hurricane of 1900 (Galveston, News Sun, September 10, 1922). It is worth noting that Dyer apparently turned his Laffite articles and collections into a biography that he tried to get published during World War I, but publishers turned it down citing the shortage of paper during the war. The manuscript seems not to have survived. In fact, Dyer was garrulous and disorganized, unable to tell myth from fact, and very gullible when it came to the imaginative old sea stories of the Galveston denizens who claimed to have been with the Laffites (Dyer to Beer, March 3, n.d., Beer Papers, Rosenberg Library, Galveston).
72. Mcintosh to Long, November 10, 1819, Nile's Register, XVII (February 5, 1820), p. 396.
73. [Mcintosh], "Visit," pp. 258–59.
74. Jean Laffite to Madison, November 7, 1819, copy in File SG-Pirates, NA; Jean Laffite to Madison, November 7, 1819, Nile's Register, XVII (February 5, 1820), pp. 395–96.
75. Madison said on February 29, 1820, that he never got the letter from Laffite dated November 7. Baltimore, Nile's Weekly Register, XVII, April 22, 1820.
76. Madison to Jean Laffite, Nov. 7, 1819, RG 45, NA.
77. In his later 1847 account, and in what he apparently told his sister as related in Maria Jane Mcintosh, Conquest and Self-Conquest; or, Which Makes the Hero? (New York, 1843), Mcintosh said more than twenty years after the fact that it was on a subsequent visit to the island that he refused to deliver the offensive letter that Laffite then corrected. There was hardly any cause for an aggressive tone with Madison after September 7, whereas Laffite's initial letter to Madison of that date certainly is threatening. It seems most probable that it was Laffite's second letter of that date, in response to Madison's demand for information, that was still aggressive in tone and had to be modified.
78. Jean Laffite to Madison, November 7, 8, 1819, copy in French in File SG-Pirates, RG 45, NA. Mcintosh's 1847 account of this is somewhat confused as to chronology and detail. [Mcintosh], "Visit," p. 259. James Campbell told much the same story in the 1850s, but confused George Brown with a "Juana," which is probably a dim recollection of Jannet. Information derived [from] James Campbell now residing on the Galveston Bay, 10th June 1855, Lamar Papers, TSL.
79. Patterson to Thompson, November 24, 1819, M-125, NA; Mcintosh to Long, November 10, 1819, Nile's Register, XVII (February 5, 1820), p. 396.
80. B[ollaert], "Lafitte," p. 443.
81. [Mcintosh], "Visit," pp. 260–61; Mcintosh, Conquest and Self-Conquest, p. 167; Patterson to Thompson, November 24, 1819, M-125, NA; Baltimore, Nile's Weekly Register, XVII, April 22, 1820. Though Conquest and Self-Conquest, pp. 149—71, has a fictionalized version of the 1819 visit of the Lynx to Galveston, the author was the younger sister of Lieutenant James McKay Mcintosh of the Lynx, and thus would have had the story directly from him. She changed the name of the vessel to the Enterprise, the place from Galveston to Barataria, and the date from 1819 to 1812, but some of what she has Mcintosh saying and doing in the form of her protagonist, Frederic Stanley, is likely genuine recollection.
82. New Orleans, Louisiana Courier, December 3, 1819.
83. Ibid., November 24, 1819.
TWENTY
1. Beardslee, Piracy, p. 22.
2. Patterson to Smith Thompson, January 3, 1820, M-125, 45, NA; New Orleans, Louisiana Courier, November 17, 1819.
3. Pierre Laffite to Isabelle Cheval, December 4, 1819, Notary Michele DeArmas, Vol. 18, Act 131; Pierre Laffite to Baptiste Lafitte, December 28, 1819, attached to Baptiste Lafitte to Antoine Abat, August 2, 1820, Notary Philippe Pedesclaux, Vol. 16, item 425, NONA.
4. Information derived from Col. S. M. Williams respecting Lafitte, n.d., Lamar Papers, TSL. This account is usually read to describe Jean Laffite, but since virtually all of Williams's other recollections indicate that he was speaking of Pierre, this one is probably about him too, especially given the reference to the eye. There is one latter-day statement that Pierre had a bad eye.
5. Journal of John Landreth on an Expedition to the Gulf Coast, November 15, 1818-May 19, 1819, entry for December 27, 1818, T12, NA.
6. Manuel Garcia to Apodaca, April 9, 1820, quoted in Faye, "Stroke," p. 811.
7. Pierre Laffite to Patterson, January 3, 1820, Parsons Collection, CAHUT. This is signed by but not written by Pierre. Copies of this letter are in File SG-Pirates, and in M-125, RG 45, NA.
8. Patterson to Thompson, February 16, 1820, Ibid.
9. Patterson to Pierre Laffite, January 24, 1820, Ibid.
10. Patterson to Commanders of the United States Vessels of War, February 3, 1820, M-125, RG 45, NA.
11. Patterson to Thompson, February 16, 1820, Ibid.
12. [John Henry Brown], "Early Life in the Southwest. No. IV. Captain John McHenry, Pioneer of Texas," DeBow's Review, XV (December 1853),
p. 572.
13. Jean Laffite to Guillaume Malus, February 13, 1820, United States vs. schooner Pegasus, item 13, Case #1509, NAFW This letter contains not only French words that are misspelled, but also homonyms of the sort a person who spoke the language but rarely read or wrote it might use. The writer also left off the endings of words entirely, writing in a sort of patois that may have reflected his speech. The handwriting is much like that of other letters in Jean's hand, though the signature differs substantially.
14. Kearny to Thompson, December 23, 1819, M-125, RG 45, NA.
15. Patterson to Thompson, March 17, 1820, Ibid.
16. "The Cruise of the Enterprize," pp. 37–40. This article presents something of a conundrum. The unidentified author clearly knows much of the story of the Enterprises visit, including her mission. He also knows the number and size of Laffite's squadron, as confirmed from other contemporary sources, and describes the stories of antipathy toward Spain that Jean and Pierre had been telling others as part of their "cover." Yet other aspects of the article appear to be considerably fictionalized, including a great deal of conversation. In the end, the article must be judged an authentic account of Kearny's visit, accurate in broad context, but unreliable in some specifics.
17. Kearney to Patterson, March 7, 1820, M-125, RG 45, NA. This report is inaccurately reproduced in Carroll Storrs Alden, Lawrence Kearny, Sailor Diplomat (Princeton, NJ, 1936), pp. 35–36. James Campbell gave a considerably garbled version of this meeting in 1855, making it appear that Kearny delivered orders to Laffite to abandon Galveston, and that Laffite entertained Kearny on the island for two weeks. Information derived [from] James Campbell now residing on the Galveston Bay, 10th June 1855, Lamar Papers, TSL.
18. New Orleans, Louisiana Courier, February 20, 1820.
19. Ibid., April 12, 1820.
20. Castellanos, New Orleans as It Was, pp. 308–9, says that Jean incited the pirates to mob the jail and try to free Desfarges and the others, and when this did not work, the mob then tried to burn the jail and the armory, though there is no evidence of this. Further confusing lore, Castellanos goes on to say that Jean went to Washington to get an audience with the president to plead for clemency, resulting in the pardon of all but Desfarges. Saxon, Lafitte, pp. 241–42, substantially repeats this, with embellishments. The story is further exaggerated in John Smith Kendall, "The Successors of Laffite," Louisiana Historical Quarterly, XXIV (April 1941), pp. 364–65, which says that the pirates led by Jean plotted to tear down the Cabildo but did not try it because of the strength of the place.
21. Statement of Mr. Malus, [March 1820], United States vs. Schooner Pegasus, Case #1509, NAFW.
22. Rieder and Rieder, New Orleans Ship Lists, p. 18.
23. Testimony of William Taylor, March 1820, United States vs. Schooner Pegasus, Case #1509, NAFW.
24. Statements of James Rinkin, Mr. Marchand, and Mr. Burton, n.d., Statement of Nathaniel Norton, alias Hugh Dunn, [March 1820], Ibid.
25. Statement of John Anderson, March 1820, Statement of Samuel Hughes, March 18, 1820, Ibid.
26. Villavaso to Cagigal, March 29, 1820, Legajo 1945, AGI-Newberry.
27. Order for seizure of the Pegasus, March 18, 1820, Libel of John Dick, U.S. attorney, March 18, 1820, John R. Grymes protest, March 22, 1820, Ibid.
28. Villavaso to Cagigal, March 29, 1820, Legajo 1945, AGI-Newberry.
29. Garcia to Apodaca, April 9, 1820, in Faye, Privateers, p. 214.
30. Nicolás Villavaso to Cienfuegos, May 30, 1820, Legajo 1945, AGI-Newberry, says Long arrived at Bolivar Point on April 6.
31. B[ollaert], "Lafitte," p. 445, says, based on recollections of Jane Long and others, that the Longs arrived the day Laffite abandoned the island. That would have been April 6, 1820, according to Warren, Sword, p. 249, but this clearly does not fit. Long left again on about April 20, taking his wife and Hall with him, not to return until early June, which means that any dinner with Laffite had to take place before their departure, and not on May ii as Jane Long's account suggests.
32. Jane Long memoir, circa 1837, Gulick et al., Lamar Papers, II, p. 76; Brown, Long's Expedition, pp. 2–3. The Long memoir is the origin of the myth that Laffite's principal ship at this time was the Pride, a story passed on in her recollections told a few years later to Bollaert (B[ollaert], "Lafitte," p. 445). This confusion of the General Victoria has often been continued since, as for instance in Beardslee, Piracy, p. 23, Jean L. Epperson, "Jean Laffite and the Schooner Pegasus," Laffite Society Chronicles, VI (February 2000), [p. 10], agrees that there is no evidence of any vessel of that name being connected with the Laffites.
33. Galveston, Daily News, May 9, 1920. This is based on stories told to Dyer by Hall, and is handled with the usual reservations.
34. Galveston, Daily News, March 6, 1893, March 14, May 9, 1920. Dyer claimed that he had information that when Laffite destroyed and evacuated Galveston, it was not at the demand of the United States, but because he had to in order to avoid mutiny. Galveston, Daily News, March 6, 1893, has the account of Charles Cronea, reprinted as "Charles Cronea of Sabine Pass: Lafitte Buccaneer and Texas Veteran," Texas Gulf Historical and Biographical Record, XI (November 1975), pp. 92–93, and later as W. T. Block, '"Uncle Charlie' Cronea: The Last of Lafitte's Pirates," CAHUT. In it Cronea, whose recollection is mainly wild imagination like most of the accounts by Galveston denizens, said he deserted Galveston in 1820, and that much of the account, at least, could be true.
35. Galveston, Daily News, December 14, 1919; James Sherwood Statement, March 27, 1880, James Campbell Pension File, War of 1812, Records Relating to Pension and Bounty Land Claims, 1773–1942, RG 15, NA. In June 1820 Madison and Lynx arrived at Charleston, South Carolina, and reported that Laffite abandoned Galveston on May 7. This is the only authoritative contemporary account that dates the event. New York, Spectator, August 11, 1820.
36. Eli Harris to Lamar, January 18, 1841, Blake, LVIII, p. 179.
37. Interrogation of George Schumph, November 26, 1821, Sumaria Instruida contra el ingles don Jorge Schumph, Notarias Publicas, Protocolos del Año 1821, Archivo de la Cuidad de Merída de Yucatan, Merída, Mexico. The papers in this case were discovered by Rubio Mane in the 1930s, but have since disappeared. Translated transcripts are to be found in the Laffite Society Research Collection, Sam Houston Regional Library and Research Center, Liberty, TX.
38. B[ollaert], "Lafitte," p. 445.
39. Jean L. Epperson, "The Final Years of Jean Laffite," Laffite Society Chronicles, VII (October 2001), [p. 2], says that Pierre left New Orleans in March-April for Havana to try to collect pay due the Laffites from their Spanish employers, and that while there he bought a rancho outside town at what is now the intersection of Correa and Calzada de Jesus del Monte. The Laffites never got to live there, but their descendants did. While a well-to-do Lafitte family did live in Cuba thereafter, there is nothing credible uncovered to date to link them with Jean and Pierre Laffite.
40. Adams, Diary, V, pp. 55–56.
41. Monroe to John Nicholson, April 17, 1820, United States vs. John Desfarges et al., Case #1440, NAFW.
42. Motion, May 16, 1820, Ruling, May 24, 1820, Minutes, 7RA-119, RG 21, NAFW.
43. New York, Spectator, June 1, 8, 1820.
44. Journal of John Landreth on an Expedition to the Gulf Coast, November 15, 1818-May 19, 1819, entry for March 14, 1819, T12, NA.
45. New Orleans, Louisiana Courier, May 26, 1820; New York, Spectator, June 17, 1820.
46. New Orleans, Courier de la Louisiane, August 2, 1820.
47. Adams, Diary, V, June 19, 1820, p. 154.
48. This comes from a very well-informed article in the Galveston, Gazette, circa 1839, republished in the Newark, NJ, Daily Advertiser, February 12, 1840. In it the editor in Galveston says that he has "seen several persons who were here during his [Laffite s] stay, ane [and] who knew him."
49. Interrogation of George Schumph, November 26, 1821, Notarías Publicas, Protocolos del Año 1821, Archi
vo de la Ciudad de Merída de Yucatan, Merída, Mexico; New York, Spectator, August 11, 1820.
50. New Orleans, Daily Picayune, August 20, 1871. This very well-informed account, dated in 1863, came from an unidentified source that shows clear indications of personal knowledge, and is entitled to some credence.
51. In 1855 James Campbell, who is not always reliable as to detail, stated that Laffite told him to meet him at Mugeres if he chose to join him. Campbell also stated that in 1836 William Cochrane, supposedly a lieutenant to Laffite when they left Galveston, told him that Laffite sailed south to Cabo Catoche, at the northeastern tip of Yucatán about thirty miles north of Mugeres. Information derived [from] James Campbell now residing on the Galveston Bay, 10th June 1855, Lamar Papers, TSL. Madison of Lynx stated in June 1820 that informants told him Laffite stated his intention to go to Old Providence to join Aury. New York, Spectator, August 11, 1820.
52. Faye, "Stroke," p. 825, says the Minerva deserted Laffite. This seems to be based on Villavaso to Apodaca, July 18, 1820, Legajo 1945, AGI-Newberry, which does not say this.
53. Statement of Romualdo Rodriguez, February 4, 1831, Libel of J. R. Madison, July 15, 1820, Statement of J. R. Madison, August 2, 1820, J. R. Madison vs. Felucca Constitution, Case #1581, NAFW.
54. Madison to Patterson, July 10, 1820, Patterson to Secretary of the Navy, July 12, 1820, M-125, RG 45, NA.
55. Baltimore, Nile's Register, January 20, 1821, p. 352. B[ollaert], "Lafitte," p. 444, recounts what he was told of the Constitution episode, but confused it with the later mutiny aboard the General Victoria.
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