Public Debt of the Late Republic of Texas - Texas 1854

Beautiful certificate from the Public Debt of the Late Republic of Texas issued in 1854. This historic document has an ornate border around it. This item is hand signed by the Comptroller, James B. Shaw and Auditor, John M. Swisher and is over 158 years old.

No. 4959 Second Class, "B." PUBLIC DEBT OF THE LATE REPUBLIC OF TEXAS

This is to Certify, That Augustus Pharr, has, under the provisions of An Act of the Legislature of the State of Texas, entitled An Act to extend the provisions of "An Act to provide for ascertaining the Debt of the late Republic of Texas," approve February 7, 1853, filed with the Auditor and Comptroller, a claim for service on the Wall Campaign amounting to Firteen 75/100 Dollars which is sufficiently authenticated to authorize the auditing of the same under the laws of the late Republic of Texas, Paid in par funds, as having been at that rate so available to the Government.

In Testimony Whereof, We have hereunto set our hands and affixed our seals of office at Austin, this 2nd day of October A.D. 1854.

James B. Shaw Comptroller

John M. Swisher Auditor

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SHAW, JAMES B. (ca. 1820-?). James B. Shaw, state comptroller, was born in Ireland about 1820. After graduating from the University of Dublin, he immigrated to the United States, settled temporarily in New Orleans, and moved to Texas in 1837. He served a short term as a private in the Texas army, was made chief clerk of the Treasury Department in 1838, and in 1839 was elected comptroller, a position which he held until 1859. Shaw frequently served as acting secretary of the treasury during Sam Houston's second administration. In December 1850 Shaw was sent to Washington, D.C., to collect the $5,000,000 payment of the federal government resulting from the Compromise of 1850 and the sale by Texas of parts of present New Mexico and Colorado. In 1857 he again represented Texas in Washington in the final disposition of the money set aside for payment of Texas's revenue debt. In 1853, preparatory to marrying a woman from New Orleans, Shaw established a 200-acre estate named Woodlawn on Shoal Creek west of Austin. The main house was built by Abner H. Cook, builder of the Governor's Mansion. The woman in New Orleans married another man, but Shaw finished his Austin home anyway and soon found someone else to marry. He and his wife had a daughter who died at the age of two. After the death of his wife a few months later, Shaw moved to Galveston and entered the banking business. He sold the Woodlawn estate to Elisha M. Pease in 1859, and the home became known as the Pease Mansion. The property around the main house was later developed as a residential subdivision called Enfield. Shaw probably died in Galveston in the late 1870s or early 1880s.

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SWISHER, JOHN MILTON (1819-1891). John Milton Swisher, soldier, civil servant, and financier, was born on May 31, 1819, near Franklin in Williamson County, Tennessee, the son of Elizabeth (Boyd) and James Gibson Swisher. In 1833 he immigrated to Texas with his parents, who settled first in Milam Municipality. At age fourteen Swisher opened a school-what he referred to as an "ABC class"-at Tenoxtitlán, but quickly abandoned it to take up farming. The family remained at Tenoxtitlán from January until October 1834 and then, harassed by Indians, moved to Gay Hill in what is now Washington County. After learning of William B. Travis's appeal for assistance at the Alamo, Swisher and ten or twelve companions started on March 1, 1836, for San Antonio. They halted at Gonzales on March 5 and there, after Sam Houston arrived on March 10 to organize the army, became the core of Capt. William W. Hill's Company H of Col. Edward Burleson's First Regiment, Texas Volunteers. Harvey H. Swisher, John's uncle, was first lieutenant of the company. After taking part in the battle of San Jacinto, Swisher was discharged on May 30 at Victoria. Thereafter he clerked for a time in his father's Washington County store. By December 1836 he was working as recording clerk of the treasury department and in 1840 was promoted to chief clerk. In 1841 he was appointed a first lieutenant in the Republic of Texas Marine Corps, but resigned after a cruise to the Yucatán under Commodore Edwin W. Moore. Swisher served as chief clerk of the auditor's office at Washington-on-the-Brazos, as clerk of the Ninth Congress of the Republic of Texas, and as clerk of the Convention of 1845. In 1846 he was elected colonel of the first regiment of Thomas Greenqv's brigade of Texas militia, and in January 1847 he raised a company of rangers for service in the Mexican War, but got no farther than San Antonio before the United States victory at Buena Vista made the company unnecessary. His younger brother, James Monroe Swisher, served as a private in Capt. Benjamin McCulloch's company of Col. John C. Hays's First Regiment, Texas Mounted Riflemen.

In 1848 Swisher was appointed auditor of public accounts, and in 1852 he became a banker in Austin. On January 23, 1860, Governor Sam Houston appointed him paymaster of the Texas Rangersqv, a position he held until Texas seceded from the Union. Swisher was an ardent unionist, but after secession became an accomplished fact he threw his support behind the Confederacy. In 1862 he was sent to London to exchange Texas securities for war materials but was frustrated when the state's United States bonds were declared nonnegotiable. On promise of exchange for Texas cotton, he then ordered supplies delivered to Matamoros, but when he returned to Texas he was dismissed from his post on charges of unionist sympathies. Swisher nevertheless spent the remainder of the war in Matamoros as purchasing agent for Col. John S. Ford's Confederate forces. From 1865 until 1868 he ran a banking and commission house in Galveston. Then, after returning to Austin, he organized and until 1870 served as president of a stock company for the construction of the city's street-railway system. Swisher married Maria W. Sims, a native of Virginia, at Washington-on-the-Brazos on May 28, 1844; they had two children. Maria died on April 13, 1870, and Swisher married Helen "Nellie" A. Nickerson, a teacher at Medina, on January 1, 1873; they had two daughters. After Nellie's death in March 1875 Swisher married Bella French (see SWISHER, BELLA FRENCH) in Austin in October 1878. Swisher died on March 11, 1891, and was buried in Oakwood Cemetery, Austin. He was a Mason. His reminiscences of early Texas and the battle of San Jacinto are preserved in the Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin, and were published in a truncated version as Swisher's Memoirs by Mary R. Maverick Green in 1932.

History from Texas State Historical Association.