The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 5, July 1901 - April, 1902 Page: 121

Guy .Morrison Bryan.

121

GUY MORRISON BRYAN.1
GEORGE P. GARRISON.
Guy M. Bryan was born January 12, 1821, at Herculaneum, Jef-
ferson county, Missouri, on the banks of the Missouri river below
St. Louis. He spent the greater part of the first ten years of his
life at Potosi, Washington county, Missouri, his mother's home,
where he acquired the rudiments of an education. While he was
yet a small boy his father died, and his mother afterwards married
Mr. James F. Perry.
In the spring of 1831 Mr. Perry emigrated to Texas. The fam-
ily and negroes traveled by land, using two-horse wagons and a car-
riage, and young Guy rode a mule the whole distance. They
reached San Felipe, Texas, August 15th, and there Mrs. Perry and
her children remained until the spring of 1832. Then they moved
to their homestead on "Pleasant Bayou," a branch of Chocolate
Bayou now in Brazoria county, where Mr. Perry established a ranch.
In December, 1832, he moved to Peach Point, ten miles below Bra-
zoria, west of the Brazos, which became his permanent home.
In the winter of 1835-6 Guy Bryan and his half brother Stephen
and half-sister Eliza Perry attended the school of Mr. Pilgrim, who
was teaching in the neighborhood, at Coumbia. Guy's boarding-
place was the home of Mr. Josiah H. Bell, who lived about a mile
from the schoolhouse, in what is now West Columbia; and in his
daily walks to and from school he was accompanied by Thaddeus
and James H., the sons, and Lucinda, the daughter, of Mr. Bell.
Early in March, 1836, Mr. Bell came to his youthful boarder and
told him that a courier from San Felipe had arrived bearing a let-
ter from Travis in the Alamo, which told of his being besieged by
the Mexicans and called on the government and the people for
immediate aid. Mr. Bell said that the courier and his horse were
broken down, and asked if the young man, who had a horse of his
own, would not take the letter to Brazoria and thence to Velasco at
the mouth of the Brazos. At Velasco was a detachment of infantry
1This memoir has been compiled mainly from an autobiographical sketch
prepared by Colonel Bryan in 1895 for his daughter, Miss Hally Ballinger
Bryan.