The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 66, July 1962 - April, 1963 Page: 360

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360

Southwestern Historical Quarterly

Col. N. J. Chance, Col. W. C. Twitty, Major C. L. Roff, William
Peery,24 J. M. Peery,25 J. C. Chance, Samuel C. Doss and others.
How well they laid and executed their plan of operations, the
subsequent pages of this work are designed fully to show. They
resolved to meet the danger at once and to meet it boldly. They
selected from the good people of the county a sufficient number
and in the early years of Texas' statehood. Montague County was named for him
upon its creation in 1858.
Montague was born on August 22, 1798, in South Hadley, Massachusetts. He moved
to Louisiana in 1820o and was a surveyor there during the next fifteen years. He
set out to aid the Texas revolutionists in their struggle against Mexico in 1836 but
arrived too late to take part in the Battle of San Jacinto. Returning to Louisiana
to gather his family around him, he moved to the Republic of Texas later that
same year, settling first at old Warren on the Red River in present Fannin County.
He conducted a general merchandise store in partnership with William Henderson,
than accepted the post of surveyor of the Fannin Land District, that included
much of present Cooke, Grayson, and other North Texas counties. He was a noted
Indian fighter. Upon the outbreak of the Mexican War he helped raise a regiment
of Red River volunteers and commanded a company as captain.
Daniel Montague moved westward along the Red River in the late 1840's, taking
up land in Cooke County, of which he became county surveyor. He also had sur-
veyed much of the area that became Montague County. The 1850 census of Cooke
County, Texas, lists him as 52 years of age, engaged in farming, and possessed of
land valued at $5,0ooo.
Montague's principal service to the Confederacy, as this narrative discloses, was
as president of the "Citizens Court" that tried, condemned, and hanged the thirty-
nine prisoners charged with disloyalty and treason to the State of Texas. Montague
is also shown as foreman of the grand jury which in November, 1862, returned
an indictment against Joel Francis De Lemeron on a charge of treason. The case
was tried in the fall term of 1862 before the district court at Gainesville.
Montague was among the ex-Confederates who refused to accept the outcome of
the War Between the States and emigrated to Mexico in 1865. He lived for the
next eleven years in the valley of the Tuxpan River. He returned to Texas in 1876
to make his home with his widowed daughter, Elizabeth Montague Twitty, at
Marysville, Cooke County, where he died on December 20 of that year. His return
to Texas and subsequent death are significant in establishing the probable date
of Diamond's final draft of his narrative, as is obvious from the text of his
manuscript. Lucas and Hall, A History of Grayson County, Texas, 40-41; Z. T.
Fulmore, History and Geography of Texas as Told in County Names (Austin, 1915),
86-87.
24William Peery, a native of Kentucky, was enumerated as a sixty-year-old farmer
living in Cooke County in the 186o federal census. He had lived for a time in
Missouri before moving to Texas with his wife and three children in 1851. U. S.
Eighth Census, 186o (Returns of Schedule 1, Free Inhabitants, for Cooke County,
Texas, microfilm, Dallas Public Library), family no. 551.
'"Presumably a brother of William Peery, James M. Peery was a member of the
Masonic Lodge at Gainesville in 1859. He served as a member of the patrol at
Gainesville as provided by state law in 1861. Smith, First zoo Years in Cooke
County, 32.

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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 66, July 1962 - April, 1963, periodical, 1963; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101196/m1/386/ocr/: accessed March 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.

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