Florence Stratton
Beaumont Enterprise journalist Florence Stratton loved and served her family and community, and witnessed the boom years of the city of Beaumont, Texas.
She wrote the first history of Beaumont -- The Story of Beaumont -- which remains one of the best accounts of the city's history and the period following the discovery of oil at Spindletop, the world's first oil gusher. It chronicles many of the families of early Texas and Beaumont (see the index).

Jeremiah Cloud (1784-1861) was born about 1784 in what became Twiggs county, Georgia. (Picture of great grandson William Lafayette Cloud shown.)
He moved his family to Alabama after the Creek cession of 1814 and again to Texas after her independence from Mexico. He settled in Austin's colony in 1837, 15 years after Stephen F. Austin settled it and about 5 miles NW of San Felipe de Austin, the county seat. In 1850 a post office and courthouse was established near his farm at the new county seat of Bellville.
His family was involved in the county government at Bellville and they settled in Austin, Washington and Milam counties.

Cloud DNA Project
The Cloud DNA Project is helping find lost ancestors using Y chromosome DNA.
Y-DNA is carried only by men and can be used to identify and trace the paternal lineage of Project participants. Comparing the DNA signatures of different family branches allows us to determine if they are related and to approximate when they shared a common ancestor.
If you are a man descended from a CLOUD line, we invite you to join the project. Take a look at the Cloud DNA Project pages for information. For questions, or to join, contact the project administrator.

Mourad Bumstead was born in Long Island in 1811. A surveyor by trade, he left for Texas, arriving there in 1831. When he arrived, he found growing discontent because of the Mexican government's rejection of its 1824 constitution and replacement with a military dictatorship. (Eleven Mexican states subsequently rebelled against dictator Santa Ana's regime, only the Northern part of Coahuila de Téxas successfully defeated him and became the Republic of Texas.)
In June of 1832, he joined a group of men determined to rescue William B. Travis and his law partner Judge Patrick Jack from Colonel Juan Davis Bradburn, Commander of the garrison at Anahuac.
On December 5, 1835, Mourad Bumstead joined other Texian and Tejano volunteers in an attempt to remove Mexican troops quartered in San Antonio de Béxar. During the five days of house-to-house fighting which ensued, General Martín Perfecto de Cós (brother-in-law to General Santa Ana) and his soldiers retreated to the Alamo before surrendering. The victorious volunteers then occupied the Alamo, already fortified by Cós' men, and further strengthened its defenses. The Siege of Bexar was the longest Texian campaign and only one of two successes, with the Battle of San Jacinto being the second and final victory. Three months later, in March of 1836, the assault at The Battle of the Alamo, led by General Antonio López de Santa Anna, President of México, resulted in the defeat and death of all its defenders and became a rallying cry for the Texas revolution.
In 1848 Mourad married Jane Cravey, daughter of Henry Cravey and Mary Sapp. Mourad and Jane Bumstead had ten children and lived out their lives near Fletcher in East Texas.