| Autobiography leaves account of McGaffeys |
| Dateline: NEDERLAND |
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Mrs. Otis McGaffey was a pioneer resident of Sabine Pass for over 30
years, and her autobiography tells of dozens of hardships and horrors that
she endured, including the environment, Civil War and a yellow fever
epidemic. |
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Mary Tomb McCollister was born on March 4, 1822 in Salem, N.Y., where
she lived and attended school until age 10. The family moved in 1832 to the
frontier outpost of White Pigeon, Mich. At first they traveled in a barge
down the Erie Canal to Lake Erie, where they boarded a steamboat for
Detroit. She continued her studies in White Pigeon, one of her classmates
being
Otis McGaffey, whom she married on May 18, 1841. |
| McGaffey had already made a visit to the Republic of Texas
with his father
Neal, and both became citizens by taking the oath of allegiance at
Beaumont on Dec. 31, 1839. They immediately returned to Michigan; Otis to
marry, and each to bring his family to Sabine Pass, which had been founded
in 1832 by Otis' uncle,
John McGaffey. |
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The McGaffeys left Michigan by horse and wagon, traveling first to St.
Louis, where they boarded a steamboat bound for New Orleans. Upon reaching
the Red River, they disembarked and caught another steamboat to
Natchitoches, La. Again they traveled by horse and wagon to Texas. |
| When they reached Sabine Pass, they rented a vacant
warehouse, where Otis planned to live and operate a store; there were only
four neighbors living nearby. They quickly had their first encounter with "gallinippers"
(mosquitoes), which were a threat to man and beast. One wag described the
giant alligators, "large as a horse's body," and 15 feet or more long, which
sunned themselves beside her kitchen, and thus prevented children from
playing outside. |
| The McGaffeys became the parents of nine children, and for 30
years Otis owned Sabine Pass' leading mercantile and cotton commission
business, stocking all the early wares needed to sustain the frontier
economy, and buying and selling ginned cotton, hides, tobacco and other
frontier produce. In 1862, during the Civil War, the family fled to Wiess
Bluff during a virulent yellow fever epidemic, but not before three family
members died, including Otis' mother
Hannah, his daughter
Amelia, and his son-in-law,
Lt. R.J. Parsons. The family at first
attended the Methodist Church from 1848 until around 1870, after which most
of them joined the Tremont Baptist Church. |
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The Sabine Pass Beacon of June 10, 1871 carried the large ad of Otis
McGaffey and Co. The firm stocked a large variety of fresh and canned foods,
hardware, glassware, ready-made garments and other dry goods, saddlery and
all leather goods, farm implements and musical instruments. The writer
believes that Otis McGaffey earned a small fortune in gold, shipping cotton
aboard blockade runners during the Civil War. |
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Mary McGaffey wrote that her family had endured 10 hurricanes, two each
in 1871 and 1875, during which the house and store floors were always
flooded. Fed up with those disasters, which threatened their lives, the
McGaffeys sold out in 1875, and moved to Luling, Texas, where daughter
Mary Jane Keith owned a store. While an invalid in 1895, Mary McGaffey
wrote her long autobiography, prior to her death on March 28, 1896. Otis
McGaffey died at age 88 in 1908, and was buried beside his wife in the
Luling City Cemetery. |
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