William Lafayette Cloud
Pictured is William Lafayette Cloud, a great grandson of Jeremiah Cloud.
Jeremiah Cloud (1784-1861
Jeremiah Cloud was born about 1784 in what became Twiggs county, Georgia. He moved his family to Alabama after the Creek cession of 1814 and again to Texas after her independence from Mexico, settling 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 his descendants spread out and settled in Austin, Washington and Milam counties.
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Surnames researched here.
Simon W. Wiess
Simon Wiess was born Jan. 1, 1800 in Lublin Poland and was an early settler in what would later become Texas, being given land by the Mexican government and made tax collector at Sabine Pass by Santa Ana and later was Deputy Collector of Customs for the Republic of Texas near Camp Sabine. He was Jewish and is thought to be the first Jewish settler in Jefferson County.
He is said to have spoken seven languages fluently. He left home in Poland when he was 15 to become a sailor and came to own several sailing vessels and engaged in the trade between New England and the West Indies. He was a Royal Arch Mason at Constantinople in 1825. His first recorded visit to the United States was on February 22, 1826, when he visited the Mt. Lebanon Lodge in Boston Massachusetts.
He had extensive land holdings in Texas and his sons later owned the largest lumber mill in the world at the time, the Reliance Lumber Mill. The first oil gusher came in on land owned in part by one of his sons and a grandson was president of Humble Oil Company with a college named for him at Rice University.
Mourad W. Bumstead
Mourad Whitfield 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.
Veteran of The Siege of Bexar
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. (Also see the Texas State Library article on the Siege of Bexar.)
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. Mourad died in 1877 at 76 and Jane died in 1912.
