History of Dallas County, Texas

It is both wise and just that the correct history of the original settlement and reclamation from savagery of every district in the United States should be preserved by the inhabitants of such locality. It is a source of pleasure to the descendants and successors of the first occupants; and, when its accomplishment may have demanded, as in all this section of country, both moral and physical courage, combined with intelligence and steadfastness of purpose, its preservation tends to the elevation of each succeeding generation occupying the same soil. It descends as a higher title to true manhood and womanhood than are the merely inherited titles of rank in the old countries of Europe. It is the base upon which rests a degree of laudable self-respect and inherited patriotism unknown to the old and intensified populations of the old world.

 

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In the fall and winter of 1840-41 the fort, since known as Bird's Port, about twenty-two miles westerly from Dallas, on the north side of the Main or West fork of the Trinity, was built by a company of three months Rangers, under Capt. John Bird, all residents of Bowie and Red River counties. They soon returned home and left the post unoccupied. Not far from the same time, but the precise date is unknown, Robert Sloan, in command of a detachment from a company of "minute" men in Red River county, made a hasty scout through this country, and while here one of the men, named David Clubb, formerly of Illinois and a soldier in the Black Hawk war of 1832, was killed by Indians at a small lake on the Elm fork of the Trinity, a short distance above its mouth and below the Keenan crossing. It has been erroneously said that this man^s name was Samuel Chubb, and that he was killed on the east side of White Rock creek. Sloan was not the captain of the Red River company, but a leader of one of the squads into which it was divided for alternate scouting purposes.