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RESEARCH REPORT ON THE FAMILY OF ZEBEDEE HANCOCK AFTER 1824 by Tonya S. Reiter
Part Two-William Hancock
William Hancock’s surviving family, widow Helen, son George, and married daughter, Clarissa were living in Leon County, Florida in 1850. The Needham and Clarissa Eason family and the Hancocks relocated to Lavaca County, Texas around 1856. This is where Needham died in 1858. He was very wealthy at his death, so Clarissa did not lack for material security. On the 1860 US Census, Clarissa’s real estate value was listed at $10,000 while her personal wealth totaled $24,450. She owned twenty-two enslaved men, women, and children. The land the Easons owned and worked was on the border of Lavaca and Colorado counties.
Needham Eason had written a will just days before he died, leaving bequests for the two children from his first marriage and for the six children he fathered with Clarissa. After Needham died, Clarissa took on the very large undertaking of managing the plantation. She did very well and the farm produced 91 bales of cotton in 1859. The next year the farm production improved. 110 bales of cotton brought in more than $10,000 which offset the $8800 in expenses Clarissa incurred building a new house and maintaining the farm and her family. Her critics in the community, who thought she was recklessly spending her deceased husband’s money, were silenced. But, Clarissa, again, scandalized her neighbors by driving around the countryside in a band-new fancy carriage and attending camp meetings and receiving friends in her tent.
Things were going well into the early 1860s. The children were schooled and Clarissa had paid the material part of the legacies due to her stepson and stepdaughter. In 1862, intending to raise the cash needed to pay each of her stepchildren $2000, she sold fifty bales of cotton. Unfortunately, Clarissa accepted Confederate bonds as payment and in 1865 when her stepson returned to claim the money his father had left him, the bonds were worthless. Needham, Jr. sued his step-mother, but a review of her management of the plantation shows no abuse. Some of the problems Clarissa encountered were outside of her control. In 1863, 1864, and 1865, her most valuable enslaved men and mules were impressed by the Confederacy. The mules were never returned and, of course, the men were freed at the end of the war. Like other Southern slaveholders, the Eason family lost a great deal of wealth through the manumission of their enslaved workers. Needham, Jr.’s suit put him at odds with the rest of the family. He moved away from the area and took up the practice of medicine.
Clarissa died in 1871. Her children, William Hancock’s grandchildren, stayed in Texas. The Eason plantation assets were liquidated by sale and division. Two of Clarissa’s sons ran a general merchandise store and one became a teacher. Clarissa’s daughter, Christian, married John C. Simmons and raised a large family in Gonzales County, Texas.
William Hancock’s son, George Washington Hancock, had lived with his mother in his sister, Clarissa’s household well into the 1850s. He married Jerusha Nancy Box in 1857. She was from Alabama. They were the parents of two children, a daughter, George Ann Hancock and a son, William Box Hancock. George Ann’s daughter, Jemmie Newton, was something of a family historian, so stay tuned for her history of George Washington Hancock and his descendants in the next installment.
For the information on Clarissa Hancock Eason’s life in Texas, I am indebted to the detailed research on Colorado County, Texas done by Paul C. Boethel, “The Widow’s Plight and Place,” Nesbitt Memorial Library Journal, 3, no. 1 (January 1993), 33-37, https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth151387/m1/33/?q=Journal. I have freely quoted his work in this report.
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