- http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fca90
ASTLEMAN, SYLVANUS (??1832). Sylvanus Castleman, one of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred, moved to Texas from Missouri, probably in 1821 or 1822, for in March 1822 Austin took a lot in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, as payment for surveying Castleman's land in Texas. Seth Ingram surveyed the Castleman land on the west side of the Colorado River above La Grange in 1823. Indians raided the Castleman farm and stole cattle from him just before Austin and the Baron de Bastrop lodged with him in August of the same year. In December Castleman was appointed judge for the alcalde election and, being himself elected alcalde, took his oath of office on January 10, 1824. In April 1824 his daughter Nancy married John Crownover. On July 7, 1824, Castleman received title to two sitios of land in what is now Wharton County, one-half sitio now in Fayette County, and two labores now in Austin County. The census of March 1826 listed him as a farmer and stock raiser aged between forty and fifty. His household included his wife, four sons, two daughters, one servant, and one slave. Castleman died before March 10, 1832, when it was announced that all movable property of Sylvanus Castleman, deceased, would be sold at his house. Elizabeth Castleman, administratrix, gave notice in the Telegraph and Texas Register of July 8, 1840, that she would present her account for final settlement of the estate at the next term of Austin county court, and the July 1841 term of the Fayette county court divided Castleman's Fayette County land among his wife and children.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Eugene C. Barker, ed., The Austin Papers (3 vols., Washington: GPO, 1924?28). Lester G. Bugbee, "The Old Three Hundred: A List of Settlers in Austin's First Colony," Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association 1 (October 1897). J. H. Kuykendall, "Reminiscences of Early Texans," Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association 6?7 (January, April, July 1903). La Grange High School, Fayette County: Past and Present (La Grange, Texas, 1976). Worth Stickley Ray, Austin Colony Pioneers (Austin: Jenkins, 1949; 2d ed., Austin: Pemberton, 1970). Texas Gazette, February 20, 1832. Leonie Rummel Weyand and Houston Wade, An Early History of Fayette County (La Grange, Texas: La Grange Journal, 1936).
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1827 - 1889 (61 years)