Col. Richard Bass

A repost from 2014:

Richard Bass was born in Perry County, AL on 3 JAN 1819.  He was the father of my grandfather's mother, Bettie Bass Rogers.  He served in the Confederate army in Mississippi (from Texas).  (Source: Historical Data Systems, comp.. American Civil War Soldiers [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 1999. Source 425.)



His father's estate had a petition against it which gives Richard's birth as 1814.  This date is not corroborated by his census data as well as his grave marker which all reflect an 1819 birth.  So the legal petition in Alabama was probably wrong, but it may have helped in some legal sense for him to be of a different age..  Another source has him born in NC rather than AL.  Wherever he was born, he was the youngest of 8 children of his parents, and his father died when he was very young, and he was raised by a step-father. His mother was Julia Ann Holloman Bass Green.  Father was John Bass, both from Wayne County, NC.  His step-father was Jetson Green, who raised him from when he was around 6 years old. (NOTE: I haven't found anything to substantiate this, besides court documents by Green asking for guardianship...not receiving it, but he did marry Mrs. Bass.)

He married Mary Ann Elizabeth Powell on 12 Oct, 1839 in Perry AL, at age 20.  They moved to Louisiana, Union Parish, by the time he was 30, according to the 1850 US Census records.  The birth places of his children put that move between 1841 and 43.

Then the family moved again, according to 1860 Census records, to Walker County, Texas.  His age is listed incorrectly as 20, though he is definitely 40.  At the cusp of the Civil War he was middle aged.

Downtown  Huntsville, Walker County, Texas 1870s

Next census for 1870 shows him in Walker County, working as a merchant, rather than a farmer as he had previously identified himself in census reports.  Being a merchant meant he probably lived closer to a town at this time, perhaps Waverly, where he died.

I mentioned his children as siblings of Elizabeth "Bettie" Bass yesterday.  Most of the Bass children were born in Waverly, Texas or Walker County, Texas.

Col. Richard Bass died 5 May 1880 in Waverly, Walker County, TX, where he is buried.  The Handbook of Texas History says

In 1986 all that remained of Waverly was a cemetery, a nearby Presbyterian church, and a rural subdivision called Old Waverly, which had a population of about fifty people. Texas historical markers were erected for Old Waverly in 1969 and for the Waverly Cemetery in 1978.

More information about the settlers moving to Waverly includes this:

In the autumn of 1852 some 300 people from Alabama, including slaves, moved into the Waverly area. The town was surveyed, mapped, and incorporated in 1858. According to popular legend the town was named for the Waverly novels of Sir Walter Scott. Some considered Waverly to belong to the South of "moonlight, magnolias, and landed gentry." In reality it was a small enclave of the slave-plantation system imported from central Alabama. Waverly Institute, consisting of a male and female academy, was established in 1856. A post office operated from 1855 until 1872. A Masonic lodge operated from 1861 to 1865, and Methodist, Presbyterian, and Episcopalian congregations were started in town.

What became of the tiny town?

In 1870 San Jacinto County was formed from a part of Walker County, including the Waverly area. At that time Waverly leaders, in fear that the Houston and Great Northern Railroad would bring "tramps and ignorance to the town and kill cattle," refused to give the railroad right-of-way. In doing so they ensured the rapid demise of Waverly. The town of New Waverly was established ten miles west of Waverly in 1870 to take advantage of the railroad and became a prosperous town .

A bit more information can be found here...about Waverly, Texas. 

I've posted about his wife, "Mae" Mary Ann Powell Bass HERE.