The Documented Genealogy of Curtis Lynn Older

Relationship of Curtis Lynn Older
to
Joseph Kerr / Carr Junior, Alamo Defender
(1814 - 06 March 1836)


Curtis Lynn Older is a
First Cousin, 5 times removed of Joseph Kerr Junior

Download Adobe Acrobat File - Joseph Kerr at Alamo - (Texas Archives Records)

Relationship of Joseph Kerr, Jr. to John Kerr Sr.:

1) John Kerr Sr.
2) Joseph Kerr Sr., son of John Kerr Sr.
3) Joseph Kerr Jr., grandson of John Kerr, Sr.


Relationship of Curtis Lynn Older to John Kerr Sr.:

1) John Kerr Sr.
2) Samuel Kerr (son)
3) Nancy Kerr (granddaughter)
4) Elias B. Gouty (1st great grandson)
5) Joseph P. Gouty (2nd great grandson)
6) Robert William Gouty (3rd great grandson)
7) Mavis Lorene Gouty (4th great granddaughter)
8) Curtis Lynn Older (5th great grandson) 1st cousin, 5 times removed, of Joseph Kerr Jr.
9) Rachael Lynn Older (6th great granddaughter) 1st cousin 6 times removed of Joseph Kerr Jr.

Documents in the Texas Archives Related to Joseph and Nathaniel Massie Kerr

1. Republic of Texas }
County of Harrisburg} I do herby certify that the within is a true copy of the original letters of administration issued from this office on the 16th inst.
Houston Dec 16, 1837

Witness my hand and seal
this 16th day of Dec 1837
Clerk of Probates
?? ???


2. Republic of Texas
County of Harrisburg
Probate Court, } On the 6th day of November
Dec. 16 1837 } last James D. Kerr
appeared in open court and applied for the administration of the Estate of Nathaniel M. Kerr deceased: And the said James D. Kerr having complied with all the requisitions of the law, and there being no legal objection filed to his appointment, it is ordered by the Court that the said James D. Kerr be, and he is hereby appointed the administrator of said Estate, with full and ample power to settle the same according to law-always subject to the decrees and orders of this Court.

?? (SS) A? ?Briscoe?
Clerk of Probate Judge of Property
?Justice


3. Department of State
Republic of Texas

I the undersigned Secretary of State in and for the Republic of Texas do hereby certify that James Collinsworth who administered the oath to the offiant? W H Patton as stated with in was at the time and still is chief justice of this Republic with full power to administer oaths and that all of his official acts as such are entitled to full faith and credit
Given under my hand
and seal of Office at the
City of Houston this 22nd
day of March 1837 and in
(not legible)
J. Pinckney Henderson
Secy of State


4. Houston Dec 3, 1837
This is to certify that I was acquainted with N. M. Kerr and Joseph Kerr of Louisiana and that the former died in February and the latter Joseph Kerr I have no doubt was massacred at the Alamo on 6th of March 1836 he at this time was Orderly Sergeant.
J. C. Neill then
Col. of Artilery and
Comd of Bexar


5. City of Houston Republic of Texas
May 21st 1837
Personally appeared before the under?? Chief Justice of the Republic of Texas William H. Patton Quartermaster General of the Texas Army and made oath that he was at San Antonio in Texas on or about the 17th of February 1836 at which place he was ?? ??? ??? ?with? Nathaniel M. Kerr and Joseph Kerr who had entered the Texas army. He understood that they were from Louisiana. Nathaniel M Kerr died after a very short illness on or about the 17th of February 1836 and was ?supposed to be poisoned? and this officiant assisted to bury him - and this officiant is ?informed?
?are? ?this?
attack and massacre at the Alamo.

Sworn to ??? }
?? the date ?? } W. H. Patton
written }

Jas Collinsworth
Chief Justice

___________M___days
N. M. Kerr___3____11
Joseph Kerr__4____00

(Calculations at the bottom of the document appear to arrive at totals of $47.19 and $42.13 which may have been the amounts due to Joseph Kerr and Nathaniel Massie Kerr respectively.)


KERR, JOSEPH (1814-1836). Joseph Kerr, Alamo defender, son of General Kerr, was born at Lake Providence, Louisiana, in 1814. He and his brother, Nathaniel, traveled to Texas with Capt. S. L. Chamblis's Louisiana Volunteers for Texas Independence. In early February 1836 they were honorably discharged from Chamblis's company because their horses were disabled. The brothers continued on to San Antonio de Béxar, where Nathaniel died of a sudden illness. Joseph remained with the Texan garrison, entered the Alamo on February 23, 1836, and died on March 6 in the battle of the Alamo.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Daughters of the American Revolution, The Alamo Heroes and Their Revolutionary Ancestors (San Antonio, 1976). Bill Groneman, Alamo Defenders (Austin: Eakin, 1990). Amelia W. Williams, A Critical Study of the Siege of the Alamo and of the Personnel of Its Defenders (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas, 1931; rpt., Southwestern Historical Quarterly 36 (April 1933), 37 (July, October 1933, January, April 1934).

Joseph Kerr, brother of Samuel Kerr, His life is well told in a book entitled "General Joseph Kerr of Chillicothe, Ohio. Ohio's Lost Senator". There is also a biography of him in the Ohio Archaelogy and Historical Socity Publication XII,p 16 4. Two of his sons, Nathaniel and Joseph Kerr, were in Col. James Bowie's group of 100 men who gave up their lives March 6, 1836, at the Alamo.

Joseph KERR, b. 1814, LA; d. Mar., 6, 1836
residence: Lake Providence LA
son of Gen. Kerr of Lake Providence, LA
brother of Nathaniel Kerr (d. Feb. 19, 1836)
uncle of James D. Kerr and Harriett Kerr Davison

Joseph Kerr Junior (1814-1836). Joseph Kerr, Alamo defender, son of General Kerr, was born at Lake Providence, Louisiana, in 1814. He and his brother, Nathaniel, traveled to Texas with Capt. S. L. Chamblis's Louisiana Volunteers for Texas Independence. In early February 1836 they were honorably discharged from Chamblis's company because their horses were disabled. The brothers continued on to San Antonio de Béxar, where Nathaniel died of a sudden illness. Joseph remained with the Texan garrison, entered the Alamo on February 23, 1836, and died on March 6 in the battle of the Alamo.qv

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Daughters of the American Revolution, The Alamo Heroes and Their Revolutionary Ancestors (San Antonio, 1976). Bill Groneman, Alamo Defenders (Austin: Eakin, 1990). Amelia W. Williams, A Critical Study of the Siege of the Alamo and of the Personnel of Its Defenders (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas, 1931; rpt., Southwestern Historical Quarterly 36 (April 1933), 37 (July, October 1933, January, April 1934).

Joseph Kerr Senior (1765 – August 22, 1837) was a Democratic-Republican politician from Ohio. He served in the United States Senate. Born in Kerrtown, Pennsylvania (now Chambersburg), Kerr (pronounced "car") moved to Ohio in 1792. He served in a number of positions as clerk, judge and justice of the peace in the Northwest Territory. After statehood was declared, he was elected to the Ohio House of Representatives in 1808, 1816, 1818, and 1819 and the Ohio State Senate in 1804 and 1810. He also served as a brigadier general of Ohio Volunteers during the War of 1812, in charge of supplying provisions to the Army of the Northwest. Kerr was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1814 to fill a vacancy created by the resignation of Thomas Worthington. Kerr served from December 10, 1814, to March 3, 1815. He did not seek re-election. Kerr's extensive farm went bankrupt in 1826, and he moved to Memphis, Tennessee and then to rural Louisiana, where he purchased a homestead.

Nathaniel Massie (1763 – November 3, 1813) was a frontier surveyor in the Ohio Country who became a prominent land owner, politician, and soldier. He founded fifteen early towns in what became the State of Ohio, including its first capital, Chillicothe. In 1807, the Ohio General Assembly declared him the winner of the election for governor, but he refused the office.

A native of the colony of Virginia, Massie served briefly in the Virginia militia during the American Revolutionary War. He platted the town of Chillicothe on his own land. Massie was one of the largest landowners in early Ohio, and served as a major general in the Ohio militia.

He served as a delegate to the 1802 Ohio Constitutional Convention and was a leader of the Jeffersonian faction that supported statehood. He was a leader of the Chillicothe Junto, a group of Chillicothe Democratic-Republican politicians who brought about the admission of Ohio as a state in 1803 and largely controlled its politics for some years thereafter. Massie served in the General Assembly and was the first president of the Ohio Senate.

Massie led troops in the War of 1812, but died of pneumonia in the late autumn of 1813 at the age of 50.


A Line in the Sand: The Alamo in Blood and Memory
By Randy Roberts, James S. Olson
Published by Simon & Schuster, 2001
ISBN 0743222792, 9780743222792
352 pages

Ohio's Founding Fathers

By Fred J. Milligan

I have the book if you would like more information. "Two of General Kerr's sons, Nathaniel Massie Kerr and Joseph Kerr, were in Col. James Bowie's group of 100 men who joined in the Texan fight for liberty and with him gave up their lives, March 6, 1836, at the Alamo where a bronze tablet marks their last resting place. Their brother, James D. Kerr, was appointed their adminstrator because both died intestate and unmarried and Texas granted them and their heirs vast tracts of lands for their services. Some of this land was lost to the heirs but some was held for their brothers and sisters." Renee Kerr
 
Hi: Joseph Kerr and his brother Nathaniel died at the Alamo after joining a group of 30 volunteers. There is a plaque with both of their names at the site. Their father was one of most famous Kerrs, General Joseph Kerr, later referred to as the "Ohio's Lost Senator." He was born 1765 in Chambersburg, PA and died in LA in 1837. He married Mary Daugherty. They had: Aletha, Harriet, Chambers, Elie Williams, Susan Blair, Nathaniel Massie, James D., and Joseph. They all descend from John Kerr, 1745-1807 and Mary Doherty, both from PA. I descend from the General's brother John Kerr and Christena Nisewanger. Hope this helps – Bob


KERR, JOSEPH (1814-1836). Joseph Kerr, Alamo defender, son of General Kerr, was born at Lake Providence, Louisiana, in 1814. He and his brother, Nathaniel, traveled to Texas with Capt. S. L. Chamblis's Louisiana Volunteers for Texas Independence. In early February 1836 they were honorably discharged from Chamblis's company because their horses were disabled. The brothers continued on to San Antonio de Bexar, where Nathaniel died of a sudden illness. Joseph remained with the Texan garrison, entered the Alamo on February 23, 1836, and died on March 6 in the battle of the Alamo.

Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 37, Number 4: 

Footnote 18

On January 9, 1875, before Robert W. Walton, Notary Public of Navarro County, Texas, S. L. Chambliss swore that on or near the first of February, 1836, he as captain of the Louisiana Volunteers for Texas Independence, honorably discharged Nathaniel and Joseph Kerr from his company, because of the disability of their horses. He sent them to join the Texas troops at San Antonio, Texas. He further swore that their names appear as citizens of Bexar County on abstracts of land certificates, but says that is a mistake, for they were volunteer soldiers from Louisiana, fighting for Texas independence, and that they fell at the Alamo.

On the same day and before the same Notary, Mary E. Martin swore that in February, 1836, she saw and read a letter, written to General Kerr of Lake Providence, Louisiana, by his son, Nathaniel Kerr, who was then stationed at the Alamo in San Antonio. In this letter Nathaniel Kerr stated that he and his brother, Joseph, were honorably discharged from their original company in the Texas service, on account of the disability of their horses and that they were then stationed at the Alamo. It was later believed by all their friends that both brothers had died at the Alamo.

Both these men were unmarried, and their heirs were a niece, Harriett Kerr Davisson, and a nephew, James D. Kerr. In their Power of Attorney, made February 24, 1855, the claimants state that Nathaniel Kerr died from a sudden disease at the Alamo on February 19, 1836. Likewise Bounty Warrant, Nacogdoches 416, states the same and gives the man--Nathaniel Kerr--an honorable discharge by death.

Bounty Warrant, Nacogdoches 417, shows that Joseph Kerr "died with Travis at the Alamo, March 6, 1836." These warrants were granted by Barnard E. Bee, December 19, 1837, and were approved by James S. Gillett, June 21, 1854.


The Battle of the Alamo (February 23 – March 6, 1836) is the most famous battle of the Texas Revolution. After an insurgent army Texan settlers and adventurers from the United States drove all Mexican troops out of Mexican Texas, Mexican President Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna led an invasion to regain control of the area. Mexican forces arrived in San Antonio de Bexar on February 23 and initiated a siege of the Texan forces garrisoned at the Alamo Mission.

In the early morning hours of March 6 the Mexican army launched an assault on the Alamo. The outnumbered Texans repulsed two attacks, but were unable to fend off a third. As Mexican soldiers scaled the walls, most of the Texan soldiers retreated into the long barracks or the chapel. Several small groups who were unable to reach these points attempted to escape and were killed outside the walls by the waiting Mexican cavalry. The Mexican soldiers fought room-to-room and soon had control over the Alamo. Between five and seven Texans may have surrendered; if so, they were quickly executed on Santa Anna's orders. Most eyewitness accounts reported between 182 and 257 Texan dead, while most Alamo historians agree that 400–600 Mexicans were killed or wounded. Of the Texans who fought during the battle, only two survived: Joe, spared because he was a slave, and Brigido Guerrero, a Mexican Army deserter who convinced Mexican soldiers he had been imprisoned. Women and children, primarily family members of the Texan soldiers, were questioned by Santa Anna and then released.

On Santa Anna's orders, three of the survivors were sent to Gonzales to spread word of the Texan defeat. After hearing this news, Texan army commander Sam Houston ordered a retreat; this sparked the Runaway Scrape, a mass exodus of citizens and the Texas government towards the east (away from the Mexican army). News of the Alamo's fall prompted many Texas colonists to join Houston's army. On the afternoon of April 21 the Texan army attacked Santa Anna's forces in the Battle of San Jacinto. During the battle many Texans shouted "Remember the Alamo!" Santa Anna was captured and forced to order his troops out of Texas, ending Mexican control of the area, which subsequently became the Republic of Texas.

By March 24 a list of names of the Texans who died at the Alamo had begun to be compiled. The first history of the battle was published in 1843, but serious study of the battle did not begin until after the 1931 publication of Amelia W. Williams's dissertation attempting to identify all of the Texans who died at the Alamo. The first full-length, non-fiction book covering the battle was published in 1948. The battle was first depicted in film in the 1911 silent film The Immortal Alamo, and has since been featured in numerous movies, including one directed by John Wayne. The Alamo church building has been designated an official Texas state shrine, with the Daughters of the Republic of Texas acting as permanent caretakers.


James Clinton Neill (c. 1790 – March 31, 1848) was a 19th century American soldier and politician, most noted for his role in the Texas Revolution and the early defense of the Alamo. He was born in North Carolina. Neill was born in North Carolina. He enlisted on 20 September 1814 and was discharged on 10 April 1815. He fought in the Creek War and was wounded at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814. In the military he commanded a company in Major William Woodfolk's Battalion of Tennessee Militia Infantry. He lived in Tennessee with his wife Margaret Harriett, who bore him three children – George Jefferson Neill (b. 1808), Samuel Clinton Neill (b. 1815) and Harriett (b. 1820). After time in Tennessee he moved his young family to Alabama, Neill served in the state legislature, then on to Texas. The family moved to Texas in 1831 with Stephen F. Austin's third colony where he received a league of land(4,428) acres. They settled in (Viesca District) what is now Milam County. Neill served as a district representative in the Convention of 1833. On January 17, 1836, James Bowie arrived with the suggestion from Sam Houston to remove the artillery and blow up the Alamo. Houston had written the Provisional Government asking for approval of his orders. Houston sent Bowie to San Antonio because he trusted Bowie's opinion. Instead of leaving the Alamo and falling back to Gonzales or Copano Bay, Bowie and Neill became committed to its defense. Bowie, impressed with Neill's leadership, wrote, "No other man in the army could have kept men at this post, under the neglect they have experienced." Despite Houston's orders to have the Alamo destroyed as indefensible, Neill and Bowie vowed "... we will rather die in these ditches than give it up to the enemy." However, Neill was soon badly in need of supplies, as well as soldiers.

On February 11, Neill left the Alamo, likely to recruit additional reinforcements and gather supplies for the garrison.[6] He transitioned command to Travis, the highest-ranking regular army officer in the garrison. Neill was heading back to the Alamo when the fort fell to Mexican troops on March 6 (the Battle of the Alamo). By the day of the battle, Neill had reached Gonzales, where he signed a personal voucher for ninety dollars to buy medicine for the Alamo garrison.

On March 13, he joined the withdrawal of Sam Houston's army to Groce's Retreat on the Brazos River. Unable to transport their cannons, Houston ordered them dumped into the Guadalupe River before abandoning Gonzales. That changed on April 11 when the "Twin Sisters" —two matched six-pounders—reached the Texan camp. The brass cannons were a gift from the people of Cincinnati, Ohio. Since Neill was a ranking artillery officer, Houston named him to command the revived artillery corps. On April 20, Neill commanded the Twin Sisters during the Battle of San Jacinto. During this fight, his artillery corps repulsed an enemy probe of the woods in which the main Texan army was concealed. Neill was seriously wounded when a fragment of a Mexican grapeshot caught him in the hip.

King, C. Richard, James Clinton Neill, The Shadow Commander of the Alamo, Eakin Press; ISBN 1-57168-577-4

COLLINSWORTH, JAMES (1806-1838). James Collinsworth, lawyer, jurist, and signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, was born in Davidson County, Tennessee, in 1806, the son of Edmund and Alice (Thompson) Collinsworth. He attended school in Tennessee, studied law, and was admitted to the Tennessee bar in 1826. He was an ally of Andrew Jackson, Sam Houston, and other leading Tennessee politicians. From April 30, 1829, until early 1834, Collinsworth served as United States district attorney for the Western District of Tennessee. By 1835 he had moved to Matagorda, in the Brazos Municipality, Texas, and begun the practice of law. Along with Asa Brigham, John S. D. Byrom, and Edwin Waller he represented Brazoria in the Convention of 1836.

At the convention Collinsworth signed the Texas Declaration of Independence, introduced and guided to adoption a resolution making his fellow Tennessean Sam Houston commander in chief of the Texas army, became chairman of the military affairs committee, and served on the committee appointed to draft a constitution for the new Republic of Texas. After the convention adjourned, Houston, on April 8, 1836, appointed Collinsworth his aide-de-camp with the rank of major. After the battle of San Jacintoqv Gen. Thomas J. Rusk commended him for his bravery and chivalry.

From April 29 to May 23, 1836, Collinsworth served as acting secretary of state in President David G. Burnet's cabinet. On May 26, 1836, because of his intimacy with President Andrew Jackson, he was designated a commissioner to the United States to seek assistance and possible annexation. The mission failed. Later in the year Collinsworth declined Houston's offer to make him attorney general of the Republic of Texas. Instead, on November 30, 1836, he was elected to a term in the Senate of the republic.

When the judiciary of the republic was organized, Collinsworth, on December 16, 1836, was appointed the first chief justice, a post he held until his death. Also in 1836 he helped organize the Texas Railroad, Navigation, and Banking Company, and the following year he helped found the city of Richmond. He was a charter member of the Philosophical Society of Texas, founded in 1837.

PATTON, WILLIAM HESTER (1808-1842). William Hester Patton, soldier, surveyor, and legislator, was born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, in 1808. He moved to Brazoria County, Texas, in March 1832. As an early advocate of Texas independence, he served as a sergeant in Capt. John Austin's company at the battle of Velasco in June 1832. He enlisted in the Texas army on September 28, 1835, at the beginning of the revolution; commanded a company at the siege of Bexar, December 5 through 10, 1835; and was appointed to receive the weapons surrendered by Gen. Martín Perfecto de Cos's army. On December 21, 1835, Gen. Sam Houston appointed Patton acting assistant quartermaster with the rank of lieutenant and ordered him to Velasco to supply arriving volunteers and forward them to Houston's army. Patton was still at San Antonio on February 5, however, when he and the other officers of the Alamo garrison signed a memorial requesting that the soldiers under their command be represented at Washington-on-the-Brazos by Samuel A. Maverick and Jesse B. Badgett. On March 13, 1836, Patton was elected captain of the Fourth Company of Col. Sidney Sherman's Second Regiment, Texas Volunteers, also known as the Columbia Company. Patton was attached to Houston's staff as an aide-de-camp with the rank of major, and his company was led at the battle of San Jacinto by Lt. David Murphree. After the battle Patton was given custody of Antonio López de Santa Anna and was one of the commissioners selected to escort him to Washington, D.C. On July 14, 1836, Patton was one of eighteen officers who testified against President David G. Burnet on charges of usurpation and treason. In 1837 Houston appointed him quartermaster general of the Army of the Republic of Texas, and his nomination was confirmed on May 22. On August 26, 1837, Patton resigned from the army and settled in Bexar County, where he worked as a surveyor and served as justice of the peace. On September 25, 1837, he was elected to represent Bexar County in the House of Representatives of the Second Congress of the Republic of Texas; he served until May 25, 1838. An energetic and aggressive Indian fighter, Patton was severely wounded in an Indian fight on Leon Creek near San Antonio on October 28, 1838. He was murdered at his home on the San Antonio River, some thirty miles below the city of San Antonio, by Mexican bandits on June 12, 1842. Patton's West Columbia sugar plantation was purchased after his death by James Stephen Hogg and is now maintained by the state of Texas as the Varner-Hogg Plantation State Historical Park.