Daniel  Shipman

Portrait of Daniel  Shipman Headstone Photograph


Daniel Shipman

Participated in the
Disturbance at Anahuac
June, 1832 and the
Storming and Capture
of Bexar, December 5 to 10, 1835
Born in North Carolina
February 20, 1801
Died in Goliad County, Texas
March 4, 1881

Eliza Hancock Shipman

Wife of Daniel Shipman
Born December 22, 1813
Died in Goliad County, Texas
September 11, 1858

Erected by the State of Texas
1936
Full Name: Daniel  Shipman
Location: Section:Republic Hill, Section 1 (C1)
Row:S  Number:4
Reason for Eligibility: Republic of Texas Veteran 
Birth Date: February 20, 1801 
Died: March 4, 1881 
Burial Date: Reinterred June 15, 1938 
 
SHIPMAN, DANIEL (1801-1881). Daniel Shipman, one of the Old Three Hundred, was born in North Carolina on February 20, 1801, the son of Mary (Robinson) and Moses Shipman. The family left South Carolina on March 5, 1814, to follow the frontier. After making crops in North Carolina and Tennessee, they followed their relatives and neighbors, the family of Edward Burleson, to Illinois and then Missouri in 1815. From there, in 1821, they drifted down into Arkansas and then to the Pecan Point region of North Texas, where they arrived on March 19, 1822. Daniel and his friend Charles Isaac Nidever rode south to explore the Brazos River region; they reached the home of Martin Varner in Independence on April 8. After reporting to his father, Shipman joined Stephen F. Austin's colony in the fall of 1823. They received a labor of land at the juncture of the Brazos River and Mill Creek in May or June of 1824. Young Shipman served for a time on a surveying crew under William Selkirk before returning to his father's farm to raise a crop. He fought the Karankawa Indians during the summer of 1825 under Capt. Amos Rawls and later under Capt. Horatio Chriesman, but then quarreled with Austin over a quarter league that he had been promised. He visited the colony of Martín De León, where he intended to acquire a full league. Although he became friendly with De León and his family, Shipman was dissatisfied with the land and the colonists and so returned to the Brazos. In partnership with Nidever, he received a one-league headright now in Brazoria County on May 21, 1827. Shipman married Margaretta Kelly on September 23, 1828, and subsequently settled on Oyster Creek in Fort Bend County.

He served in Capt. Francis W. Johnson's company in the Anahuac Disturbances of 1832 and in Capt. John Byrd's company at the siege of Bexar. He was with Lt. Thomas H. Borden, the company's temporary commander, at the storming of the city in December 1835, and is said to have been at the side of Benjamin R. Milam when he was shot. On August 2, 1836, Shipman and his father enlisted in Byrd's four-month volunteers; Shipman served until the company was disbanded on January 18, 1837. In February 1838 Shipman received half a league and a labor in Harris County as a head of household and an army veteran. By 1840 he owned 2,214 acres of land in Bexar County, an equal amount in Brazoria County, and 288 acres in Harris County. On February 24, 1844, he was elected justice of the peace of Fort Bend County. In 1867 he was a resident of Washington County.

After the death of his first wife, Shipman married Eliza Hancock. In 1879 he published Frontier Life: 58 Years in Texas. The book is largely derived from the work of Dudley G. Wooten and other writers, but its early chapters are Shipman's own richly detailed and colorful memoirs. Shipman died near Goliad on March 4, 1881, at the home of his son Daniel, Jr. He and his second wife are buried in the State Cemetery in Austin. His younger brother John was killed on the Mier expedition.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Daniel Shipman, Frontier Life: 58 Years in Texas (1879). Andrew Jackson Sowell, History of Fort Bend County (Houston: Coyle, 1904; rpt, Richmond, Texas: Fort Bend County Historical Museum, 1974).

Thomas W. Cutrer

"SHIPMAN, DANIEL." The Handbook of Texas Online. [Accessed Fri Feb 28 14:58:32 US/Central 2003].
Notes:

#9141) Daniel Shipman's third wife, Martha J. Haley, is buried in the Brenham Masonic Cemetery in Brenham, Washington County, Texas. Research provided by Joe D. Wilson
Entered by Administrator on 12/23/2013

#9356) According to court documents and census records, Daniel Shipman spent the last years of his life with Daniel and Eliza's son Edward M. Shipman. Research provided by Joe D. Wilson.
Entered by on 12/23/2013

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