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Surnames: CHAFFIN CHAFIN
Classification: Query
Message Board URL:
http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/an/4NI.2ACEB/417
Message Board Post:
This is why I love genealogy:
On the night of April 20, 1836, a tired and angry “army” of Texians were camped at the
confluence of Buffalo Bayou and the San Jacinto River in southeast Texas. Among them was
a company of volunteers from San Augustine, Texas, which included 30-year-old James A.
Chaffin. For six weeks, this small band, under the command of General Sam Houston, had
been retreating across Texas in front of a Mexican army that had shown no quarter at the
Alamo. At about three o’clock the next afternoon, April 21, 1836 – celebrated by Texans
everywhere as “San Jacinto Day” -- the Texians advanced across the Plain of St. Hyacinth
and routed a much-decimated force (recently reinforced but still only about one-fifth the
size it had been at the Alamo) under the command of the Mexican president, Antonio Lopez
de Santa Anna. The Battle of San Jacinto was one of the most significant in American
history, for it led directly to the Mexican War a decad!
e later, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and the doubling in size of the United States.
James A. Chaffin was born about 1806 to Anderson Chaffin (c.1785-1818) and Frances Vaughn,
who married in Charlotte Co., Virginia on March 4, 1805. Anderson Chaffin was a son of
Joseph Chaffin (c.1756-1841) and Sally Hatchett. Joseph Chaffin was born in Charlotte
Co., Virginia, a son of Joshua Chaffin, Sr. (c.1720-1805) and “Easter” (or “Esther”), my
5th-great-grandparents.
Records in Halifax Co., Virginia clearly establish James A. Chaffin as a son of Anderson
Chaffin. Both Joseph Chaffin and his son, Anderson, moved to Halifax Co., probably in
late 1805, from their original home in Charlotte Co. Anderson Chaffin died in Halifax Co.
in 1818, and considerable litigation followed over the disposition of his estate. These
records establish fairly clearly the identity of his children. But in 1831, James A.
Chaffin sold his land in Halifax Co. and moved to Texas.
He arrived, and apparently settled in, the old Mexican municipality of San Augustine in
East Texas in 1835. He was single when he arrived because he received a single-man’s
headright grant to one-third of a league. He served in Captain Jacob Eberly’s Company in
late 1835, and in the army of the Republic of Texas for all of 1836. At the Battle of San
Jacinto, he was a private in Capt. William Kimbro’s, 8th Infantry Company, of Col. Sidney
Sherman’s 2nd Regiment of volunteers. He was awarded a donation certificate (No. 970) for
having participated in the battle. Later, he was granted a bounty certificate for service
in the army in 1836.
After the Texas Revolution, he returned to San Augustine where, for many years, he owned a
hotel, grocery, and saloon, though not always legally. In 1840, he was charged with
selling gin, brandy, and whiskey and with keeping a billiard table. He nevertheless seems
to have been a respectable citizen, and when he died in 1879, he was a member of the Texas
Veterans Association. He was buried in the Parker Cemetery, five miles south of San
Augustine.
By my calculation, I am a sixth cousin, four time removed, of James A. Chaffin. For any
native Texan (on my mother’s side, I’m 7th-generation), that’s close enough. I have seen
no evidence that James A. Chaffin ever married, but if anyone has more details on his life
and family, please post. Regards to all.
Scott Chafin
Falls Church, VA
Sources:
Curtis Golden Chaffin, “The Family History of Chaffins in Virginia (1717) to Chaffins in
Georgia (2002) and My Life & Travels” (2002), 58, 90-92.
Personal correspondence with Curtis G. Chaffin
Records of the General Land Office of Texas; State Library and Archives of Texas; San
Jacinto Museum; Ralph Smith Collection of San Augustine County Records, 1836-1910, East
Texas Research Center, Ralph Steen Library, Stephen F. Austin State University,
Nacogdoches, Texas.
Stephen L. Hardin, “Texian Iliad: A Military History of the Texas Revolution” (1994),
195-217.