Author: Karen Sikes Collins
“We’ve done a poor job in America of reckoning with our history of slavery. There just aren’t places people can go and have an honest encounter with that history that centres on the lives of enslaved people.”
- Bryan Stevenson, Equal Justice Initiative
The Moore-Hancock Farmstead, built by Elizabeth and Martin Moore in 1849, has the last surviving log house on its original site in Austin. It also has an encompassing African-American history both during slavery and after freedom. The inheritance, sale, and purchase of enslaved persons during the Moore period was accompanied by the interracial breeding of persons who were enslaved or freed by the Hancocks. And after the Civil war, those former slaves ranged from landowners themselves to one imprisoned likely by the Black Codes. The story of the Moore-Hancock Farmstead has all these aspects of Black history. Since the name of a slave is rarely found, almost every name encountered in research has been included here.
Martin Moore was an Irish immigrant born in 1816 who arrived in Washington County, Texas, in 1838 and moved to Austin the next year when it was selected for the capital of the republic. He did not appear to enslave people until 1845 after his marriage to Elizabeth White.
Elizabeth’s family moved from Dallas County, Alabama, first to Brazoria County, Texas in 1838 and in 1839 to Bastrop and Austin. The entourage included Gideon White, his wife Elizabeth Carson, five daughters, at least eight enslaved persons, and business partner Edward Seiders. Gideon was killed by Native Americans in 1842 on Shoal Creek a half mile from his house which was a log cabin built on the creek about 34th Street. His will, written in 1838, listed by name eight slaves: Sterling, Maria, Eda, Jim, Allen, Washington, Susan, and Bob. In his will he gave one enslaved child to each of five daughters when they married and the three adults to his wife. But by the time he died four years later, the probate inventory listed slaves Sterling, Maria, Eda, Dick, Allen, Bob, Susan, Mary, Davy, Stephen, Emily, and Zeno. Jim and Washington were no longer listed but children Dick, Mary, Davy, Stephen, Emily, and Zeno were new additions.
In 1846 his wife sold seven-year-old Davis “Davy” at auction to Wayman Wells for $312 [$12,000 in 2025] and then divided the rest among her daughters. Elizabeth Moore received one enslaved boy named Allen from his estate and later from her mother a girl named Mary and baby, Ujena.
In 1845 tax roles Elizabeth and Martin owned 3 slaves, and by the next year they claimed 5 slaves. The slaves’ names are known because Elizabeth and Martin sold them and the bill of sale noted name and age. Only Allen, Mary and Ujena were accounted for by inheritance. The others were obtained by gift, exchange for goods, or purchased in another place, possibly New Orleans which had a thriving slave market.
On Dec. 15, 1846 the Moores sold Negro children Mary age 8 and Ujena aged about 2, “slaves for life”, for $550 [$22,000 in 2025] to Sarah Lee, wife of Joseph Lee of Austin. These are the enslaved children inherited from Elizabeth’s mother earlier in 1846. They likely were the children of White’s two adult slave women, Eda or Maria, who were given to Elizabeth Moore’s sisters.
On October 18, 1847, Martin alone sold a woman named Larrey age 24, child Mary age 2 1/2, and an infant for $675 [$27,000 in 2025] to Salina Ann Conner of Austin. There is no record of when or how they became his property. He could have received them as payment for goods or obtained them by an unrecorded sale. He imported goods from Galveston, Houston, and New Orleans for his story and could have purchased them (or maybe just Larrey) in one of these places. He owned Larrey for at least a year or maybe two according to tax records and sold her and her two children soon after she had a baby. There is no record of the father of her children.
On October 5, 1849, they sold Allen age 13 “slave for life” for $500 [$20,000] to A. B. Hemphill of Fayette County. Elizabeth had inherited Allen from her father’s estate, and he had been with them for several years. Likely his mother was Eda or Maria.
After placing an ad in the Austin newspaper seeking to buy a house servant, on November 14, 1849 Elizabeth bought Harriet age 21 “slave for life” for $600 [$24,000 in 2025] from Mary Ann Wallace. Harriet had previously been owned by John Craft. During the sixteen years Harriet was with Elizabeth, she apparently had no children. It is unknown which if any of three black Harriets in Austin after the Civil War was this Harriet. If she survived in the 1870 census, she would be a 42-year-old woman with very young or no children. It is a mystery worth solving since for sixteen years, she helped Elizabeth raise five children, including Kate, the future wife of gunfighter, Ben Thompson, and ancestor of the only descendants of the original builders. And her labor helped run the now historic Moore-Hancock Farmstead.
Beginning in 1846, Martin began advertising cattle for sale. He owned 200 head by then. Martin may have rented or otherwise obtained the labor of enslaved persons, possibly including Renty, to tend his cattle. But by 1853-54 Martin was listed as Renty’s owner. Renty (Reno, Renta) Lott was born ca. 1830 in Florida Territory and arrived in Travis County in 1842 as an enslaved twelve year old. No bill of sale or gift for Renty is known but he appears as Moore’s taxable “property” worth $1,000 in 1854 (that’s $37,000 today).
Renty married Julia who was a slave born in 1834 in Alabama likely on the John Allen Hancock plantation. She was brought to Onion Creek in Bastrop County as a young child by John Allen’s son William Ryan Hancock. When William died in 1852, his orphaned 10-year-old son James was taken in by his uncle Judge John in Austin. James inherited 18-year-old Julia, and her mother Polly Hancock so they joined the slaves on Judge John’s farm which was a five minute walk from the Moore home where Renty lived.
Martin had about 45 horses and 200 head of cattle so Renty likely was a cowboy and horse wrangler on these 521 acres which ran from about 40th Street to Richcreek, Shoal Creek/Shoalwood to Burnet/Grover with a jog at 47th. There was a second small log house where the fire station on Hancock Drive stands today (one block away) which may have served as quarters for Moore slaves, although it was common for a house slave to sleep in the main house. The enclosed back porch room of the main log house, maybe with its own fireplace, may have been Harriet’s quarters.
Martin was killed by a horse in 1859. Texas joined the Confederacy in February 1861 but was largely outside the battlefield. Renty continued with widow Elizabeth as she increased her horse herd. Renty left Elizabeth’s ownership by about 1862-63. After slavery, Renty registered to vote in Travis County. In 1871 he was listed as delinquent in taxes indicating he owned tools or livestock. Late in 1871 Renty began serving a two year sentence in the Huntsville Prison. At that time in southern states it was not uncommon for African-Americans to be incarcerated on flimsy charges and their labor sold to individuals to the great financial benefit of the state.
Renty and Julia had three children born before the end of the Civil War: Butler b. 1856, William b. 1858, and Booker b. 1863. Julia Lott had four more children after slavery: Thomas b. 1870, Robert b. 1873, Walter b. 1876, and Laney b. 1879. It is not known if Renty or another man was their father. By the 1880 census Renty has disappeared from Julia’s household and she is listed as a widow who washes clothes for a living. Her mother Polly Hancock lived with her. She may have remarried to a Mr. Washington.
The name Booker seemed a common name for a slave in the extended Hancock family. In 1852, when Julia and Polly moved to Judge John’s farm, a 13-year-old mulatto named Booker, possibly Polly’s son, joined them. Julia named her third son Booker, maybe for a brother. In the 1855 estate sale of John Allen Hancock, a youth named Booker was among his slaves. This was before the time of Booker T. Washington who was born in 1856.
Renty and Julia Lott have descendants who live in the Austin area today. Married in 1878 to Fannie Franklin, their oldest son Butler assisted with building the Texas Capitol building. He died in 1930. Two of Butler’s sons, Harry and Butler Jr., married, had families, and died in Austin. Descendants include surnames Nunn, Barrs, Womack and possibly Jones. Some of Renty’s descendants, surnames Johnson and Jerry, live near Atlanta, Georgia.
Judge John Hancock purchased the farmstead from widow Elizabeth Moore in 1866. Judge John Hancock’s family in Alabama fathered some of their own slaves. John Allen Hancock (1780-1855) or other male family members had children with enslaved women according to descendants of both Orange and Rubin Hancock, and recently to DNA results. Orange, born in 1837, was Judge John Hancock's son, and Rubin, born in 1835, Payton, born in 1841, and probably Salem, were mulatto half brothers or blood kin to Judge John Hancock, the second owner of this farmstead.
Judge John (born 1824 in Jackson County, Alabama) came to Texas in 1847 with one slave, and boarded at the Swisher hotel. In 1852 he purchased the adjoining tract northwest of the Moore farm and added a second slave, possibly 22-year-old Salem. In May Judge John became a presiding district court judge traveling a seven-county territory. That summer one of Judge John’s slaves ran away and joined a group of slaves hiding in the hills west of Austin. That slave drowned in the Colorado River.
In September, when his brother William Ryan in Bastrop died, bachelor Judge John took in the two youngest children, orphans William and James, whom he raised like his own sons. Both had inherited slaves from their father, and these slaves likely would have accompanied the two boys when they moved to Travis County. The slaves inherited by William were named Tom, Booker, and Harriet. James inherited Julia, Polly, Lewis, and Martha. Tax rolls for Judge John show an increase from two to seven slaves in 1853 and three more by 1855, probably the slaves inherited by Judge John’s nephews, William and James. Those noted as mulatto were Polly, Julia, Booker and Harriet, possibly all related; the other three were described as black. Title to the seven slaves passed to Judge John since William and James were not listed as slave owners in the 1860 slave census.
To solve the problems of putting to work and housing his 10 slaves, Judge John added several small log houses and fences to the tract of land adjacent to the Moore’s farm. For himself, he continued to board or rent quarters in town and to travel his territory holding court. To supervise his slaves, he imported a white overseer from Alabama, James Doughtry.
When Judge John’s widower father died without a will in 1855, his slaves and all other assets were sold, and the proceeds probably split among his heirs. Judge John was one of the youngest of 10 children. While his older siblings likely were given family slaves when they came to Texas nearly two decades earlier, Judge John had to purchase any remaining family slaves he wanted. He bought nine.
First on his list were "brothers", Orange, Payton, and Rubin, between 16 and 20 years of age and considered prime, for $3,140 [$117,000 in 2025]. They were "brothers" of Salem who was already with Judge John. Daphney, Susan, and Jemima were listed as women but based on the low value placed on Daphney ($50) and Susan ($285), they were probably older [$1800 and $11,000 respectively in 2025]. Perhaps they were mothers of Judge John’s other slaves (Rubin named his second daughter Susan). Dorcas along with her two children was considered prime and valued at $1,505. [$56,000 in 2025]. Dorcas was likely related to one or more of Judge John’s slaves (possible half-sister to Judge John) and she was purchased to keep the family together. She later married a man named Gregg and purchased land from Rubin in Waters Park. The Hancock Family Plantation at Bellefonte, Alabama was over 900 miles from Austin, so the journey to Texas for Judge John and his newly acquired slaves would have taken weeks. If they traveled 100 miles south of Bellefonte, they could have journeyed by the Coosa and Alabama rivers to the coast and onto a Texas port and then overland to Austin also likely making that journey were Judge John’s in-law, Q.J. Nicholds, with two slaves, Margaret and Rafe, and Judge’s older brother George with slave woman, Kate.
Also in the estate sale, a man, woman, and child were sold only as a unit. The Hancock family plantation at Bellefonte, Alabama, was over 900 miles from Austin so the journey to Texas for Judge John and his newly acquired slaves would have taken weeks. Also making that journey were Judge John’s brother-in-law, T. J. Nicholds, with two slaves, Margaret and Rafe, and Judge’s older brother, George, with the slave woman, Kate, he purchased.
These purchases of Hancock family slaves brought Judge John’s slaves in 1856 to 19. In 1858 he had 24, all or most of the increase were children born to his slaves. Julia would have had two children, and the Judge's two biracial sons with Eliza would have been born by then. Even though Judge John was a Unionist and encouraged his nephews to join a Union cavalry during the Civil War fighting against slavery, he had more than two dozen slaves and five slave houses in 1865. All or most of those slaves were born on a Hancock plantation in Alabama or Texas. The emancipation of his 26 slaves in June 1865 cut Judge John’s $25,000 estate value [$484,000 today] in half.
By selling land he recouped his cash, and in 1870 Judge John built a fine large home on North Loop and Hancock Drive for his white family which included his wife Susan, son Edwin, and the two nephews he reared, William and James Hancock, with their wives. Also living in the house was longtime overseer James Doughtry. Later his widowed sister-in-law, Louisa Hancock, also lived in the Judge’s home. His five slave houses behind the big house and other small log cabins continued to provide housing for farm workers, some of them freed slaves (like Salem’s only child John Hancock and his wife Caroline Manor). A young slave named John was credited with saving Judge John’s son when Edwin fell into the family fish pond. That man when freed continued to live on the Hancock place many years and was likely Salem’s son, John. Also living near the Hancock house were two Mexican families named Martinez. Other black heads of households living there were George and Laura Dickerson, George and Lizzie Goodron, Harris and Ida White, Eugenia Jackson, Mary from Alabama, Jesse Holmes (maybe Holman), James and Elizabeth Hill, and Ellis Endsmore.
Following the Civil War, Hancock’s biracial son and former slave Orange and his family lived in the log farmstead house which Judge John purchased from widow Moore. There daughter Emma practiced writing her name on the walls and luckily also wrote the date 1868 in a tiny room painted turquoise with a pink ceiling. Orange worked for Judge John “by the month” according to Emma. The farmstead probably housed more than Orange’s family; maybe one or more of his half brothers also lived here.
In a difficult time for former slaves who owned nothing, Orange and his brothers all purchased farm land in the 1870s around Waters Park and Duval, now north Austin. Family stories agreed that Judge John helped them but no records have been found. The fact that their benefactor was a lawyer and Congressman may have shielded them from some of the worst treatment legalized by Black Code laws and resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan. They all registered to vote along with John, Salem’s son. Orange, Rubin, and Payton Hancock, Judge John’s half brothers, had large families descendants of whom still live in the Austin area. In the 1870 census, Salem, Orange, Payton, Lucky, Thomas, Scott, and Clairon show up as heads of household of black families with the last name Hancock.
Judge John also had two sons with Eliza, an enslaved woman belonging to him. When their oldest mulatto child Hugh Berry was 5 years old, Judge John sent him, his brother, and mother Eliza to Oberlin, Ohio, thus freeing them. Hugh’s mother and brother died shortly after 1860, and he was boarded and cared for by a black family, the Pattersons, in Oberlin. He was educated at Oberlin College at Judge John’s expense. Hugh visited his father in Washington DC when Judge John was a Congressman returning to Oberlin campus with sufficient spending money to support his love of hunting.
Hugh returned to Austin, married Susie James O’Connor in 1879, and had four daughters: Elizabeth M. (Mrs. Avila), Bertha James (Mrs. Thomas M. Doram), Nettie Blair (Mrs. Booker T. Washington Jr.), and Hugh Ella (Mrs. Montgomery Gregory). Hugh taught school and later owned a saloon at 424 East Sixth in Austin named the Black Elephant (the building is still there). In 1892 he was elected representative from the 8th ward to the City Council of Austin. Hugh was in numerous fights and altercations over the years. Later he left his family and died in Pocatello, Idaho, in 1910.
Judge John has no living white descendants, but the families of Orange and Hugh Berry gave him many black descendants.
In the South at that time so much wealth was in slaves that to pass wealth on to children meant bequeathing slaves to them, “property” which they could sell or keep. Many early Austinites, including our White, Moore, and Hancock families, came from the slave state Alabama, and they brought slaves and the way of life slavery dictated. Every member of the early White and Hancock families were slave owners. The White/Moore family had no problem splitting up slave families and selling children. The Hancock family apparently tried to keep slave families together and rarely sold a slave.
Tax, probate, and sales/purchase receipts of 1840-1866 indicate that Elizabeth White Moore’s family in 1839 brought at least eight slaves from Dallas County, Alabama. Her mother, Elizabeth Carson White, and her sisters inherited those slaves when their father was killed by Indians in 1842 on Shoal Creek. Elizabeth inherited from her father and later her mother children Allen, Mary and Ujena. Older sister Cornelia Jane married to Enoch Johnson inherited adult Maria, Jim, and another child. Younger sister Louisa Maria married to Edward Seiders inherited adult Sterling and child Susan; Rebecca Jane married to James Thompson inherited child Washington and a boy named Bob whom they sold to Benjamin Piper in 1849 and moved to California, possibly taking Washington with them; and Narcissa Lucinda married to Josiah Fisk inherited adult Eda and child Dick. Mother Elizabeth White kept at least one seven-year-old child Davis “Davey” whom she sold to Wayman Wells in 1846. All of these enslaved children likely were birthed by Eda or Maria.
Judge John Hancock and all six of his white siblings who came to Texas brought slaves from Jackson County, Alabama, where in 1830 their father John owned 26 slaves and his brother owned 11. Judge John arrived in Austin in 1847 with one slave, had two by 1851 but had 7 by 1853 and 21 by 1860. All or most of his slaves had been born on his father’s plantation in Alabama, his brother’s farm in Bastrop County, or his own farm in Austin.
In Jackson County, Alabama, in late 1855 at the sale of his father’s estate, Judge John bought nine slaves and brought them to Texas: Rubin, Orange, Payton, Susan, Jemima, Daphney, Dorcas and her two children. He paid $5,507 [$200,000 in 2025]. By 1860 he had 21 slaves.
At the 1855 estate sale of John Allen Hancock, Judge John’s older brother George purchased Kate (age 30, black) with whom Freedmen’s Bureau records say he had a daughter. George had a white son, Lewis, by his wife, Louisa, born in 1856. Lewis became mayor of Austin and had a golf course named for him. By 1860 George had six slaves all living in one house. George’s slaves may have included 2 children birthed by Kate (a black boy and then a mulatto girl fathered by George), a black man, Ariel, and two more children of Kate and Ariel (Lucy and Lincoln). After the war, Kate lived with her sister in Webberville at Sandy Clopton's blacksmith shop. In the 1850s George purchased a long narrow strip of land on the east side of the Moore’s farm originally inherited by Elizabeth Moore’s sister, Cornelia Johnson, whose family moved to Williamson County.
Judge John’s sister Celia’s husband, Q.J. Nicholds purchased Margaret and Rafe from John Allen Hancock’s estate sale. In 1860 Celia and her son had twenty-one slaves in Travis County.
Judge John’s sister Frances “Frankey” Baker and her son W. B. Baker in 1860 had ten slaves, two of them mulatto, in Travis County.
Sister Phoebe Peyton Forehand had one 14 year old male slave in 1853 in Bastrop County.
Sister Lucy Harris had seven enslaved people in 1850 in Bastrop County and twelve (all but two female) by 1860 after they moved to Travis County.
Other siblings of Judge John, Lewis Swanson (and wife Elizabeth Jones) and William Ryan (and wife Martha Ayers) had settled on Onion Creek, Bastrop County, in 1838. Lewis died in 1850 at which time he had two male slaves Horace and Augustus and one female mulatto who had run away.
Brother William Ryan died in 1852 in Bastrop County and his will gifted to his children by name fifteen enslaved people. Son William received Tom (black), and Booker and Harriet, both mulatto. Son James received Lewis and Martha (black) and Julia and Polly, both mulatto. Since William and James went to live with Judge John, their slaves probably also moved with them. Others listed in William Ryan Hancock’s estate as mulatto or copper were Robert, Isaac, and Sally (with son Tom) and as black were Mariah, Betsey, Louisa, and Austin. These slaves went to the other three children of William Ryan Hancock in Bastrop County (John Henry, Sarah Frances, and Mary Jane).
Other slaves sold at the estate sale who were purchased by Judge John’s siblings who lived in Alabama were nearly adult Booker; elders Patsy and Dicey; and youth Silus. Purchased by someone named Bohr were girl Vina and family unit Hal, Martha and child.
Many slaves freed in 1865 at the end of the Civil War stayed in Travis and Bastrop counties reconnecting with family members or starting new families. Among the marriages in 1866 following the end of the Civil War was Jemima Hancock who married Washington Corzine, perhaps the slave Jemima that Judge John brought from Alabama.
There were numerous small enclaves of black families in and around Austin trying to make a life for their families following the war. At the Austin History Center are transcripts of interviews with 70 former slaves which paint a picture of what life was like during and after slavery in Travis County.
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