TOMBSTONE TUESDAY: Captain Sylvanus Hatch

TOMBSTONE TUESDAY (March 18, 2025): Captain Sylvanus Hatch was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts on June 1, 1788. As a young man, Hatch was educated and ambitious, and he apprenticed with a builder and a contractor. At the age of 21, Hatch went to Georgia for work, and two years later, he moved to Baton Rouge, La. At the beginning of the War of 1812, he enlisted and was commissioned as first lieutenant and served as adjutant under Gen. Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans https://www.battlefields.org/.../war.../battles/new-orleans

After the war of 1812, Hatch continued to live in Louisiana and met a widow, Phamelia Nicholson Brown, whom he married on Oct. 21, 1821. They lived on a large plantation for several years in Iberville Parish, where their first of three sons was born in 1825. He sailed to Texas in 1828 in a boat he had built. He first landed on Galveston Island where he met up with tall, hostile Indians armed with bows, arrows and clubs. Hatch kept on sailing to Matagorda Bay and landed at Indian Point, where he caught his first glimpse of the area he would later settle and come to his final resting place. He then went up Matagorda Bay, through Lavaca Bay and up the Lavaca River to Texana. After completing an expedition from Texana to La Bahia Mission, he and his group headed home to Louisiana and he was arrested by a Mexican Admiral while passing through Pass Cavallo. The life of Sylvanus and his gunman were saved because they were Freemasons, but the rest of his men were executed. Later in his old age, Captain Sylvanus Hatch was pronounced by the King of England to be the oldest living Mason in the world. Hatch made regular trips with his boat between Texana and New Orleans and in 1829 he moved his family to Texana. The Texas Revolution brought with it the call to arms from General Sam Houston in 1836. Hatch’s home was the headquarters of many Texas patriots. James Bowie, William Travis and David Crockett, who all perished at the Alamo, frequently enjoyed hospitality in his home. Old Camp Independence https://www.tshaonline.org/hand.../entries/camp-independence

was established on his land. Here, the soldiers remained until discharged from the Texas Army. The Felix Huston and Albert Sidney Johnston duel was fought on this land and witnessed by Capt. Hatch and his son Davis. https://www.tshaonline.org/texas-day-by-day/entry/973 Hatch was a survivor of the Meir Expedition in 1842, the most disastrous of the expeditions from Texas into Mexico during the days of the Republic of Texas. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/mier-expedition

After Texas’ independence, Sylvanus Hatch, at the age of 56, purchased a league of land on Chocolate Bayou and founded the Chocolate settlement where he and his brother Joseph, settled with their families in 1846. Calhoun County was created and the first county court was held on Sept. 22 of that year. Hatch was one of the two first commissioners to serve in the county. By this time, Sylvanus was 58 years old. He built a large, comfortable home on his Agua Dulce Ranch. Four years later, Phamelia died on Feb. 22, 1850, from Asiatic Cholera. Sylvanus and his wife had been attending to German immigrants with the disease, who had docked in Indianola. The original site of Agua Dulce, which translates to “sweet water” in English, is thought to be in a clearing at the number two fairway of present day Hatchbend Country Club Golf course near a clump of live oak trees. Barbed wire that perhaps surrounded the home is embedded in at least two of the oak trees along what may have been the home’s perimeter. At the time, family cemeteries were typically located near the homestead. Hatch died on Oct. 16, 1885, at the age of 97 years, four months and 18 days. He was buried next to Phamelia in the family cemetery where a Texas Centennial Marker was erected in 1936. In 2008 the Texas Historical Commission erected a Historical Marker for Hatch Cemetery https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=207766 located on the grounds of the Hatchbend Country Club on the west side of Calhoun County on Chocolate Bayou.

Tombstone Tuesday is written and compiled each week by Jody Weaver and Sheryl Cuellar of the Calhoun County Historical Commission, sharing the people and stories behind Calhoun County's history .