On my mothers side, the families got to Texas in the 1830s and 1840s.
Bakers came from Georgia, Dubose’s came from South Carolina.
On my fathers side, the Carleton came in late 1863. My great grandfather, William Lewis Carleton, was born at his grandfathers home, who was an American Revolutionary War Soldier, in North Carolina.
His father was a medical doctor, a lay Baptist preacher, and a farmer, in Alabama, where my great grandfather grew up.
He studied and became a doctor himself, but he also studied, and became a Methodist Minister.
He married my great-grandmother, in Louisiana. Her father fought with the Mississippi contingent at the Battle of New Orleans, with Andrew Jackson.
When the Late War of Norther Aggression broke out, he was a circuit riding Methodist minister, in Washington County Arkansas. He practiced his doctoring on folks needed it as he rode his circuit. Minister to them, doctor them, preform their weddings and burials.
He did not have to go into the army, as he was a minister, and ministers were exempt. There were two circuit riding ministers in this territory, the other was older, although my great grandfather was married man with children. He and the other minister talked it over, and decided one would stay and ride the circuit, and one would enlist in the army.
My great grandfather enlisted, and the other minister bought him a greatcoat for him to go in.
At this time, there were no chaplain positions in the Confederate Army, he went as a soldier, enlisting with men of his ministerial flock.
When the chaplain position was formed in the Confederate army, he was appointed as chaplain in his outfit.
He shot yankees, helped the wounded, and prayed for the dying.
The only account we have of him in battle, was passed down verbally. He told of how, when a friend was shot down at his side, he knelt and prayed with the dying man, while yankee bullets were knocking bark from an oak tree in his face.
When the yankees invaded Arkansas, he was given permission to go home, to move his family to Texas. He packed his widowed mother, his children, wife, in two covered wagons and came to Texas.
Two weeks after they pulled out, the damn yankee soldiers, hanged a 12 year old neighbor boy trying to make him tell where non existent money was buried. It was because this was typical yankee USA soldier criminality, he took the family to Texas. Said he figured if there was anyplace left where his family would be safe from the crimes of the USA yankee soldiers, it would be Texas.
Once in Texas, the methodist church put him back to work circuit riding, and he continued his medical doctoring.
Thats how my families got to Texas, and why i am a Texican.
John C Carleton