A TOWERING EAST TEXAS PIONEER:
A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF COLONEL ALBERT MILLER LEA
By W. T. Block
Copyrighted, East Texas Historical Journal, XXXII, 2 (1993), 23-33
In a remote corner of the Trinity Episcopal Cemetery in Galveston,
Texas, a plain marble head stone marked the last resting place of a United States naval
officer, killed at the Battle of Galveston. The inscription reads: "Edward Lea,
Lieut. Commander, U. S. N., Born 31st January, 1837, Killed in Battle, January 1, 1863.
'My Father Is Here.'" The casual observer might suppose that the last words referred
to the Heavenly Father, but in reality, the young commander died in the arms of his
earthly father, Confederate Major Albert Miller Lea. The mental image of the Confederate
officer embracing his dying son was to grip Galvestonians for decades thereafter and point
out one of the horrors of the American Civil War.[1]
At a remote distance in southern Minnesota, the breadth of the nation
away, there stands a modern city, a rail junction of 25,000 population, and its large,
neighboring lake, both of which bear the name of "Albert Lea," namesakes of the
same Confederate major.[2] Likewise, Lee County (Fort Madison), Iowa, was
also named for Albert Lea, although the spelling of the county's name was later altered.[3] However, at the time that each received its name, Lea was a young United
States Army lieutenant who had just graduated from West Point and was stationed at Fort
Des Moines, on the far western frontier.
Albert Lea visited the Minnesota site only twice, the first time when
he led a United States army expedition that discovered the lake and camped out on the
townsite, at that time an expanse of trees and prairies, in July, 1835. The second visit
occurred in June, 1879, when the municipal officers of Albert Lea, Minnesota, invited the
ex-Confederate Colonel Lea to be their guest of honor at their fortieth anniversary
celebration. As this monograph progresses, it will likewise reveal that Albert Miller Lea
was a man who walked with the presidents (Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, John Tyler,
and Millard Fillmore), who knew and corresponded with the Confederacy's leaders (Jefferson
Davis and Robert E. Lee), and who was a personal confidant and relative by marriage of
General Sam Houston.
Albert M. Lea was born on July 23, 1808, at Richland, Grainger County,
Tennessee, a few miles northeast of Knoxville and near the Kentucky and Virginia borders.
At age thirteen, he entered East Tennessee University at Knoxville (now the University of
Tennessee) and became one of its youngest graduates.[4] In 1827, he
received an appointment to West Point, where he graduated fifth in his class in 1831, and
majored in mathematics and engineering.[5] One of his classmates there
was John Bankhead Magruder, who would later become Lea's commanding officer in Texas
during the Civil War.[6]
Lea was commissioned a lieutenant in the Thirteenth United States
Artillery, but because he was gallant enough to wish to please Magruder's fiancee by
trading assignments, Lea ended up in the Seventh Infantry Regiment at Fort Gibson in the
Indian Territory, at that time considered to be on the extreme western frontier. Likewise,
Lea was to lose all opportunities for a rapid promotion, and was to earn frequent
transfers on the outer fringes of civilization, that would take him from Massachusetts to
Iowa and from Detroit to New Orleans. On two occasions, he encountered pestilence
epidemics, which annually plagued the Mississippi Valley and threatened to include him
among the casualties. On one occasion in 1833, he was assigned to pick up $96,000 (at that
time a fabulous amount of money) in silver coins in New Orleans while a virulent yellow
fever plague was in progress there. He then delivered the money by steamboat to army
authorities in St. Louis for distribution as annuities to Missouri's Indian tribes. Later,
he was aboard a Mississippi steamer when several soldiers accompanying him contracted
cholera and at least one of them died. Also in 1833, he was ordered to Detroit to
participate in an engineering survey of the Great Lakes.[7]
In late 1833, Lieutenant Lea, by then a member of the army's
Topographical Engineers, was appointed by the War Department as chief of engineers on the
Tennessee River, with orders to design navigational and flood control improvements along
that watercourse. In April, 1835, Lea was transferred to the First Regiment of United
States Dragoons (cavalry) at Fort Des Moines, soon to become the Iowa Territory, but at
that moment a part of the Wisconsin Territory.[8]
In June, 1835, Lieutenant Lea received orders to command a
topographical expedition, consisting of three detachments of sixty men each, to explore
the territory between the Des Moines and Mississippi rivers, as far north as the Minnesota
River. He was likewise instructed to map all lakes and watercourses encountered en route,
to take periodic celetial bearings, and to keep a daily journal of his expedition. Lea led
his men "up the divide between the Des Moines and Mississippi rivers to Lake Pepin,
thence the column turned west and headed for the source of the Blue Earth River in Kossuth
County, Iowa." On that march, the column traced the present-day Shell Rock River to
Freeborn County, Minnesota, and to its head waters in a large, horse-shaped lake, which
Lea promptly named Fox Lake. They likewise camped out on the site of forested uplands and
prairies which was later to become the future site of Albert Lea, Minnesota. Unknown to
Lea, the lake had long been called Lake Chapeau by the French fur traders. Captain Nathan
Boone, a son of the famed Kentucky pioneer, was the scout for the expedition.
According to one history, Lea led Companies B, H, and I of the First
Dragoons over 1,100 miles of unexplored territory in Iowa and Minnesota for almost three
months without the loss of a single man, wagon, horse or mule. Lea recalled in his
autobiography of 1879 that while Joseph N. Nicollet was mapping his first surveys of the
Upper Mississippi River in Washington, D. C., in 1841, Lea suggested to Nicollet that the
beautiful, horse-shaped lake be listed at Lake Chapeau, the name given to it by the French
fur traders. Instead, Nicollet responded, "Ah, Magnifique! But Lake Chapeau ees no
longer ze name. It ees now Lake Albert Lea." And that is the name the lake continues
to bear.[9]
Lea was first introduced to President Andrew Jackson at the home of a
friend in Philadelphia in 1833. Early in 1836, Lea resigned his commission, to become
effective on June 1, 1836, and returned east to Philadelphia, where he married Ellen
Shoemaker on May 5th. During the months he was on army leave, Lea wrote a book-length
treatise, Notes on the Wisconsin Territory (based on his journal), which was published by
H. S. Tanner of Philadelphia during the summer of 1836. Lea's book had suggested that the
name of Iowa be given to the new territory (and subsequently the state), which at that
moment was being debated in the United States Congress.[10] The book
also attracted the immediate attention of President Martin Van Buren and the War
Department, and the Encyclopaedia Britannica, in its article on the State of Iowa,
observed that "Albert Lea, who wrote an early book on the area, suggested the
name."[11] The book was also credited with encouraging much of the
early immigration to all of the regions west of Lake Michigan, which once comprised the
Wisconsin Territory.
On January 31, 1837, Lea's son Edward was born in Baltimore. Soon
afterward, the young couple resettled briefly in Rock Island, Illinois, after President
Van Buren appointed Albert Lea as chairman of the Missouri-Iowa Boundary Commission,
charged with surveying and marking the border between those states. Also in 1837, Albert
Lea platted a townsite in the "Iowa District," named Ellenborough after his
wife, and made plans to operate a Mississippi River ferry and an immigation company.
Reputedly, Lea was once offered $30,000 for his interest in the venture, but he refused.
Later, he had to return to the East in a hurry due to his wife's ill health, and the land
was eventually sold for taxes.
In late 1837, the president again chose Lea as the new chief engineer
for the State of Tennessee. In 1838, the couple returned to Maryland for three years,
while Lea served two years as chief engineer and track builder for the Baltimore and Ohio
Railroad, and where his young wife Ellen died. Embittered and in despair following her
death, Lea accepted another presidential appointment that took him to Washington, D. C.,
as chief clerk (an appointment now known as assistant or Undersecretary of Defense) in the
War Department during the closing days of Van Buren's presidency in March, 1841.
The following September, the holdover Secretary of War from President
W. H. Harrison's cabinet, John Bell, resigned, and President John Tyler appointed Lea as
acting Secretlary of War for six weeks until John McLean took office. After three years in
Washington, D. C., Lea returned to Knoxville in 1844, where he taught for the next seven
years as professor of mathematics at East Tennessee University. In 1845, he married his
second wife, Catherine Heath of Knoxville. In 1850, Albert Lea spent three more months as
acting Secretary of War in the cabinet of President Millard Fillmore. After his return to
Knoxville, Lea left the university in 1851 to become a glass manufacturer in the same
town, an industry in which he invested most of his assets, but success continued to evade
him. He often said he could make good glass, but no glass profits. From 1851 until 1856,
he was also chief engineer for the City of Knoxville, and he also operated on occasion the
Lea family-owned plantation.[12]
In 1857, Albert Lea followed other members of his family to Texas and
settled at Aransas. Lea family members who had prceded him included his cousin, Margaret
Moffette Lea Houston, wife of General Sam Houston, and his older brother, Pryor Lea, who
had been a prominent politician and lawyer in Tennessee and Texas and resided at Goliad.[13] Pryor Lea had also chartered the Aransas Railroad Company, later the
Central Transit Railway, in 1858 and 1859 and served as its president. Albert Lea served
as chief engineer of the Aransas Railroad Company, as well as the Rio Grande, Mexico and
Pacific Railroad Company of Mexico.[14] According to one Texas
historian, the Aransas Railroad Company had completed most of its grading along the route
from Aransas Pass to Goliad, with construction ended early in 1861, because northern
financing was withdrawn.[15]
In an article in Southwestern Historical Quarterly, another Texas
writer referred to Pryor and Albert Lea as "confidants of Governor (Sam)
Houston" and suspected that they were members of the Knights of the Golden Circle, a
secret, jingoistic society that appears to have been plotting a filibustering expedition
against Mexico. Early in 1860, Colonel Robert E. Lee of the United States Army had just
arrived in San Antonio as commander of the Eighth Military District, and at that time
Albert Lea carried on an extensive correspondence with both Colonel Lee and Governor
Houston. A letter from Robert E. Lee to Houston, which acknowledged receipt of Albert
Lea's three letters of February 24, 25, and 26, "is now framed and housed in the
Archives of the Texas State Library." Also, on February 24, 1860, Albert Lea wrote a
leltter to Governor Houston, as follows:[16]
. . . Colonel Robert E. Lee would not touch anything that he would
consider vulgar filibustering; but he is not without ambition and under the sanction of
the government, might be more than willing to aid you to pacificate Mexico; and if the
people of the U. States should recall you from the 'Halls of the Montezumas' to the 'White
House,' you will find him well-fitted to carry out your great idea of a Protectorate. . .
.
When Albert Lea came to Texas in 1857, his son Edward remained in
Maryland to attend the United States Naval Academy. The last letter Albert Lea received
from his son arrived in Aransas shortly before the American Civil War began, and it came
from Cherbourg, France, where Lieutenant Edward Lea's ship, the United States steam
frigate Harriet Lane, was docked. Later, the Harriet Lane, named for President James
Buchanan's niece and official White House hostess, sailed to the China coast, but was back
at Fort Sumter when war broke out in April, 1861. In 1862, the steam frigate served as
Admiral David Farragut's flagship for several months. In March, 1861, the father wrote to
his son that the latter should follow the dictates of his own conscience in choosing which
side to fight for if war began. Like his friend, Governor Houston, Albert Lea opposed
secession,but his older brother, Pryor Lea, was a major voice for secession in Texas, and
was a member of the Secession Convention. Soon after the shelling of Fort Sumter, Albert
Lea applied for a Confederate commission. He was soon breveted a major of artillery, and
was ordered to report to General Felix Zollicoffer in Knoxville, Tennessee.[17]
An early letter of Major Lea, dated August 31, 1861, was published in
Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies in The War of The Rebellion. In his
letter, Lea requested permission to raise a company of "sappers and miners"
(construction engineers), which was granted. He also warned that the areas of Northeastern
Tennessee and Southeastern Kentucky contained a large number of people with pronounced
Union sympathies.[18]
In February, 1862, Major Lea's engineers were commanded to fortify the
Cumberland Gap, a famous passageway through the Cumberland Mountains, where the boundaries
of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Virginia converge. He was also ordered to build breastworks
and similar defensive fortifications around nearby Fort Pitts. Lea took a philosophical,
"did-my-duty" attitude toward the fact that his engineering achievements were
ignored by his Confederate superiors in Richmond, whereas an opposing Union general paid
him the highest of compliments. (Lea once wrote, "I did my duty as ordered and looked
for no approbation or reward but the favor of God.") Union General G. W. Morgan, who
at that moment was assigned to the Cumberland Gap, observed:[19]
. . . Before the arrival of our siege guns, Engineer Lea, of the Rebel
forces, constructed a strong breastwork, protected by rifle pits, upon the summit, to the
right of Fort Pitts, and convinced that the position could only be carried by immense loss
of life, I abandoned any idea of attacking the place from the front. . . .
Although no proof exists in Civil War correspondence, it appears more
than coincidence that his long-time friend, Major General John B. Magruder, was
transferred from Virginia to Houston, Texas, to assume command of the Military District of
Texas, New Mexico and Arizona on December 1, 1862, and Major Lea was transferred to Texas
only two weeks later. The writer also believes that Lea's transfer to Texas was sped along
with the help of Lea's military friends in Richmond, Virginia. By December 15th, Major Lea
was back in Texas, visiting his wife, a daughter, and two sons, who were staying with
relatives in Corsicana, Texas.
Major Lea quickly learned that one of the Union vessels occupying the
harbor of Galveston was the Harriet Lane, on which he believed his son was still serving.
Lee hurried on to Houston to General Magruder's headquarters, where he soon learned that a
plan to recapture Galveston Island was to be executed within a week.
Although Major Lea had already been reassigned as chief engineer of the
Southern Sub-district of Texas (General H. P. Bee's command at Brownsville), he was
temporarily detached to Colonel C. G. Forshey's staff of engineers while plans for the
recapture of Galveston were pending. During the pre-dawn hours of January 1, 1863, Lea
helped to move the six brass cannons of Captain M. McMahon's battery across Galveston
Island's rail causeway. Afterward, Colonel Forshey placed Major Lea in the town's tallest
church steeple, where he could observe the naval battle in progress in Galveston Bay. Lea
quickly discerned that the Confederate gunboat Bayou City, had rammed the Harriet Lane
near the wheel house, after which the Confederates scampered aboard the Union vessel to
subdue the crew.[20]
Major Lea soon went aboard the Harriet Lane, only to find out that its
Union commander, Captain Wainwright, was dead and Lieutenant Commander Edward Lea, the
executive officer, had been shot through the navel. Quickly discerning that his son's
wound was mortal, Lea went ashore to arrange his son's removal to the Sisters of Charity
Hospital. He told General Magruder about his son's wound, and the general offered his own
quarters for the son instead. Upon Major Lea's return to the Harriet Lane, he was told
that his son Edward was dying, and as Lea cradled the young Union officer's head, he said,
"Edward, this is your father."
"Yes, father, I know you," the young commander responded,
"but I cannot move."
Upon being advised that his death was near and asked whether he wished
any special disposition made of his body, Edward Lea replied, almost with his last breath,
"No, my father is here."
The following day, Major Lea, in the absence of any ordained minister,
delivered the obsequies above the coffins of both Captain Wainwright and Commander Lea,
before the Union officers were buried in a common grave. In his report of the battle,
General Magruder praised Major Lea as being "one of the most distinguished and
scientific officers of my staff."[21]
In 1866, the body of Captain Wainwright was reinterred with honors at
the Naval Cemetery in Annapolis, Maryland. A wealthy relative sought permission to rebury
Commander Edward Lea's remains beside those of his mother in Green Mount Cemetery in
Baltimore. However, Albert Lea refused,, stating that his son would have preferred to
remain where he had fallen in battle--"in sight of the sea, in sound of the
turf."[22]
After the battle of January 1, 1863, when Major Lea reported to General
H. P. Bee as chief engineer of the Souther Sub-district of Texas, General Magruder wrote
of him that "Major Lea is a graduate of West Point and is well-known to His
Excellency, the (Confederate) President." Indeed Lea, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee,
and a number of other Confederate and Union generals had all been classmates together at
West Point. And as Secretary of War in the cabinet of President Franklin Pierce, Jefferson
Davis would certainly have been well-acquainted with Albert Lea's record at the War
Department. Soon afterward, Major Lea led a contingent of engineers that fortified the
mouth of the Rio Grande River at Bagdad (an extinct town destroyed by a hurricane), and
later, the approaches to Fort Brown at Brownsville.[23] Late in the year
1863, Major Lea was promoted to lieutenant colonel.[24]
In November, 1863, a Federal invasion force occupied the lower Texas
coast, and General Magruder evacuated most of General Bee's command from Fort Brown.
Colonel Lea was ordered inland and was appointed chief engineer of the Western
Sub-district of Texas. Soon afterward, he led a contingent of soldiers and slaves while
fortifying the approaches to Gonzales, Texas. Colonel Lea's last service to the
Confederacy came in 1864, when General Magruder assignd him as head of the Confederate
cotton bureau at Eagle Pass, Texas, where he bartered Confederate cotton for gunpowder and
muskets.[25]
Throughout his lifetime, Albert Miller Lea was a prolific letter
writer, as well as a writer of scientific and historical treatises. And as soon as Albert
Lea arrived in Texas in 1857, he showed a renewed interest in writing, especially in the
field of science. During his retirement years at Corsicana, Lea kept up a perpetual
correspondence with the Freeborn County Standard of Albert Lea, Minnesota, which published
between January and May, 1890, many of Lea's historical articles about his frontier army
assignments. Lea also corresponded during his retirement years with the Minnesota and Iowa
Historical Societies. His "Report Made By Lieutenant Albert Miller Lea on the Des
Moines River" and his "Report Made By Albert Miller Lea On The Iowa-Missouri
Boundary," along with Lea's lengthy biography by Ruth Gallaher, appeared in the Iowa
Journal of History and Politics in July, 1935.
E. W. Winkler once described two of Albert Lea's treatises in the Texas
State Library, concerning currents of the Gulf of Mexico and Aransas Bay, written while
Lea was chief engineer of the railroad.[26] Another of his articles,
"The Gulf Stream and Its Effect on The Climate of Texas," appeared in the Texas
Almanac for 1861.[27]
According to one biography, Albert Lea designed and sketched the plans
for the first "iron horse" ever manufactured by the Baldwin Locomotive Works. S.
W. Geiser, an early scientific writer, described Albert Lea's contributions to early
science in Texas in an article written in 1939.[28] Several of Albert
Llea's letters are in the Texas State Archives, two of which (one from Robert E. Lee and
another to Governor Sam Houston) were reprinted by Texana in 1966. And a Galveston editor
observed that "Colonel Lea was a man of large and varied information, who for many
years was a frequent contributor to Galveston News and other publications, generally under
his 'nom de plume' of Sanex."[29]
After the Civil War, Albert Lea moved his family to Galveston, where he
resided for the next nine years. In the summer of 1864, he opened a book store there, also
an unsuccessful venture. He became Galveston's city engineer in 1866, a position he held
for the next four years. In 1870 he began trading in real estate and acquired some
valuable Galveston city property as a result. In 1874, when he decided to retire from
public pursuits, he purchased a farm from a relative in Corsicana, after which he moved
his family to Navarro County. He and his sons, Albert Lea, Jr., and Alexander M. Lea,
engaged for many years in a cotton-buying enterprise.[30]
Albert Lea and his family were active members of St. John's Episcopal
Church at Collin and 14th Streets in Corsicana, where "a large stained glass window
still bears the name of Lea." Albert Lee is credited with having drawn up the plans
for the first St. John's Church. It appears the Colonel Lea lived his last years on his
farm rather quietly.[31] In 1879 he wrote his family's history and
autobiography, manuscript copies of which are deposited in Rosenberg Library in Galveston
and at Barker Texas History Center in Austin, as well as published in the Freeborn County
Standard in 1879. In June, 1879, he revisited Albert Lea, Minnesota, during a celebration
of which he was the honored guest. Most probably, the hosts who had invited him were
former Union soldiers.
His last years at Corsicana were marked by feeble health and family
misfortunes. His son Alexander died in 1878, followed by Lea's wife Catherine in 1884. By
1890, his son Albert, Jr., was experiencing financial reverses in the cotton business. On
the morning of January 16, 1891, Lea's lifeless body was found in a sitting position in an
arm chair in his bedroom, an apparent victim of heart failure. A Galveston editor noted
that "Colonel Lea was the friend and associate of many of the political dignitaries
of antebellum days, but of late years, he has been very feeble. . . .He has always been
highly respected and esteemed by all."[32] Perhaps the nicest
compliment came from Lea's old friend, W. P. Doran of Hempstead, Texas (who earned much
acclaim in his own right as "Sioux," Texas' renouned Civil War correspondent for
the News and Telegraph), who called Albert Lea---"one of nature's noblemen."[33] Lea is buried in Section K, Row 1, of Oakwood Cemetery in Corsicana;
there is a tombstone but no state marker on his grave. Lea's only daughter died at
Corsicana in 1938.
It is an ironic fact that today Albert Miller Lea is much better
remembered in his native state of Tennessee or in the midwestern states he explored
(Minnesota and Iowa) than he is in East Texas, where he resided for nearly half of his
life, built railroads, fought at the Battle of Galveston, and operated his businesses. Lea
was an uncommon man in many respects. As stated previously, he charted and explored the
wilderness, and in his book, he made it attractive to the East Coast land emigrant to whom
Horace Greely advised -- "Go west, young man." Albert Lea also punctured that
wilderness with his rail trackage, enabling the same land emigrants to reach the west more
easily via the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Lea walked and talked with the political elite
of his day in Washington, D. C., commanded their respect, and served faithfully whenever
they appointed him to office. He also knew many of the Union and Confederate generals of
that age who had been his West Point classmates. He cast his lot with the Confederacy and
lost, but after he was paroled, he sought to rebuild his fortunes within the same nation
he had previously fought against. And he left the frontier state of Texas all the richer
because of his thirty-five years of residence there.
Endnotes
1 "Sioux," pen name of W. P. Doran,
"Sioux's Retrospection About The Battle of Galveston," (Galveston) Daily News,
July 28, 1886; C. C. Cumberland, "The Confederate Loss and Recapture of
Galveston," Southwestern Historical Quarterly, LI (October, 1947), p. 125; Alva
Taylor, "The Lea Family," History of Navarro County, Texas (Corsicana, Tx.:
1962), p. 104.
2 "Biography of Albert Lea," (Albert Lea,
Mn.) Freeborn County Standard, June 5, 1879, copy owned by the writer, courtesy of Albert
Lea Public Library, which has a vast archival file on Albert Lea; State Historical Society
of Iowa, The Book That Gave Iowa Its Name (Iowa City, Iowa: Athens Press, 1935), a restudy
of Albert Lea, Notes on The Wisconsin Territory (Philadelphia: H. S. Tanner, 1836).
3 Ruth Gallaher, "Alberr Miller Lea," Iowa
Journal of History and Politics, XXXIII, No. 3 (July, 1935), pp. 195-241.
4 "Obituary of A. M. Lea," (Austin, Tx.)
Statesman, January 17, 1891; A. M. Lea, "History of The Lea Family," 1879,
manuscripts deposited in Barker History Center and In (Galveston) Rosenberg Library.
5 "Biography of A. M. Lea," in W. P. Webb et
al (eds.), The Handbook of Texas (Austin: 1952), II, 39-40; Roy S. Sunn, "The KGC in
Texas, 1860-1861," Southwestern Historical Quarterly, LXX (April, 1967), p. 548; also
see G. W. Collum, Biographical Register of The Officers and Graduates of The United States
Military Academy (1891), I, 565.
6 "Honor To An Old Galvestonian--A. M. Lea,"
(Galveston) Daily News, June 19, 1879; Ruth Gallaher, "Albert Miller Lea," Iowa
Journal of History and Politics, XXXIII (July, 1935), pp. 195-241.
7 Ibid.; abstract of "A History of Thew Lea
Family," reprinted in (Galveston) Daily News, June 30, 1922; "Autobiography of
Albert Miller Lea," reprinted in (Albert Lea, Mn.) Freeborn County Standard, 1879,
copy owned by the writer; and Curtiss and Wedge, A History of Freeborn County (Mn.),
(Minneapolis: 1911), pp. 40-45.
8 "Biography of Albert Lea," in Webb,
Handbook of Texas, II, 39-40; "Biography of Albert Lea," (Albert Lea, Mn.)
Freeborn County Standard, June 5, 1879, copy owned by the writer and reprinted in
(Galveston) Daily News, July 30, 1922; see also "A Journal of The Marches of The
First United States Dragoons, 1834-1835," Iowa Journal of History and Politics, VII
(July, 1909), entire article.
9 "Autobiography of Albert Miller Lea," as
reprinted in (Albert Lea, Mn.) Freeborn County Standard, January-May, 1890, author's copy
courtesy of City of Albert Lea Public Library; see also E. D. Neill, History of Freeborn
County, Minnesota (Minneapolis: 1882), pp. 303, 361; also letter Albert M. Lea to Editor,
Freeborn County Standard, June 7, 1877, reprinted in Curtiss and Wedge, History of
Freeborn County (Minneapolis: 1911), pp. 42-45.
10 'History of the Lea Family,' abstracted in
(Galveston) Daily News, July 30, 1922; "Honor To An Old Galvestonian,' (Galveston)
Daily News, June 19, 1879; State Historical Society of Iowa, The Book That Gave Iowa Its
Name (Iowa City: 1935); also Curtiss and Wedge, A History of Freeborn County, Minnesota
(Minneapolis: 1935), p. 44.
11 Encyclopaedia Britannica (Chicago: Encyclopaedia
Britannica Inc, 1970), XII, 501.
12 Webb et al (eds.), Handbook of Texas, II, 39-40;
"Obituary of Albert M. Lea," (Austin) Statesman, January 17, 1891; A. M. Lea,
"History of the Lea Family," reprinted from (Albert Lea, Mn.) Freeborn County
Standard, copy owned by writer; "Obituary of Colonel Lea," (Galveston) Daily
News, January 17, 1891; "Honor To An Old Galvestonian," (Galveston) Daily News,
June 19, 1879; typescript, "Colonel Albert Lea," (n. d.), p. 4, City of Albert
Lea Public Library, copy owned by writer; and N. O'Steen, "The Leas of Tennessee: A
Civil War Tragedy," Tennessee Alumnus (publication of the University of Tennessee
Alumni Association), Winter, 1978, pp. 26-28
13 Pryor Lea had previously been United States
Attorney for the State of Tennessee; Congressman, 21st and 22nd United States Congresses;
member of the Texas Secession Convention, and in 1866, Texas State Superintendent of
Public Instruction. See Webb, Handbook of Texas, II, 40; also Neel O'Steen, "The Leas
of Tennessee," serialized in two parts, "The Antebellum Years," Tennessee
Alumnus (Fall, 1977) and "A Civil War Tragedy," Tennessee Alumnus (Winter,
1978), pp. 26-28.
14 Ibid.
15 S. G. Reed, A History of the Texas Railroads
(Houston: St. Clair Publg. Co., 1941), p. 106.
16 Roy S. Dunn, "The KGC (Knights of the Golden
Circle) in Texas, 1860-1861," Southwestern Historical Quarterly, LXX (April, 1967),
pp. 549-550, which also cites Letter, Albert Lea to Governor Houston, February 24, 1860,
in the Governors' Letters, Texas State Archives.
17 A Compilation of The Official Recods of The Union
and Confederate Armies in The War of The Rebellion, 128 vols. (Washington, D. C.:
1880-1901), Series I, Volume IV, p. 406.
18 Ibid., letter of Major A. M. Lea, Series II, Volume
I, p. 827/
19 Ibid., Series I, Volume VII, p. 118; also Series I,
Volume X, Part 1, p. 57; Neal O'Steen, "The Leas of Tennessee: A Civil War
Tragedy," Tennessee Alumnus (Winter, 1978), p. 27.
20 "Sioux," pen name of W. P. Doran,
Hempstead, Texas,"Reminiscences of the War--Battle of Galveston," (Galveston)
Daily News, August 6, 1876; C. C. Cumberland, "The Confederate Loss and Recapture of
Galveston," Southwestern Historical Quarterly, LI (October, 1947), p. 125.
21 Official Records, Armies in The War of The
Rebellion, Series I, Volume XV, pp. 200-203, 215-219; W. P. Doran, also known as
"Sioux," "Sad Ending For A Once Prominent Galvestonian-Gallant Major A. M.
Lea," (Galveston) Daily News, January 21, 1891; (Austin) Statesman, January 17, 1891;
"History of the Lea Family," abstraction in (Galveston) Daily News, July 30,
1922; Mrs. Sarah Malgruder, "The Recapture of Galveston," (Galveston) Daily
News, September 28, 1884.
22 Doran, "Gallant Major Albert Lea,: (Galveston)
Daily News, January 21, 1891.
23 Official Records, Armies, Series I, Volume XV, 238,
936.
24 Ibid., Series I, Volume XXVI, Part 1, pp. 299-300
25 Ibid., Series I, Volume XXXiv, Part 2, pp. 839,
1079.
26 E. W. Winkler (ed.), "A Check List of Texas
Imprints," Southwestern Historical Quarterly, XLIX (1945-1946), pp. 543, 569; A. M.
Lea, "Report Made By Lieutenant Albert Miller Lea on The Des moines River" and
"Report Made By Albert Miller Lea onThe Iowa-Missouri Boundary," Iowa Journal of
History and Politics, XXXIII, Nr. 3 (July, 1935), pp. 242l-259.
27 Webb, Handbook of Texas, II, 40.
28 S. W.Geiser, "A Century of Scientific
Exploration inTexas," Field and Laboratory, VII (January, 1939); typescript,
"Colonel Albert Lea," (n. p.; n. d.), p. 3l at City of Albert Lea, Minnesota
Public Library, copy owned by writer.
29 "Obituary of Colonel Lea," (Galveston)
Daily News, January 17, 1891; James M. Day, "Texas Letters and Documents,"
Texana, IV (Spring, 1966), pp. 48-49.
30 Webb, Handbook of Texas, II, 40; Neal O'Steen,
"The Leas of Tennessee: A Civil War Tragedy," Tennessee Alumnus (Winter,
1978-also Fall, 1977), p. 28.
31 Alva Taylor, "The Lea Family," A History
of Navarro County, Texas (Corsicana: 19620, p. 104.
32 "Death of Colonel Lea," (Galveston) Daily
News, January 17, 1891; N. O'Steen, "The Leas of Tennessee," Tennessee Alumnus
(Winter, 1978), p. 28.
33 W. P.Doran as "Sioux," "Death of
Gallant Albert M. Lea,' (Galveston) Daily News, January 21, 1891; "Obituary of Albert
Lea," (Austin) Statesman, January 17, 1891.
