Paget Halpen of Texas
I am looking for information about Paget Halpen of Texas, USA, born about 1795, location unknown. Some events in his life have been recorded, as follows:
Paget Halpen, aged 29, was listed as a passenger on the schooner ‘Hope Mary Ann’ which left New Orleans, Louisiana and arrived in New York on 3.5.1824. (He may have disembarked before New York). No birth place was shown, but he was a US citizen and a ‘shugar planter’, present and intended residence - New Orleans. The only other passengers were Wm. Leonard, 29, farmer, also of New Orleans, and Robt O’Reilly,16, planter, from Ireland.
A Paget Halpen next appears back in Louisiana. He was one of seven signatories to a public notice in the Baton Rouge Gazette, of 17.3.1827. It read: “Charles Ash Mix is declared a liar, swindler and a villain; beware of him.”
In the Orleans Parish Court Records, Louisiana (1813-1835), there was a case in which Ulick Wale was the plaintiff, and Paget Halpen was the defendant. No further details have been found so far.
In the adjoining territory of Texas on 16 March 1839, Paget Halpen was one of 28 men at a meeting to establish Houston’s first Episcopalian church. (From ‘Houston, the Unknown City’ 1991 by Marguerite Johnston). Then, in Sept. the same year his name is found on the tax list in the Texas Morning Star as owing $13.75 to the City of Houston.
He is also on a list of men claiming a state pension for having fought in the war to ‘free’ Texas- ‘Survivors of the Revolution which separated Texas from Mexico, 1835-42’. Texas had by then become an independent republic, and later joined the union.
P. Halpen was a passenger on the schooner 'Hornet' from Galveston, Texas, arriving New Orleans on 20.10.1840.
Later there are at least five entries in the Texas Land Titles Abstracts, from 1846 to 1856, recording his acquisition of a total of about 3000 acres of land ‘freed from Mexico’, and finally one for ‘the heirs of Paget Halpin’ in 1906.
Paget was recorded many times. Among other things he was a founding member of the Episcopalian (Anglican) Church in Houston, and he was an important landholder in Texas. I have written to the church but have received no reply. There are a number of Halpens to be found in Texas and nearby states, so I would guess that his descendants would be among them.
Can anybody add to our knowledge of Paget Halpen of Texas ?
