Judge James Nolan, many descendants
Judge James Nolan is best known to all residents for deeding land free of charge in 1859 to the H & TC Railroad to create Navasota, the town that trains built. But there is more to know. It is obvious, from checking the burial list of Oakland Cemetery that there must still be many distant descendants still living among us.
We all basically have learned over time that Nolan arrived in the late 1840s soon after Grimes County was created from the immense Montgomery County in 1846. We also know he arrived in an ox drawn wagon with his elderly father and mother, wife, and family as well as a trained bear to “squat” about where today’s intersection of Brosig and Washington Avenue is located. The spot became known as Nolansville as it also became a stagecoach stop. The name changed to Navasota about 1858 that possibly was derived from the Native American word “nabatoto” meaning “muddy water” after the nearby river.
The Nolan Family History in the Grimes County Heritage and History Book tells us more as well as a Grimes County Historical Commission newsletter of January 2017.
Judge Nolan was not really a “judge” but picked up that misnomer when he presided at a “lynch court trial for a criminal.” A granddaughter, Dorothy Clark Bednar, claimed “he came to Navasota from Mississippi right after Texas became a state.” The Nolans lived in tents until about 1855 when Judge Nolan began to buy up land. He first bought 133 acres from M. L. Duke for 77 cents an acre and other land as cheap as 50 cents per acre. The old Brosig home place is about where he finally built a log home. Nearby he dug a well that had such a strong current of water it attracted people from all around to haul water away in barrels. Travelers stopped at the well with thirsty horses.
The land Nolan purchased extended south to include where the several churches now stand to about the Ira Malcolm Camp property that later became Freedman Town. With the coming of the railroad he built a hotel on the corner of Washington Avenue and the railroad tracks where J. W. Brosig later built a large hardware store and is now the Circle P Antique Shop & Art Gallery. The 1860 U. S. Census lists Judge Nolan as a “hotel operator.”
The first Nolans to die at Navasota were buried in the Nolan Cemetery on what today is off a side street east of Brosig Avenue. Today, it is claimed that the bodies are still there but under a residential garage. If there were grave markers, they reportedly were taken and placed in the Oakland Cemetery. One can find the burials listed on Findagrave. com if you, under the cemetery tab, type in “Nolan Cemetery, Grimes County, Texas USA.”
The Commission’s January 2017 newsletter states that Judge Nolan not only deeded property for the railroad, but also “gave land to the Jewish citizens and the Negroes for burial purposes and to the Christian people he gave the south end of Oakland Cemetery.”
In 1879, Nolan died at his dinner table of a stroke. It is said he died a “poor” man. Nolan was buried at the Oakland Cemetery as well as several of his descendants.
See www.tworiversheritagefoundation.org for more info and membership.