Henry Millard
Henry Millard (circa 1796– 1844) was an American businessman, military officer, and public servant. He founded the city of Beaumont, Texas, in 1835 and fought in the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836 during the Texas Revolution.
Millard was born in Stillwater, New York, to Josiah and Nancy (Tower) Millard in about 1796. In 1804 his family moved to Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, and then downriver in the 1820s to Natchez, Mississippi.
On August 24, 1826, Millard married Mary Dewburleigh Barlace Warren Beaumont, the daughter of William Henry Beaumont and Elizabeth (Duncan) Beaumont of Natchez.
The Millards' first son, Frederick Sipe Millard, was born in 1827. That same year the father opened a store with his brother-in-law, Franklin Beaumont. They sold medicine, toy trains, books, and stationery.
In 1832 Millard moved his family to New Orleans, where he started a drug firm with a man named Samuel Mason. Mason died in 1833, which caused difficulties for the firm. During that same year Millard's second son, Henry Beaumont Millard, was born. Millard's wife Mary died in 1834.
Millard formed a new partnership with Joseph Pulsifer and Thomas Huling.
Millard left his sons with foster parents in New Orleans and moved to Texas in 1835. He and his business partner Pulsifer opened a store in the settlement of Santa Anna, while the third partner, Huling, opened a store in Zavalla.
The three of them decided to invest in land. They purchased 50 acres (200,000 m2) of land between the settlements of Tevis Bluff and Santa Anna. On that land they laid out the town of Beaumont, which Millard apparently named after Jefferson Beaumont. As a delegate to the Consultation of 1835 in San Felipe, he helped found the municipality of Jefferson, which later became Jefferson County. He was elected to the General Council of the Consultation, but resigned in order to accept a commission as a lieutenant colonel in the Texas revolutionary army.
...
Wikipedia