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Bios: Hamilton Prioleau Bee
Laredo & San Antonio, Texas, 1822-1897
Hamilton Bee, for whom Beeville and Bee County, Texas were named, was
the son of General Bee from Sumpter District, SC. Gen. Bee served as
a Patriot in the American Revolution.
Hamilton Bee married Mary Mildred Tarver, a sister to Edward R Tarver,
General Bee's Aide-de-Camp. Mildred and her mother Mary Field Tarver
(d/o Hume R Field) came to Texas to join her brother after their
father John Andrew Tarver, a wealthy landowner of Lowndes County,
Alabama died. John A Tarver served in the Alabama Legislature. John Tarver's father was Benjamin Tarver, whose will is online in the probate section of TARVER-Gen records.
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BEE, Hamilton Prioleau (1822-1897)
In 1853, he met Miss Mildred Tarver (of an old Virginia and Georgia
family) who had recently removed with her widowed mother from Alabama
to Seguin, Texas, and in 1854 they were married. Her father, John A
Tarver was a large planter in Lowndes County, Alabama and died in
1850. Her mother (nee Mary Fields) died in Seguin in 1855.
The Fields and Tarver families bear an honorable reputation. The
former in Virginia, Tennessee, and Texas and the latter in Virginia,
Georgia, Alabama and Texas.
General and Mrs. Bee have had ten children, of whom Barnard E., the
oldest, and a noble young man, was accidentally killed by the fall of
a horse, in 1881. Forbes Britton and Willet died some years later.
The survivors are Clem S., Hamilton P., Tarver, Anne, Carlos, Edward
and Benjamin.
SOURCE:
Extracted from The Encyclopedia of the New West. Wm S Speer
& John H Brown, editors. Marshall Texas: The United States
Biographical Publishing Company, 1878, reprint 1881.
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BEE, Hamilton Prioleau (1822-1897)
Hamilton P. Bee, Confederate brigadier general, the son of Anne and Bernard E. Bee, was born in Charleston, South Carolina, on July 22, 1822. The family moved to Texas while he was still a youth. In 1839 he served as secretary for the commission that established the boundary between the Republic of Texas and the United States, and in 1843 Texas president Sam Houston dispatched Bee, with Joseph C. Eldridge and Thomas S. Torrey to convene a peace council with the Comanches. On August 9, 1843, the commissioners obtained the promise of the Penatekas to attend a council with Houston the following April. The meeting culminated in the Treaty of Tehuacana Creek. In 1846 Bee was named secretary of the Texas Senate.
During the Mexican War he served briefly as a private in Benjamin McCulloch's famed Company A–the "Spy Company"–of Col. John Coffee Hays's First Regiment, Texas Mounted Rifles, before transferring in October 1846, as a second lieutenant, to Mirabeau B. Lamar's independent company of Texas cavalry. Bee volunteered for a second term in October 1847 and was elected first lieutenant of Lamar's Company, now a component of Col. Peter Hansborough Bell's Regiment, Texas Volunteers.
After the war Bee moved to Laredo and was elected to the Texas legislature, where he served from 1849 through 1859. From 1855 through 1857 he was speaker of the House. He was elected brigadier general of militia in 1861 and appointed brigadier general in the Confederate Army to rank from March 4, 1862. His brigade was composed of August C. Buchel's First, Nicholas C. Gould's Twenty-third, Xavier B. Debray's Twenty-sixth, James B. Likin's Thirty-fifth, Peter C. Woods's Thirty-sixth, and Alexander W. Terrell's Texas cavalry regiments. Given command of the lower Rio Grande district, with headquarters at Brownsville, Bee expedited the import of munitions from Europe through Mexico and the export of cotton in payment. On November 4, 1863, he was credited with saving millions of dollars of Confederate stores and munitions from capture by a federal expeditionary force under Gen. Nathaniel P. Banks. After transfer to a field command in the spring of 1864, Bee led his brigade in the Red River campaign under Lt. Gen. Richard Taylor. Having had only slight training or experience in the art of war and having served only in an administrative capacity to that time, he was less than skillful in handling troops. While he was leading a cavalry charge at the battle of Pleasant Hill, two horses were shot from beneath him, and he suffered a slight face wound. Though he was afterward the object of some heavy criticism, he was assigned to the command of Thomas Green's division in Gen. John A. Wharton's cavalry corps in February 1865 and was later given a brigade of infantry in Gen. Samuel Bell Maxey's division.
After the war Bee went to Mexico for a time. In 1876 he returned to San Antonio, where he remained until his death, on October 3, 1897. He is buried in the Confederate Cemetery in San Antonio. Bee was married to MILDRED TARVER of Alabama in 1854, and they had six children. He was the brother of Gen. Bernard Elliott Bee, Jr.
SOURCE:
The New Texas Handbook, a 6-volume encyclopedia on Texas history. References follow. Hamilton Prioleau Bee Papers, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin. Clement Anselm Evans, ed., Confederate Military History (Atlanta: Confederate Publishing, 1899; extended ed., Wilmington, North Carolina: Broadfoot, 1987-89). Fredericka Meiners, Hamilton Prioleau Bee (M.A. thesis, Rice University, 1972). Fredericka Meiners, "Hamilton P. Bee in the Red River Campaign," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 78 (July 1974). Charles D. Spurlin, comp., Texas Veterans in the Mexican War: Muster Rolls of Texas Military Units (Victoria, Texas, 1984). Ezra J. Warner, Generals in Gray (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1959). Marcus J. Wright, comp., and Harold B. Simpson, ed., Texas in the War, 1861-1865 (Hillsboro, Texas: Hill Junior College Press, 1965).
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BEE, Hamilton Prioleau (1822-1897)
BEE, Barnard Elliott
Born: 1787, Charleston, South Carolina
Father: Judge Thomas Bee
Mother: Mrs. Susannah Bulline Shubrick
Residence: Austin, Texas
Married: Anne Wragg Fayssoux
Children: Susan Bulline, Anna, Hamilton Prioleau, Barnard Elliott,
Mattie E., Emma Templar, Maria.
BEE, Hamilton Prioleau
Born: 22 July 18222, Charleston, Couth Carolina
Father: Barnard Elliott Bee
Mother: Anne Wragg Fayssoux
Residence: Austin, Laredo, & San Antonio, Texas
Married: (1) Maria Andrea Martinez
(2) MARY MILDRED TARVER, 21 May 1854, Seguin, Guadalupe Co., TX
Children: (1) Lamar, Melitona
(2) Barnard, Elliott, Clement Stevens, Hamilton Prioleau,
John Tarver, Forbes Britton, Ann Fayssoux, Carlos, Willett,
Edward V., Benjamin Elliott
Speights, Mrs. D. B.; Hemphill, Texas 75948
SOURCE:
Citizens of the Republic of Texas. Texas State Genealogical
Society, Hacienda Tejas, Dallas, TX.
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NOTES
See also bio on Edward R Tarver and in probate section, see will of Benjamin Tarver, the father of John Andrew Tarver. of Lowndes Co., Alabama.
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