William B. Travis - Family Life

Family Life

Travis, an American of English descent, was born in August,1,1809 in Saluda County, South Carolina, to Mark and Jemima Travis. Records differ as to whether his date of birth was the first or ninth of August, but his youngest brother James C. Travis, who was in possession of the Travis family Bible at the time of his statement, indicated that he was born on the first. When he was nine, his uncle Alexander Travis, a prominent Baptist preacher, called on his family to move to the town of Sparta in Conecuh County, Alabama, where he received much of his education. He later enrolled in a school in nearby Claiborne, where he eventually worked as an assistant teacher.

Travis then became an attorney and, at age 19, married one of his former students, 16-year-old Rosanna Cato (1812–1848), on October 26, 1828. The couple stayed in Claiborne and had a son, Charles Edward, in 1829. Travis began publication of a newspaper that same year, the Claiborne Herald. He became a Mason, joining the Alabama Lodge No.3 – Free and Accepted Masons, and later joined the Alabama militia as adjutant of the Twenty-sixth Regiment, Eighth Brigade, and Fourth Division.

His marriage soon failed, and Travis fled Alabama in early 1831 to start over in Texas, leaving behind his wife, son, and unborn daughter. Their son was placed with Travis's friend, David Ayres, so that he would be closer to his father. Travis and Rosanna were officially divorced by the Marion County courts on January 9, 1836, by Act no. 115. Rosanna married Samuel G. Cloud in Monroeville, Alabama, on February 14, 1836. However, they both died of Yellow Fever during an epidemic which afflicted the state in 1848.