Ball, Hutchings and Company

Texas Military Board

Notes concerning this firm in the Texas Military Board Papers at TSLAC, Box 2-10/299.

Folders for Ball, Hutchings and Co., a Houston firm, concern agreements about buying and selling cotton.

Some indication that the firm struggled with military officials to ensure that its teams were not detained. A letter from John Sealy on behalf of the firm to Capt. E. P. Turner, dated Brownsville, April 30, 1863, discusses General Order No. 60. “Although Paragraphs II & VIII protect us while fulfilling the conditions of our contract,” Sealy wrote, “I fear that some misconception of our position as Confederate and State Contractors may lead to some detention of our teams and cotton.” Sealy enclosed evidence of “our Contract with the State Authorities, and, Special Order No. 63 from your Head Quarters: also Bill of Lading for a portion of the Cards now awaiting transportation at the mouth of the River. We have further the order of Major Gen’l Magruder permitting us to export the cotton designated in our contract, and a similar order from COl. Bankhead for the exportation of cotton in accordance with provisions of Contract with Major Minter to furnish cotton & wool cards destined for Arkansas, both contract and permit being approved by the Major General Commanding.”¹

A spring 1863 letter to the Board discusses a plan whereby the firm will purchase cotton cards for the state and then “deliver them to the chilef justices of each country for distribution at a rate fixed by your Honorable Board.”²

The firm has an agent in Havana trying to procure machinery for the Huntsville State Penitentiary from England through Cuba, and also reports about markets in Liverpool.

The firm’s arrangement as of September 1863 is to serve as “State Agents” to purchase cotton with money furnished by the Board and then transport it “as the property of the State” to Mexico for sale.³

A receipt also shows that the firm bought 50 bales of cotton from the Chenango Plantation that same month. Multiple receipts like this from different plantations, suggesting ramsdell1924 might be wrong to judge extent of cotton trade only based on what happened up to September 1863. The firm is heading to Brownsville with 6 to 700 bales in November 1863, but also writes the Board that it is waiting to hear if the city has been taken. Letters also detail the process by which the firm shipped: by securing teams at Kings Ranch and having cotton hauled from there “by Mexicans to Brownsville” (letter to Board dated November 28, 1863). After fall of Brownsville, some of these teamsters were returning to New Braunfels claiming damages and talking of selling cotton purchased by the state for their own indemnification.

One letter dated November 28. 1863, reads, in part:

We must confess that the Federal raid in the West & capture of Brownsville was unexpected to us and has in a measured deranged all our plans, and it will be some time before we can again establish our business relations beyond the Confederacy on so good a basis as they were before the fall of Brownsville. We have a partner and an agent beyond the Rio Grande and no effort will be spared on our part to effect good arrangements for receiving & selling the Cotton intrusted to us by your Hon. Board, if we can only get the teamsters to act fairly.

Even after Brownsville, receipts for purchases of cotton 50 or 100 bales at a time continue in December. Some account summaries were photographed. Disputes between the Board and the firm over money owed to the latter appear to pick up at end of 1863 and into 1865.