In a thread below, Lamon Miller suggested he might be related to a fellow named John Lamon who in 1853 and 1854 was working on a surveying party among the mesquite trees of South Texas.
John Lamon was listed as a chain carrier on the field notes that were prepared from the work and filed in the Texas GLO, but he didn't actually sign his name to them. Here's an example of his signature (complete with rubric), taken from the instrument by which Lamon in 1846 transferred a land certificate he had received from the Republic of Texas for his service in the Army to a San Antonio merchant named John Twohig.
At least one of the witnesses was a famous character in his own right: John Coffee Hays.
As a footnote, John Lamon's Bounty Warrant was later located in Bexar Land District in what is now Kendall County, Texas. The details are found in Texas GLO Bexar Bounty File 341.
I found John Lamon's discharge from the Civil War. Interesting to see who his Commanding Officer was:
Neither one were spring chickens in 1862.
> I found John Lamon's discharge from the Civil War. Interesting to see who his Commanding Officer was:
Yes, that's interesting that Lamon served in de Montel's Ranger Company. It makes sense given both their backgrounds and that surveying on the Texas frontier was camp life with weapons. I'm thinking there's a script for a western movie in that, but Robert Duval's accent would never pass muster.
John Lamon was born April 27, 1816 in Wittelsheim, Haut-Rhin, Alsace, so he probably spoke with an Alsatian German accent. He died in 1882 in Castroville.
Here's a bit of information about the John Twohig who bought that Bounty Warrant from John Lamon in 1846. Twohig was born in Ireland in 1815. He arrived in Texas in March of 1841 at Galveston by ship from New Orleans. Twohig probably insisted on the three witnesses since neither he nor Lamon could understand a word the other was saying without an interpreter. :>
Minor footnote: I just mentioned the details of Private Lamon's military service in a preliminary report I'm working on. A set of field notes were prepared by another surveyor in August, 1862, listing John Lamon as a chain carrier when he was patrolling several counties away with the Texas Ranger Company. The 1862 field notes are an obvious transcription from de Montel's 1854 field notes, but the military service was a nice addition.
