The Malone Legacy

In 1803, Ol' Man Malone was baptized in Nacogdoches at "Old Stone Fort", a presidio. Very little was known of his guardians or parents. When the record of his baptism was recorded, that act within itself... gave him the legal surname: Malone.  Holding a SAFE surname granted by the authority of the Catholic Church & Spanish Crown, intitled Mario Malone (once mature enough), future property rights and voting privileges. These rights were granted in 1824, by the Federal Constitution of Mexico & the 1827 State Constitution of Coahulia y Tejas.  The Christian baptism was confirmed in (registros parroquiales eclesiasticos) parish registries, Mexico City. This is not family legend. This part is documented and confirmed by Rev. Dr. Dumas Malone and independent professional genealogist Marry Hall 2024.

In 1803, Ol' Man Malone was baptized in Nacogdoches at Old Stone Fort, a presidio. Very little was known of his guardians or parents. When the record of his baptism was recorded, that act gave him a surname: Malone. The baptism was confirmed by the Mexican Catholic Church records — held in Mexico City. This is not family legend. This part is documented.

It is important to remember: in 1803, this was not yet Texas. It was the northeastern frontier of New Spain — a colonial borderland where Spanish missionaries, French traders, Comanche raiders, and Indigenous nations all moved through the same corridors. Mario was not old at the time of his baptism. He was a man in his prime. What made him remarkable was not his age but his reputation. As the years passed, he became known as someone deeply wise and spiritually grounded — a man who understood the land, the systems pressing in on his people, and how to navigate both without surrendering either.

Who exactly Mario was before that baptism is one of the enduring mysteries of this line. The oral record holds competing accounts — and in 1803, that ambiguity was not unusual. Colonial administrators, missionaries, and census-takers of that era struggled to categorize the populations moving through the frontier and black land prairies borderlands. The categories themselves were unstable:

Some accounts said Mario was a remnant of the Mexican War of Independence (1810–1821) — an Irish exiled mix, a so-called Wild Goose, left behind when the colonial tide shifted. Others described him as an African mix — possibly an impresario of sorts who moved through the colonial labor networks with unusual freedom. He was most certainly a free person of color. Still, others called him an Indian. The Tonkawa identity was the common denominator between the family, supported by grandmother of Jim "James" Malone, Fransis Malone.

What is known is this: Mario held land titles. The oral record says those titles were given to him by the Mexican Government — either purchased outright or granted in recognition of service. The exact nature of that service is not recorded. But a man of Indigenous or mixed origin holding documented land title in Spanish colonial Texas was not common. It required wealth, political standing, or a relationship with the colonial administration that most free people of color never achieved. That land — at Natan Samox, at the confluence of the Little River and the Brazos — is the same land the family never fully left.

He was, by every account, a man who understood how to outmaneuver a system that was not built for him. The new machinery of slavery was pressing in from the east. The Republic of Texas was not yet formed, but its logic was already moving through the territory. Mario read it. He blended where blending was survival. He held paper where paper was power. He raised his sons on land that was his by record. That is not luck. That is strategy across a lifetime.

Through that Methodist fellowship, Dumas Malone conveyed to Rev. Nathaniel Aaron Burton directly what the records showed. The Malones were "on the Rolls" — the Tonkawa Malone's appeared on the National Archives Indian Census Roll (M595), recorded in variations of the name. This information was documented by 1st Lady, Deloris Burton M.A., who kept meticulous records through old-fashioned photo albums. She had plenty of written notes which spanned the years — 1886 to 1939 — In her photo album alongside a photograph of my grandmother she had written: Pawnee and Ponca Agencies.  I do not think anyone knew what it meant for years. However, that thread existed. It was not pursued further but has been recorded here.

Family oral history identifies William T. “Bill” Malone as the son of Mario — Ol’ Man Malone — born in 1817 and killed at the Alamo in 1836. The family remembers him as a man of Indigenous and mixed-heritage community, not as the later identity assigned to him in competing accounts.

His Tonkawa wife, Fransis, was pregnant when he left for the garrison. Their son, James Henry Malone, was born in September 1836 after his father’s death. The family holds that Ol’ Man Malone raised both Fransis and James Henry. James Henry died young; the surviving record of his life is limited.

The public record around William T. Malone is not a single, settled story. Three families from Alabama, Georgia, and Virginia claimed to be his heirs. Although the Virginia family prevailed in the lawsuit, the outcome does not resolve the Malone family’s questions about Bill’s identity, including the family’s memory that he was dark-skinned while the claimant families were all Anglo. Texas historical accounts also reflect the complexity of the case. This page does not repeat disputed claims as fact. The Malone family did not know of a land bounty in its own oral record, and no claim to one is made here.

One detail carried in the family’s memory is that Bill lost a finger at age 15 in a livestock-rope accident, not because he was drunk. In the cattle country of early Texas, roping and handling unbroken animals were dangerous work, especially for Indigenous, Mexican vaquero, free, indentured, and enslaved laborers. these dangerous labors were assigned to "COW BOYs" not Anglo "COW HANDs".  The exact circumstances and treatment belong to oral history and are presented here with that care.

What remains central is not a disputed benefit or a borrowed pedigree. It is the family’s continuity: after Bill’s death, Ol’ Man Malone protected his daughter-in-law and grandson, James Henry Malone. (True Heir of William (Billy) Malones 600+ acre bounty.  Despite the erasure the line continued in what eventually became Milam County, through memory, kinship, and survival.

This is not hearsay. This is recorded Texas law — and it is largely absent from the history taught in Texas schools. The Malones were not alone in staying. Many free people of color, Mestizo families, and those who had blended into the land over generations made the same choice: stay, blend, and survive.

Consider what James Henry Malone was facing. He was born in September 1836 after his father, William T. Malone, was killed at the Alamo. By the time he was about six, the Republic’s expulsion law threatened free people of color with removal or enslavement. The family’s record is clear on one point: the Malones were never enslaved. They remained connected to kin and place in Milam County while the paper record around them grew thin.

James Henry's date of departure was not recorded.  We know his son, Jim “James” Malone, was born in 1856. The later census record applied the period classification “Mulatto” to Jim. That label reflects the state’s system of classification, not the full identity preserved in the family’s oral history.

Jim “James” Malone married Lenora Kerr, born circa 1858. Family oral tradition holds that the Kerr line was believed to be connected to the Creek Nation of Tennessee and also preserves a Melungeon connection. Those strands remain subjects for continued research; they are recorded here as family history, not as a substitute for documentation.

They never left. They blended. They reclassified. They survived. Hillard Rhiley Malone was reclassified again after James. The paper changed with every generation. The blood did not.

Hillard Rhiley Malone (1875–1970) and Georgia Ann King (1885–1957) built their life in Two Mile Bottom — the same bottomland the Burtons and Smiths had worked for generations. Georgia Ann was a midwife. She kept guinea fowl. She was the kind of woman who held a community together without ever being named in the record.

Their son Promise Malone became a dentist. His practice was burned in a night raid. The family absorbed that loss the same way they had absorbed every other attempt to erase them — and kept going.

The Malones and the Burtons shared the same land, the same water, and the same strategy: stay together, blend when necessary, and never let the record be the final word on who you are.

Three places mark the Malone world in Milam County.

Peaceful Rest Cemetery in Gause — still maintained, still standing. Historically called the Negro Cemetery, the Colored Cemetery, the Family Cemetery. Buried there: African, Free People of Color, Mestizo triracial lines. The full spectrum of what this family was.

Little River — the water boundary of the Freedom Colony land, the same river that runs at the base of Natan Samox. The family still gathers at Sugarloaf Mountain. They still pray there.

Sugarloaf Mountain — Natan Samox — Red Mountain, the origin place. The Tonkawa of Oklahoma erected a monument there after purchasing the land. They refuse to acknowledge the Mestizos who never left. The family does not need their acknowledgment. The mountain was here before Oklahoma existed.