(1849-1904) (1840-1904) Oakwood records: 1843-1904
Submitted by Kathleen Huston
Alice Casey left Ireland and arrived at New Orleans in 1855, at age fourteen. She took a job with Major George Henry Thomas and wife to be a servant for them at Ft. Mason, in current Mason, Texas. The Thomas family and Casey traveled with Lt Col Robert E. Lee from New Orleans to Ft. Mason. Thomas would later be a Union General and Lee a General and Commander of the Confederate Army.
Lee wrote in a letter to his wife, that Thomas’s Irish servant left to marry a soldier at Ft. Mason. This was Casey who married Michael Hillaire in 1857, the hospital steward. Hillaire was French, came to Ellis Island 1850 and joined the Second Cavalry. His army career took him to Ft Croghan in Burnet, Texas, then Ft. Mason. Most likely Casey served as a laundress at Ft. Mason after marriage as wives were required to work at a fort.
Allice Casey Hillaire and James Bassett Nitschke
Michael and Alice were transferred to Camp Verde outside Kerrville, Texas in 1859, Hillaire as hospital steward, Casey most likely as laundress. This camp had camels that Secretary of War Jeff Davis had placed there to use in the west Texas desert. Mostly like Hillaire and Casey rode the camels in camp activity days, which often centered around the camels.
When the Civil War broke out in 1861, the US soldiers of Camp Verde evacuated to the coast. Hillaire’s term of service was over, so he and Casey first bought property and lived in Kerrville, then bought a ranch and lived on the Llano River, near Mason.
Casey had a daughter, Alice, in 1862 on the isolated ranch. Hillaire died on the ranch in 1865, reportedly by getting kicked in the head by a mule. According to family lore, Casey put the baby in a wheelbarrow and walked alone through dangerous passes in the hills with wild animals, outlaws, and Indians, to get to town and get help. This mountain pass had been the location of a neighbor’s family’s death by Indian attack shortly before.
She then lived, and probably worked, at or near Ft. Mason. Some time between 1866 and 1870, Casey married a US soldier, and former Union soldier, William Calhoun at Ft. Mason. They had their first child at Ft. Mason in 1868. Shortly after they moved to Austin and became prominent citizens. Casey’s death in 1904 was a headline in the Austin newspaper and the Austin mayor served as a pallbearer in Calhoun’s funeral.
Alice Casey rose from the poverty of famine Ireland to success for herself and her offspring in one short lifetime on the Texas frontier. She was my great- great- grandmother and her daughter Alice with Hillaire was my great- grandmother. My family has told proud stories about Casey throughout my life.
Section 4, lot 125