Let an especial attention be had to keep a regular record of your marriages, and of the births of your children, by which their ages may at any time be legally established;--this will be of essential service to you in placing them out as apprentices and prevent impositions being practised upon you. Finally--be sober; be watchful over every part of your conduct, keeping constantly in view, that the freedom of many thousands of your colour, who still remain in slavery, will be hastened and promoted by your leading a life of virtue and sobriety.[5] FOOTNOTES: [1] American Convention Abolition Societies. Minutes, 1796, pp. 12, 14. [2] American Convention of Abolition Societies, Minutes of, 1797, pp. 16 and 17. [3] American Convention Abolition Societies, Minutes, 1804, pp. 30-33. [4] Minutes of Proceedings of Tenth American Convention for promoting the Abolition of Slavery, 1805, pp. 36-39. [5] Minutes of the American Convention Abolition Societies, 1818. Pages 43 and 47. SOME UNDISTINGUISHED NEGROES JUAN BAUTISTA CESAR A few years ago a bookseller handed me a book of MSS. papers for classification. I noted that they belonged to some military court or the archives of a Spanish Audiencia having jurisdiction in New Spain. Most of them had something to do with Texas when it was part of Mexico and belonged to the kingdom of Spain. These papers were of the highest historical value in so far as Texas was concerned. My curiosity was aroused by the original transcript of a court martial called upon to judge the transgressions of the Anglo-Americans, as they were called in those days. From these papers Philip Nolan, around whom a halo of false patriotism still lingers, was nothing more or less in the judgment of the court martial than a horse thief. It was the practice of Nolan, Bean, Fero and others to make periodical incursions across the State and stampede home, domestic, and wild horses for their mutual benefit. On this occasion the Spaniards were prepared for the malefactors and when surrounded in their provisional fort they refused at first to surrender, but the killing of Nolan put an end to all resistance and Elias Bean, David Fero and the Negro Cesar were put in St. Charles jail to await the slow machinery of the Spanish courts. Bean and Fero attempted to escape from the jail. One of these patriots became intimate with the jailer's wife and his intercepted notes showed him a depraved specimen of humanity. Among the papers examined was a deposition of Nolan's slave known in the histories of Texas by the name of Cesar, under the Spanish correct form he takes the proper name of Juan Bautista Cesar, a native of Grenada, when the island belonged to France. He was a professed Christian belonging to the Roman Catholic faith. So that during the dawn of the incipient difficulties surrounding Texas, therefore, when becoming part of the