Jean Nicolas Pichot, Jr.

Project Admin Note: There is contradicting information and unclear in these paragraphs. All statements are included until the facts can be sorted.

Ship L'ebro, Capt Perry, departed Havre De Grace, France, on 2 November 1842 for Galveston, Texas. They had a long, tedious 75-day trip crossing the ocean. Some of the passengers died at sea. The immigrants were all French except two families -- the Conrads and Wilkes. Many of them were really German, but all spoke French, being Alsatians. On New Year's day of 1843 the ship landed at Galveston. The likely tired and worn out colonists would have gladly set foot on Texas soil. It was a strange and foreign country to them, thousands of miles from the place of their nativity.

There were 114 passengers aboard the ship compromised of 42 families. Nicolas Pichot, age 23,

along with his father, Jean Nicolas Pichot Sr, age 56, his two sisters, Jean Marie, age 15, and Alexandrine, age 14, were aboard the ship.  His mother, Marice Carpentier, and oldest brother, Louis, stayed in France.  His oldest brother's wife was expecting a baby.  His mother was also afraid of the wild animals in Texas. 

Jean (John) Nicholaus Pichot Jr. was born in Alaces Lorraine, France, in February 1820. He left France in the year 1842 on the ship Ebony or Ebro, ship's Captain Perry landed in Texas 1 January 1843. Being part of the Castro Colony he lived in Castroville. He and his father both received 40 acres each on the east side of the Medina River. When his father was killed by a rattle snake bite, Jean Nicholaus Pichot Jr. then worked the entire 80 acres. On 28 January 1864 Nicholaus and his wife Regina were closing up the saloon. Nicholas told his wife to go home to the children and he would finish up and be home later. He was killed and robbed in his saloon for money that was kept in a baking powder can. The next morning Regina could see that Nicholas did not come home that night. That morning she learned he had been shot or killed by an axe and robbed. Oldest daughter Theresa, 17 years old at the time, always took breakfast to her father every morning. Today she was told she would not have to because he had been killed. Records say John's (Jean) tomb stone says February. Many years later a man by the name of Goid, living in Del Rio, Texas, confessed on his death bed that he had committed the crime. 

Sources:

Andrew Jackson Sowell, 'Early Settlers and Indian Fighters of Southwest Texas' (Austin, Tex.: State House Press, 1986).