Ghosts along the Texas Coast by Docia Schultz Williams

known you.”
    Has anyone any explanation for this? I have had several psychics suggest that this is a classic case, supportive of reincarnation. Have you a better explanation?

C HAPTER 3
History and Mystery in Far
South Texas

BRIGHT SHINES BAILEY’S LIGHTS
    Docia Williams
    Oh, there are lots of phantom lights
    That light the still and foggy nights;
    Lights that bob along a fence,
    Or in the forests, dark and dense.
    Lights, no bigger than a ball,
    And lights, we’ve heard, near six feet tall!
    Lights like those on Bailey’s Prairie,
    Big, and bold, and downright scary . . .
    That’s seen to come, and seen to go
    â€™Bout every seven years or so.
    Oh, so strange, these ghostly lights
    That come to haunt our Texas nights!

The Light on Bailey’s Prairie
    Down near Angleton there’s a place known as Bailey’s Prairie. “Brit” Bailey, for whom it is named, was one of the most colorful of Texas’ frontier characters. What was the truth, and what was fiction, has all gotten sort of tangled up over the years as different tale spinners talk or write about the colorful figure.
    Brit, a hard-living, hard-drinking, sometimes controversial but always highly interesting Texas frontiersman, still seems to appear from time to time! At least that’s what folks around Bailey’s Prairie say. Bailey’s appearances, which take the form of a big ball of light, known as Bailey’s light, seem to take place about every seven years. Old Brit has carved himself a unique and permanent niche in the “Hall of Fame” of Texas “ghostdom.”
    Having read numerous accounts of Bailey’s life, death, and subsequent hauntings, all of which did not always agree, I was delighted when I was contacted by his great-great-granddaughter, Mary Lou Polley Featherston, of Port Arthur. Her letter stated, “I was a Polley, great-granddaughter of Mary Bailey Polley, daughter of Brit Bailey. She married Joseph H. Polley who was also one of the Old Three Hundred. (This refers to Stephen F. Austin receiving permission from the Mexican government to bring 300 Anglo families into Texas in April of 1823.)
    James Briton “Brit” Bailey was born on August 1, 1779, in North Carolina. He took pride in being descended from Robert Bruce of Scotland. As a young man, he moved about a good bit, and lived in both Tennessee and Kentucky. During the War of 1812 he served as a U.S. Navy captain.
    In 1812 he packed up his wife, Edith Smith Bailey, and their family of six offspring, and came to Texas where they settled on a piece of property along the Brazos River in what is now known as Brazoria County. This land grant was under Stephen F. Austin’s jurisdiction. At first, it’s said that Austin tried to oust Bailey and his family when he(Austin) learned that Bailey had served time in the Kentucky state penitentiary for forgery. Bailey often stated it wasn’t serving in the pen that caused him embarrassment; it was the term he’d served in the Kentucky legislature that set heavy on his conscience. After paying his debts to society, Bailey packed up his family and came to Texas, just wanting a new start where they could be left alone. The settler finally got squared away with Austin, and while they were never really friendly, Austin accepted Bailey in July of 1824 as one of the “Old Three Hundred.” He was able to live and die on his original land claim, a “league of land.”
    In 1824 Austin used Bailey’s cabin to meet with settlers who lived along the lower Brazos, where they took an oath of loyalty to Mexico’s federal constitution in 1824. At the same meeting a company of militia was organized, and Brit was appointed as a lieutenant. That same year he took part in the Battle of Jones Creek. This was a no-win fight between Captain Randel Jones and his group of some twenty-three settlers, and a party of thirty or so Karankawa braves who were camped