My great grandfather Joshua David Coffee is buried in Mukewater Cemetery in Brown Couny. He joined the 14th Brigade, Capt.John H.Damron's Company, acting Brig.Gen.Smith P. Bankhead's Texas State Troops. Damron's company was ordered to the 1st Texas Cavalry Regiment, Col. Peter Hardeman's Arizona Brigade on July 8,1863 at the Warren Supply Depot in Fannin County Texas. Capt. Damron is buried in Zephyr Cemetery also in Brown County Texas. Both men's gravesites have Confederate bronze markers furnished by the VA. In February 1864, the 1st Texas Cavalry was ordered to join Gen. Samuel B. Maxey's Division, Department of Arkansas. In January, 1865, my great grandfather was transferred Capt. William B. Crocker's Company, TST and assigned to Col. James G. Bourland's Frontier Regiment and remained there until the end of the war.

Many families from NE Texas migrated to the Texas frontier after the Indian problem was over and homesteaded 320 acres of Texas school lands and took advantage of Gov.Oran Robert's "pay as you go" tax reform policy. The State of Texas Homestead Act is what started the bloody fence cutting war between cowmen, trail herders and homesteaders in Brown and Coleman County. Many men who are buried in cemeteries in Coleman and Brown County died violent deaths in the fence cutting war.

Capt. Damron was married to Nancy Blanton. She was my great grandfather's sister-in-law. John Damron migrated to Brown County from Fannin County about 1873. My great grandfather migrated from Fannin County to Brown County in 1877. They lost their homesteads in Fannin County to federal taxes after the WBTS.