{"product_id":"stapleton-clayton-r-stapleton-9798180447944","title":"Stapleton: From Gum Swamp to Texas Wilderness","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA family that couldn't read a page of law outfought the most powerful attorneys in territorial Florida. Then they loaded a wagon and headed for Texas.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eStapleton: From Gum Swamp to Texas Wilderness\u003c\/b\u003e is the true story of one American family's thirty-year journey across the nineteenth-century frontier - from the swamp country of South Carolina through the raw wilderness of Alabama and Florida to the shores of Matagorda Bay, Republic of Texas.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAt the center of it stands William Stapleton, an illiterate patriarch who built a mill on a Florida creek, raised thirteen children, was appointed a Justice of the Peace despite never reading a word in his life, and died in 1832 still fighting a fraudulent land scheme orchestrated by his own son. After his death, his children - led by William Jr. and including teenage twins Zeno and Zenothan - carried that fight into the courts of territorial Florida, faced down the personal attorney of Andrew Jackson, and won. Then they were named in a newspaper want notice for harboring an escaped person. Then they boarded a schooner in New Orleans and sailed for Texas.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis is narrative genealogy at its most propulsive - every name, date, court record, land patent, and sworn testimony verified against primary sources, brought to life with the full weight of the country these people actually crossed. It is a story about what land meant to people who had nothing else. About what an X pressed into a courthouse document could cost a man, and what it was worth. About the children who watched their father fight and understood, before they were old enough to name it, that this was what was required of them.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eBook Two of the Stapleton Trilogy.\u003c\/b\u003e The line does not stop.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Clayton R. Stapleton\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9798180447944\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Independently Published\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 06\/10\/2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 112\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.35lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.27d","brand":"Clayton R. Stapleton","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":49173561016575,"sku":"9798180447944","price":9.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/stapleton-clayton-r-stapleton-9798180447944","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}