Goree

Thomas Jewett Goree, Confederate officer, attorney, and early prison director and reformer, the son of Dr. Langston James and Sarah Williams (Kittrell) Goree, was born on November 14, 1835, in Marion, Perry County, Alabama. He attended Howard College in Marion. The family moved to Texas in 1850 and settled in Huntsville. In 1853, after his father's death, Thomas Jewett attended Baylor College, then at Independence, where he earned both his academic and his law degree. In 1858 he formed at Montgomery a law partnership with Col. William P. Rogers Rogers, Willie, and Goree; the firm later moved to Houston. In 1861 Goree left his law career and set out for Virginia to join the Confederate Army. On the boat from Galveston to New Orleans, he met Maj. James Longstreet, who had resigned his commission in the United States Army and was also traveling to Virginia to offer his services to the Confederate states. Goree, who was eventually promoted to captain, served as Longstreet's aide-de-camp throughout the war and was involved in almost every battle in which Longstreet's division took part. He was never wounded, though he had several horses shot out from under him, and his clothing was riddled with bullet holes. After Appomattox, Goree accompanied Longstreet home to Alabama. Goree returned to Texas in 1865 and took over operations at the Raven Hill Plantation near Huntsville, which his mother had purchased from Sam and Margaret M. L. Houston qqv in 1858. He ran the plantation and continued to practice law until 1869.