Nolan was imprisoned or was killed in Texas. This Mr. Nolan, as
Wilkinson generally calls him, had been engaged with Wilkinson in some
speculations mostly relating to horses. Remembering this, I took the
name Nolan for my hero. I made my man the real man's brother. "He had
spent half his youth with an older brother, hunting horses in Texas."
And again:--"he was catching wild horses in Texas with his adventurous
cousin." [Note: Young authors may observe that he is called a brother in
one place and a cousin in another, because such slips would take place
in a real narrative. Proofreaders do not like them, but they give a
plausibility to the story.] I had the impression that Wilkinson's
partner was named Stephen, and as Philip and Stephen were both
evangelists in the Bible, I named my man Philip Nolan, on the
supposition that the mother who named one son Stephen would name another
Philip. It was not for a year after, that, in looking at Wilkinson's
"Memoirs" again, I found to my amazement, not to say my dismay, that
Wilkinson's partner was named Philip Nolan. We had, therefore, two
Philip Nolans, one a real historical character, who was murdered by the
Spaniards on the 21st of March, 1801, at Waco in Texas; the other a
purely imaginary character invented by myself, who appears for the first
time on the 23d of September, 1807, at a court-martial at Fort Adams.

I supposed nobody but myself in New England had ever heard of Philip
Nolan. But in the Southwest, in Texas and Louisiana, it was but
sixty-two years since the Spaniards murdered him. In truth, it was the
death of Nolan, the real Philip Nolan, killed by one Spanish governor
while he held the safe-conduct of another, which roused that wave of
indignation in the Southwest which ended in the independence of Texas.
I think the State of Texas would do well, to-day, if it placed the
statue of the real Phil Nolan in the Capitol at Washington by the side
of that of Sam Houston.