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Note: Asahel Dancer arrived in Texas Nov. 1838. On July 11, 1839 a Conditional Land Certificate issued for 640 acres. On Nov. 1, 1841 a Unconditional Land Certificate issued for 640 acres. Could be spelled Asahel, Ashell, Ashall, Asiel, or Aticil. Name origin may be Atical of European extraction Ashel Dancer, was a Colonist and Preacher. Resided in Bastrop County, Texas. DANCER, ASIEL (ca. 1795-ca. 1849). Asiel (Asahel) Dancer, a Baptist church elder and lay minister, was born, probably around 1795, in Tennessee. Around 1813 he married a woman named Mary, also of Tennessee, and the couple had eleven children. One of their sons, John Dancer, served with Capt. Nicholas M. Dawson and died on September 18, 1842. He is buried with the Dawson and Mier expedition soldiers on Monument Hill overlooking La Grange in Fayette County. Dancer and his wife moved to Texas around 1836, traveling from Tennessee and settling in Bastrop County. In 1839 church elders Dancer and R. G. Green were sent from the Providence Church in Bastrop County to help organize a church in Fayette County, the Plum Grove Baptist Church, often referred to as the Hopewell Church. In October 1839 Dancer, a strong antimissionary Baptist (see BAPTIST CHURCH), was chosen as its pastor. The church was affiliated with the Union Baptists of western Tennessee and evidently split over the missionary question shortly after its inception. In December 1841 Z. N. Morrell became its pastor. Asiel Dancer died in Bastrop County around 1849; his wife died in Bastrop County in 1853. BIBLIOGRAPHY: James Milton Carroll, A History of Texas Baptists (Dallas: Baptist Standard, 1923). La Grange High School, Fayette County: Past and Present (La Grange, Texas, 1976). Houston Wade, comp., The Dawson Men of Fayette County (Houston, 1932). Leonie Rummel Weyand and Houston Wade, An Early History of Fayette County (La Grange, Texas: La Grange Journal, 1936). Betty McCarty McAnelly Recommended citation: "DANCER, ASIEL." The Handbook of Texas Online The State of Texas ) County of Bastrop ) I William Dunbar Clerk County Court Bastrop County Do hereby certify that Thomas REID, and his wife Sarah REID, Joseph WOOD and his wife Wlizabeth [sic] WOOD, Thomas GRAY and his wife Nancy GRAY, W. J. S. CARTER and his wife Martha A. CARTER, Joseph GRAY and his wife Mary J. GRAY, Pike COTTLE and his wife Lydia COTTLE, John PERKINS and his wife Margarete PERKINS, Barker DANCER, James DANCER, and Rebecca DANCER are all the heirs at Law of Ashal DANCER, and Mary DANCER the deceased parents of John DANCER deceased and that Alexander WOOD is legally appointed Guardian of the said Rebeca DANCER who is a minor. To certify which I have hereunto set my hand and the seal of the County Court of Bastrop County in office in the Town of Bastrop this the 1st day February AD 1853 (Signed). . . . . . . . William Dunbar CLK CC BC (Signed). . . . . . . . By Cicero Nash, Deputy
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