Philip Nolan was born about 1771 in Belfast, Ireland. A reference to him by General James Wilkinson as "a child of my own raising" and the fact that Nolan once referred to Wilkinson as "the friend and protector of my youth" give some ground for the belief held by Spanish officials in Louisiana that he was reared in the General's family.
As early as 1790 Nolan was Wilkinson's agent in tobacco dealings at New Orleans. The following year he made the first of four trading ventures into Texas.
Suspected as a spy in Mexico and cheated of his goods he lived for a time among the Indians, but subsequently went back to the Spaniards, and having sold skins and caught a number of wild horses, returned in 1794 to Louisiana.
From his second expedition (1794 - 96), to San Antonio, he took back 250 horses, selling some in Natchez and Kentucky, though he was legally entitled only to supply mounts for the Spanish cavalry in Louisiana. Sharing in the profits of his enterprises, Spanish officials both there and in Texas winked at his illicit trading, and he was even permitted to pasture his wild horses with the cavalry horses at San Antonio until they were gentle. He had corrals also and a "pasture" on the Trinity River, in East Texas.
At the beginning of his third expedition he fell in with Andrew Ellicott, then on his way to survey the Southwestern boundary. Seizing the opportunity to obtain instruction in Ellicott's profession, he accompanied him as far as Natchez, and in the summer of 1797 set out with instruments and a passport from Governor Gayoso of Louisiana to explore and map for him the north Texas region. After his death it was said that he had intended to gather information for General Wilkinson to use in a projected conquest of Mexico. After penetrating apparently as far south as the Rio Grande in the state of Tamaulipas, he returned with some 1, 300 horses. Before his return the suspicions of Gayoso had been aroused and the Texan authorities warned to look out for Nolan, and after this expedition his license to do horsetrading was revoked. Accordingly, when he set forth the next year, it was with the avowed purpose of bringing into the United States horses from his "pasture" on the Trinity River, but it is evident that he planned to do other trading also. Gayoso's warnings against him now became effective, however, and a hundred men under Lieut. M. Musquiz were sent out from Nacogdoches to arrest him. In a skirmish between this force and Nolan's party near the present Waco, Nolan was killed.
According to Professor E. C. Barker, "Nolan's connection with Wilkinson, Jefferson's desire to get information from him concerning the habits of wild horses, and Clark's vague references to 'a man who will at all times have it in his Power to render important Services to the U. S. ' have enveloped his smuggling adventures in an atmosphere of mystery and international intrigue which candid scrutiny of available sources tends to dispel. "
The testimony of those who knew him shows Nolan to have been a man of magnetic personality, reputed to possess an exceptional knowledge of the Spanish frontier. Daniel Clark, 1766-1813, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson written in 1799, characterized him as "that extraordinary and enterprising Man whom Nature seems to have formed for Enterprises of which the rest of Mankind are incapable". William Dunbar attributed to him "energy of mind not sufficiently cultivated by education, but which under the guidance of a little more prudence might have conducted him to enterprises of the first magnitude".
On December 19, 1799 Nolan married Frances Lintot, daughter of Bernard Lintot, a merchant of Natchez. An only son, born after his father's death, died at the age of twenty-one.
