Samuel Willis Tucker Lanham was born July 4, 1846 in Woodruff, South Carolina to James Madison Lanham (1815 – 1869) and Louisa D’Aubrey Tucker Lanham (1820 – 1898). Samuel was the second of about ten children born to the couple. His first three names, Samuel Willis Tucker, came from his maternal grandfather. Samuel enlisted in the 3rd South Carolina Regiment of the Confederate Army when he was fifteen or sixteen years old and served throughout the entire war. His regiment primarily served with the Army of Northern Virginia and also participated in some engagements in Tennessee. His rank was sergeant when the war ended and he surrendered with his group in North Carolina.
He married Sarah Beona Meng on September 4, 1866. The same year, he and Sarah moved to Red River County in Texas. He is known to have taught school for a time in Clarksville and a while later in Old Boston. He was admitted to the Texas Bar in 1869 and about that same time moved to what is now Parker County where he briefly taught school and began to practice law. At age twenty-five, Lanham served as prosecutor in Jacksboro for the trials of Kiowa warriors Satanta and two other war chiefs who were the first Native Americans to be tried in frontier era civil courts for Indian depredations. Satanta was known as the one of the most senior war chiefs and was called “the orator of the tribe.” The particular incident that they were tried for was the Henry Warren wagon train attack, also called the Salt Creek Massacre.
After Lanham’s 1908 death, an article in The Salt Lake Herald-Republican gave some details of the trial stating that Satanta addressed the jury through an interpreter, calling himself a friend of the Texans and stating that if he were to be acquitted, he vowed to hunt down and punish those Indians who had committed the Salt Creek attack. The suspects were convicted.
The The Salt Lake Herald-Republican article, posted a few months after Lanham’s death, said that the famous trial launched Lanham’s political career. The headlines and first paragraph of the 1908 article are shown below.
The 1908 above article mentions three companions of Satanta who were sentenced to hang. To the best of our knowledge, only Satanta and Big Tree were defendants in this particular trial. An excerpt from Lanham’s address to the Jacksboro jury was quoted below from another newspaper article:
This is a novel and important trial, and has perhaps no precedent in the history of American criminal jurisprudence. The remarkable character of the prisoners, who are striking representatives of their race; their crude and barbarous appearance; the gravity of the charge; the number of victims; the horrid brutality and inhuman butchery inflicted upon the bodies of the dead; the dreadful and terrific spectacle of seven men, who were husbands, fathers, brothers, sons and lovers on the morning of the dark and bloody day of this atrocious deed,
…
The Fort Worth Record and Register, 27 Mar 1904, quoting from “Smythe’s Sketches of Parker County.”
Lanham served as District Attorney in North Texas from 1871 to 1876, a United States representative from 1888 to 1893. His district there represented ninety-eight counties. He was first unsuccessful in a bid for governor in 1894, losing to Charles Culbertson, but was elected with wide support some eight years later. He is widely referred to as having been the last Confederate veteran to serve as Texas governor. Lanham served two terms as the twenty-second governor of Texas from 1903 to 1907.
Lanham was known as an effective speaker and while he was governor, he made many public appearances. Lanham is noted for various accomplishments during his term. He presided over the enactment of election reforms. Some of the provisions included the required filing of campaign expense reports providing for primary elections for political parties. He also was governor while other important laws were enacted including curbs on child labor. In addition, an anti-trust law was passed and two colleges were opened, one in Denton and another in San Marcus. In opposition, Lanham was generally criticized by organized labor, citing his vetoes of bills favored by labor groups.
After his second term ended, his health had declined. His wife Sarah Meng Lanham died on July 2, 1908. He followed her in death on July 29, 1908 and both were buried in Weatherford, Parker County, where they had resided most of their married lives. A Texas historical marker has been posted at their home.
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Texas History Notebook 