Samuel Augustus Maverick was born in the summer of 1803 in South Carolina to Samuel and Elizabeth Anderson Maverick. His father operated an import business. Young Samuel worked in the family business, graduating from Yale University in 1825. He left the family business and moved to Virginia in 1828 to study law. For a while he practiced law and in 1833 he moved to Georgia for a year before relocating to Alabama to operate a plantation that had been given to him by his father.
Samuel Hamilton “Sam” Walker is a Texas Ranger legend and is one of only about three dozen Rangers who are in the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame. Sam was born in Maryland on February 24, 1817 and served as a soldier for most of his adult life. His first recorded term was with the Washington City Volunteers (now Washington, D. C.) in a campaign against the Creek Indians in 1836. It is believed that he then lived in Florida where he took a railway job until he moved to Texas in 1842. He joined John Coffee “Jack” Hays’ Ranger outfit that same year, serving as a scout under Capt. Jesse Billingsley.
There are 254 counties in Texas and 11 of them are named for Alamo defenders: Bailey, Bowie, Cochran, Cottle, Crockett, Dickens, Floyd, King, Lynn, Taylor and Travis counties. Floyd County is one such county. It was named for Dolphin Ward Floyd who is believed to have died on his birthday, March 6, 1836, in Santa Anna’s attack on the Alamo. Ward Floyd was born in North Carolina in 1804 and later moved near Gonzales where he worked as a farmer. In 1832, he married the recently widowed Esther Berry House, a mother of three by her first husband Isaac House, who also lived in Texas.
Collin McKinney was a early settler in North Texas. He was born in 1766 in New Jersey to a Scottish couple, Daniel and Mercy McKinney, making him 10 years old at the height of the American Revolution. Near the end of the war, the family first moved to Virginia and then again on to Kentucky around 1780.
There were a number of early Texans who had the last name of Baylor. Henry W. Baylor was born in Paris, Kentucky in 1818 to John Walker Bledsoe Baylor and Sophie Marie Weidner Baylor. He studied medicine and liberal arts at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky, founded in 1780, making it one of the oldest universities in the United States. About 1839 he came to visit his brother John Robert Baylor who had relocated to Texas earlier in the year. They joined the forces of Col. John H. Moore to fight Comanches for a time before Henry established a medical practice in La Grange, Fayette County. After going on several campaigns in pursuit of marauding Indians, he interrupted his medical practice to enlist in Company E of Col. John Coffee Hays‘ First Mounted Riflemen, First Rgt., where he served as a surgeon during the Mexican-American War. After his initial enlistment period was up, he reenlisted with Hays in the Second Rgt. where he was chosen as Captain. This unit served under U. S. Gen. Zachary Taylor and operated between Vera Cruz and Mexico City before returning to San Antonio for the duration of his enlistment.
Burleson County is located in East Central Texas and its county seat is Caldwell. The county is named for General Edward Murray Burleson, who served as Colonel of the First Regiment of Volunteers at the Battle of San Jacinto. He was born in North Carolina on December 15, 1798 and was still a relatively young man when his father James B. Burleson brought him on to act as Secretary as his father fought in the Creek War under Andrew Jackson. They both were descended from Ed Burleson’s grandfather Aaron Burleson, who had fought as a Minuteman in the American Revolution. The family first moved to Virginia, and Ed was elected Lieutenant and later Colonel of the militia. They later relocated to Tennessee where he served as Colonel of the militia from 1823 to 1830 in Hardeman County, Tennessee.
Andrews, Texas is located in far West Texas. If you hold your right hand up and imagine that this part of Texas is represented by your thumb and forefinger, Andrews County would be where your thumb and forefinger come together. The town of Andrews is the county seat and just about the lone survivor of a number of small communities that were born and died out since around 1890 when settlers first began to come to the area.
