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.
Wellington, Texas is in Collingsworth County, located where the Texas border departs from the Red River and heads due north, on the eastern edge of the Panhandle. At its peak, Wellington’s population was around 3,700 people and since the 1990s, it has hovered around 2,000 to 2,500 people.
In 1841, Republic of Texas President Mirabeau B. Lamar had a vision to expand the borders of the young republic further west, perhaps as far as California. Lamar had won the 1838 presidential election, following Sam Houston, the previous elected president. Lamar was in various ways the ideological opposite of Houston. He became the second of four elected presidents in the short life of the Republic and served from 12/10/1838 to 12/3/1841. At the time, the Texas economy was suffering and Lamar acted on the supposition that he had authority to pursue trade that was currently operating along the Santa Fe Trail.
Coppini was a sculptor in Texas who created many memorable works, including notable statues on several Texas universities and the familiar Alamo Cenotaph just outside the Alamo in San Antonio.
James C. Loving was the son of the well known cattleman and trail driver Oliver Loving and his wife Susan Loving, and was born in Kentucky in 1836. His parents came to Texas in 1845, settling for a year in Lamar County before moving to Collin County.
Texas History Notebook 