counties – Page 4 – Texas History Notebook

Neil Love McLennan (1787-1867)

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One of the early settlers near Waco, Neil Love McLennan was born in Isle of Skye, off the western coast of Scotland in 1787. He came to America in 1801, first settling in North Carolina, married the former Christian A. (Darthal) Campbell in 1814, and then relocated in 1816 to Florida. After living there a number of years, in 1834 he and his family along with two brothers and others sailed a three masted schooner from Pensacola, Florida to the mouth of the Brazos. They arrived there in early March and continued on upriver as far as they could.

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Samuel Maverick

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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.

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Sam Walker, Texas Ranger

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.

Floyd County and Floydada, Texas

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.

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Collin McKinney

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.

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