WELCOME
Welcome to Huntsville, Texas and the Sam Houston Statue. Huntsville is part of Walker County and approximately 70 miles north of Houston and and 170 miles South of Dallas. From the citys earliest inception, it was considered the center of education and law, and was the home of many military leaders during the years of the Republic of Texas.
SAM HOUSTON
Sam Houston, one of the most illustrious political figures of Texas, was born on March 2, 1793, the fifth child (and fifth son) of Samuel and Elizabeth (Paxton) Houston, on their plantation in sight of Timber Ridge Church, Rockbridge County, Virginia.
He was of Scots-Irish ancestry and reared as a Presbyterian. He acquired rudimentary education during his boyhood by attending a local school for no more than six months.
When he was thirteen years old, his father died. Some months later, in the spring of 1807, he emigrated with his mother, five brothers, and three sisters to Blount County in Eastern Tennessee, where the family established a farm near Maryville on a tributary of Bakers Creek. Houston went to a nearby academy for a time and reportedly fed his fertile imagination by reading classical literature, especially the Iliad.
In 1859, two years before the start of the war between the states, he was opposed to having Texas secede from the union. In 1861, Texas voted to secede. Sam Houston refused to take an oath of allegiance to the new Confederacy and he was removed a governor.
He retired to Huntsville, Texas. He chose this city because the hills reminded him of his boyhood home near Maryville, Tennessee. He was seventy years old at the time of his death on July 26th, 1863. He died in Huntsville, TX at 6:15 p.m.
Soldier, statesman and rollicking character, Sam Houston walked across history.
The only man in American History to be elected governor of two states: Tennessee and TexasCitizen of four nations: United States, Cherokee, Mexico, TexasLife-long friend and champion for the rights of the Cherokee and other Native Americans.
