Samuel Houston was an American general and statesman who played an important role in the Texas Revolution. He served as the first and third president of the Republic of Texas and was one of the first two individuals to represent Texas in the United States Senate. He also served as the sixth governor of Tennessee and the seventh governor of Texas, the only individual to be elected governor of two different states in the United States.
Huntsville is a city in and the county seat of Walker County, Texas. The population was 45,941 as of the 2020 census. It is the center of the Huntsville micropolitan area. Huntsville is in the East Texas Piney Woods on Interstate 45 and home to the infamous Texas State Prison. It is home to Sam Houston State University, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Huntsville State Park, and HEARTS Veterans Museum of Texas. The city served as the residence of Sam Houston, who is recognized in Huntsville by the Sam Houston Memorial Museum and a statue on Interstate 45.
Sam Houston State University is a public university in Huntsville, Texas. It was founded in 1879 and is the third-oldest public college or university in Texas. It is one of the first normal schools west of the Mississippi River and the first in Texas. It is named for Sam Houston, who made his home in the city and is buried there.
Margaret Lea Houston was First Lady of the Republic of Texas during her husband Sam Houston's second term as President of the Republic of Texas. They met following the first of his two non-consecutive terms as the Republic's president, and married when he was a representative in the Congress of the Republic of Texas. She was his third wife, remaining with him until his death.
Franzisca Bernadina Wilhelmina Elisabeth Ney was a German-American sculptor who spent the first half of her life and career in Europe, producing portraits of famous leaders such as Otto von Bismarck, Giuseppe Garibaldi and King George V of Hanover. At age 39, she immigrated to Texas with her husband, Edmund Montgomery, and became a pioneer in the development of art there. Among her most famous works during her Texas period were life-size marble figures of Sam Houston and Stephen F. Austin, commissions for the Texas State Capitol. A large group of her works are housed in the Elisabet Ney Museum, located in her home and studio in Austin. Other works can be found in the United States Capitol, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and numerous collections in Germany.
Pompeo Luigi Coppini was an Italian born sculptor who emigrated to the United States. Although his works can be found in Italy, Mexico and a number of U.S. states, the majority of his work can be found in Texas. He is particularly famous for the Alamo Plaza work Spirit of Sacrifice a.k.a. The Alamo Cenotaph, as well as numerous statues honoring Texan figures.
Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville or Huntsville Unit (HV), nicknamed "Walls Unit", is a Texas state prison located in Huntsville, Texas, United States. The approximately 54.36-acre (22.00 ha) facility, near downtown Huntsville, is operated by the Correctional Institutions Division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. The facility, the oldest Texas state prison, opened in 1849.
Samuel Walker Houston was an American pioneer in the field of education.
Woodland is a historic house on the grounds of Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas. Built in stages beginning about 1847, it was the residence of Sam Houston from 1847 to 1859. The house is now part of Sam Houston Memorial Museum, and is a National Historic Landmark.
The dogtrot, also known as a breezeway house, dog-run, or possum-trot, is a style of house that was common throughout the Southeastern United States during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Some theories place its origins in the southern Appalachian Mountains. Some scholars believe the style developed in the post-Revolution frontiers of Kentucky and Tennessee. Others note its presence in the South Carolina Lowcountry from an early period. The main style point was a large breezeway through the center of the house to cool occupants in the hot southern climate.
Harry Daniel Payne (1891–1987) was an American architect and engineer; protégé of noted St. Louis Architect, William Ittner. Payne is most known for building designs in the U.S. State of Texas after 1926, but before this as a member of the Ittner Firm, he designed schools and hospitals in other states. Payne was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and was trained at Washington University in St. Louis. Upon graduation, he attended Fort Sheridan Officers Training School, and served in World War I in Company H, 320th Infantry, 80th Division. On September 25–26, 1918 he fought in the Meuse-Argone Offensive, leading men of H Company to take Dead Man's Hill. Payne received a battlefield commission to Captain just before the Armistice. He returned to St. Louis after the war to work with the Ittner form until 1926. That year he was recruited by Houston School Board to design all new schools for the city. After this contract was completed he went on to design schools, jails, office buildings, stadiums, houses and museums in Texas including for Anahuac ISD, Beaumont ISD, Corpus Christi ISD, Houston ISD, and Huntsville ISD.
Joshua Houston (1822–1902) was born into slavery in 1822 on the Perry County, Alabama plantation owned by Temple Lea and Nancy Moffette Lea, parents of Margaret Lea Houston. When Margaret married Sam Houston, Joshua moved to Texas with the newlyweds. Joshua traveled with Sam Houston and worked on the construction of Raven Hill in Huntsville, Texas. He became educated and was elected to local public offices. He had three wives and was the father of eight children, including Samuel Walker Houston. Joshua was a Texas delegate at the 1884 Republican National Convention. He helped establish the Bishop Ward Normal and Collegiate Institute.
The Captain Joe Byrd Cemetery is the main prison cemetery of the U.S. state of Texas, located in Huntsville and operated by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ). The colloquial name for the cemetery is Peckerwood Hill. The name originates from "Peckerwood", an African-American insult towards poor white people, because many of those buried at the cemetery were poor.
Kittrell is a ghost town about 20 miles north of Huntsville, Texas and 10 miles west of Trinity, Texas. It was named after and founded by Pleasant Williams Kittrell, a physician who helped found the University of Texas and was a member of Sam Houston's presidential cabinet.
Tom Blue was an enslaved personal servant and coachman of Sam Houston, who purchased Blue prior to his marriage to Margaret Lea. He worked for Houston for nearly 30 years. In the fall of 1862, he ran away with another servant, a boy named Walter Hume. They traveled together to Laredo, Texas and Blue sold Hume for $800. He crossed into Mexico, where he lived as a free man. Blue later settled in Harrisburg, where he married a woman who was around age 30. He said at the time that he was 119.
Sam Houston was a slaveholder who had a complicated history with the institution of slavery. He was the president of the independent Republic of Texas, which was founded as a slave-holding nation, and governor of Texas after its 1845 annexation to the union as a slave-holding state. He voted various times against the extension of slavery into the Western United States and he did not swear an oath to the Confederate States of America, which marked the end of his political career.
Nancy Moffette Lea (1780–1864) was the mother of Margaret Lea Houston and mother-in-law of Sam Houston. She was an integral member of the Houston family, running the household when Margaret was ill or pregnant. She is believed to have helped her son-in-law convert and be baptized in 1854. In appreciation, she donated a bell to the Independence Baptist Church in honor of him. The wife of Temple Lea, she inherited an estate from her family that she managed. She purchased a cotton plantation which was operated by 50 enslaved people.
Sam Houston Jr. (1843–1894) was the oldest of eight children born to Sam Houston and Margaret Lea Houston, and was the only Houston child born in the Republic of Texas, before its December 29, 1845 annexation to the United States. He was home-schooled by his mother, and later attended both Bastrop Military Institute and Baylor University. After Texas seceded from the Union in 1861, he enlisted in the Confederate States Army 2nd Texas Infantry Regiment, Company C Bayland Guards. Wounded at the April 1862 Battle of Shiloh, he served time as a prisoner of war at Camp Douglas in Illinois. Following his release, he received a medical discharge from the Confederate States Army. He attended the Philadelphia University of Medicine and Surgery. Upon graduation, he returned to a private life, and it is unknown if he ever practiced medicine. At some point, he became a writer. Houston married Lucy Anderson in 1875. Their daughter Margaret Bell Houston (1877–1966) was also a writer, as well as a suffragist who became the first president of the Dallas Equal Suffrage Association. Upon his death, Sam Jr. was buried on private property near his mother.
Antoinette "Nettie" Power Houston Bringhurst (1852–1932) was a Texas poet, the youngest daughter and fifth child of Sam Houston and his third wife Margaret Lea Houston. The elder Houston had no children with his two previous wives. Antoinette was born in the family's Woodland home near Huntsville, Texas. As a child, she lived in the Texas Governor's Mansion when her father served as Governor of Texas. Her youngest brother Temple Lea Houston was born in the mansion. She received an education at Baylor Female College in Independence, Texas, and at Austin Female College in Huntsville.
