Samuel Augustus Maverick was born on July 23, 1803, in Pendleton District, South Carolina, to Samuel and Elizabeth Maverick. He grew up and attended school in Pendleton, and he enrolled at Yale University in 1822. He graduated three years later, and he studied law in Winchester, Virginia, in the late 1820s. He returned to Pendleton in 1829 and began work as a lawyer.

 

He fiercely opposed nullification in the early 1830s, and he served as a leader of Pendleton’s Union Party. He insisted that “There is no liberty without union, no union without liberty.” He moved to Lauderdale County, Alabama, in 1834 before settling in Texas the following year. He signed the Texas Declaration of Independence in 1836, and he married Mary A. Adams later that year. They had at least six children: Samuel, born around 1837; Louis, born around 1839; George, born around 1845; William, born around 1847; Mary, born around 1851; and Albert, born around 1854.  

 

He worked as a lawyer in San Antonio, Texas, and he served as mayor in 1839. He served two terms in the Texan Congress in the 1840s. He supported the Democratic Party, and he served in the state legislature in the 1850s. By 1850, he owned $31,000 of real estate. A decade later, he owned $171,000 of real estate and $13,000 of personal property, and one writer described him as “the largest landholder in the State of Texas.”  

 

During the secession crisis, he initially remained loyal to the Union. By early 1861, however, he accepted secession, and he helped negotiate the surrender of federal garrisons in Texas. He served as mayor of San Antonio from 1862 until 1863. He died in San Antonio on September 2, 1870.  

 

Image: Samuel A. Maverick (courtesy Wikicommons)

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