218
WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1843
I have a right to call upon my friends and such men as I think will be most likely to .attain the great object of a peace which will be entirely honorable and advantageous to Texas. In the meantime, I expect to make a trip to the Indian treaty, and so soon as I can return, I will make a move in matters if the news from Vera Cruz is such as I anticipate through Cap- tain Elliot. Write me so soon as it may be convenient. Today I have written to Hockley and have said to him as I have to you, my wishes, and with him you can converse on the subject. Sam Houston [Rubric] "'Houston's Private Executive Record Book," pp. 402-403, courtesy of Mr. Franklin Williams. Samuel May Williams (October 4, 1795-September 13, 1858), Texan pioneer and banker, son of Howell and Dorthea (Wheat) \Villiams, was born in Providence, Rhode Island. At the age of thirteen he went to Baltimore to clerk in his Uncle Nathaniel Williams's store, and when he was twenty, we find him a bookkeeper i.J't New Orleans, where he was also, for a short time in 1815, private secretary to General Andrew Jackson. Stephen F. Austin knew Williams while they both lived in New Orleans, and in 1824 induced him to immigrate to Texas to become his private secretary, and partner with him in the colonial enterprise. Williams arrived in San Felipe in May, 1824, and immediately assumed the duties that Austin had outlined for a recorder, and for the next eleven years, he served as Austin's confidential and indispensable assistant in labors that taxed the capacity and industry of both. Williams wrote and spoke both Spanish and French fluently, he also wrote a fine Spencerian hand, and had sole charge of all maps, charts, and clerical work of Austin's e;olonies. Texans today owe much of their information concerning colonial Texas to his methodical bookkeeping and to his executive and business qualities. This is clearly manifested in the collection of Williams Papers in the Rosenberg Library, as well as in the Austin Papers, University of Texas Library (The Austin Papers have been edited by Professor E. C. Barker, University of Texas, and published in three volumes). On one journey to Mexico in behalf of the colony enterprise, he was imprisoned for eleven months, but he eventually made his escape and came riding into San Antonio on horseback, from which place he safely returned to San Felipe. Extensive land speculations in 1834 made him temporarily unpopular in Texas, and during 1835 he was one of the nine Texans proscribed by the Mexicans, with a price on his head. The Mexicans made several unsuccessful attempts to capture him. In 1834 Williams entered into a mercantile partnership with Thomas F. McKinney at Quintana, a village at the mouth of the Brazos river. In 1837 !this firm opened business at Galveston, and Williams established his home there. On March 28, 1828, he had married Sarah, the daughter of William and Mary Scott, a family that had immigrated to Austin's colony from Kentucky in 1824. To this union_ eight chil_d1:en were born. In addition to their mercantile business, McKmney & W1lhams gradually took on banking functions to facilitate the more rapid settlement and
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