The Tallest Texan
It’s common knowledge that America’s early immigrants were from Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales, but what isn’t known is that quite a few of the historical figures we read about today came from Northern Ireland or, to be more precise, the province of Ulster. One example is that of 'The Tallest Texan', Sam Houston. Houston’s ancestors came from Ballyhill, a small town in Northern Ireland. There are people in Northern Ireland who, like Texans, like to hold dear their own forefathers. These Northern Ireland people trace their own roots back to Scotland and, several years ago, formed the Ulster-Scots Society.
The following is an article by Co. Antrim historian, Dr. David Hume, about Sam Houston and his ancestors that appeared in the Ulster-Scots Newspaper and was kindly forwarded to us by our very own Detective Pinkerton.
DANIEL Jackson and his two sisters attended the Presbyterian Church at the Hillhead outside Ballycarry, County Antrim, Northern Ireland in a bygone generation.
An elderly local lady, herself deceased, once told me of how Daniel would boast of being connected to the famous Andrew Jackson, seventh President of the United States.
No doubt there may have been a few smirks or winks when he ventured to remind friends and neighbours of his claim to family fame.
Daniel Jackson was from the town-land of Ballyhill (or Bellahill) outside the modern-day village of Ballycarry, a location dominated by the old Plantation Bawn built by the Dalway family in the early 17th century and still standing today.
Actually, whether or not others may have laughed aside his claims, Daniel Jackson was, it appears, right. The Jacksons of Bellahill were the ancestors of the future President, whose parents were living at Bonnybefore near Carrickfergus in 1765 when they boarded an emigrant ship for the Carolinas.
I have been privileged to stand in the Waxhaws region of the Carolinas, where the Jacksons found their new home, and Andrew Jackson had always been one of my greatest American heroes.
I can also equate with Daniel Jackson in some ways too. Many years ago a relative told of how our family was connected to the famous General Sam Houston of Texas. This fired the imagination, and Houston also holds the same fascination as Jackson for me.
She never did write down the exact nature of the supposed relationship with the President of Texas, and it has only been in more recent years that a few clues have begun to emerge from the family tree. The Houstons were from Ballyboley, and one branch remained there when the others emigrated in the 18th century.
As Randolph Campbell points out in his biography of Houston (Sam Houston and the American Southwest, 1993), John Houston settled at Timber Ridge in Virginia in 1730. His son would expand the lands he owned, and by the time Samuel Houston would marry Elizabeth Paxton, another Ulster-Scot, the family were quite well off (something which was to change in the early 1800s). Samuel arid Elizabeth were the parents of Sam, born on March 2, 1793.
Timber Ridge was a long way from Ballyboley Mountain, and it is not clear that the family on both sides of the Atlantic remained in touch with each other. But on this side of the Atlantic they continued to prosper.
It was at Ballyboley that our connection, however far-out, existed with the Houstons.
A lease in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland from May 1775 details that John Hume had just over 50 acres of land at Ballyboley, his neighbours including Thomas Houston. In later years, in my grandmother's generation, the name Houston features in the family tree.
Irrespective of whether we have a family connection, however, Sam Houston will remain for me a colourful hero.
Last year, in a little bookshop in the Black Mountain, North Carolina, I picked up a copy of "Sam Houston. The Tallest Texan" by William Johnson and published in 1953. Ten dollars made the purchase complete and the basic history of Houston is enclosed within its pages. It came back across the Atlantic much quicker than the Houstons would have gone the other way in the 18th century.
A former Governor of Tennessee who took to living with the Cherokees after an unhappy marriage to a girl half his age, Sam Houston was a hard-drinking, tenacious individual. Yet while the Indians may have called him "The Big Drunk" at one point, Sam Houston redeemed himself for posterity during the Texan War of Independence; He also gained a respect for the Indian people which he never lost.
The Alamo had seen the massacre of the Texans inside the little mission there, its siege striking a chord with the Ulster-Scots psyche. The remnants of resistance to the Mexicans and Santa Anna would gather at San Jacinto for a last effort in April 1836.
When Houston addressed his men prior to the Battle he uttered words that ring down generations; "We view ourselves on the eve of battle. We are nerved for the contest, and must conquer or perish. It is vain to look for present aid: none is at hand. We must now act or abandon all hope! Rally to the standard, and be no longer the scoff of mercenary tongues! Be men, be free men, that your children may bless their father's name."
I prefer to imagine Houston saying this with an Ulster accent, mainly because Marquis James wrote of how he and Andrew Jackson would lapse into Ulster accents when they became animated in conversation.
Johnson in his book says that as far as Houston's men were concerned "there was no other general,"
His men may have regarded him as being as tall as a church steeple, but in reality he was six and a half feet tall. More importantly perhaps, says Johnson - "Sam Houston had a way of thinking, talking and acting that made him seem a giant."
The end result at San Jacinto was very different to that at The Alamo. Texan independence was won. General Sam Houston would later become President of Texas. He would also become a great hero to Americans, although this was somewhat diluted in the southern states because he later refused to support the Confederacy.
Like many families, the Houstons were split by the Civil War. Sam Houston warned of the dangers of division. His son Sam Jr. joined the Confederates in Texas.
When his son was about to leave, the old general turned up carrying his San Jacinto sword and reviewed men whose position he disagreed with. They, knowing very well his views and that he was against the Confederate cause, cheered him again and again.
The sword he later left in his Will to his son "to be drawn only in defence of the Constitution, the laws and liberties of his country."
I have a First Day Stamp cover which I consider very fitting. It is postmarked Houston, Texas and dated 5am on January 10, 1964 and features US stamps of both Houston and Jackson.
It is fitting because Houston and Jackson were good friends, part of the Ulster political establishment which would play an important part in the development of the United States.
When Andrew Jackson died at his home at The Hermitage near Nashville, Sam Houston arrived with his son just hours afterwards.
He is said to have taken his son Sam Houston Jr. into Jackson's room and told him: "Always remember my son that you looked upon the face of Andrew Jackson."
This was respect borne from the fact that both these great men were of the same root and branch. The characteristics of the Ulster-Scot were shared by both. Neither was perfect, but to a very large extent, both men were what was required at a particular time in their nation's history.
Andrew Jackson was a child of the American Revolution and son of a mother who referred him to the sufferings of his grandfather during the Siege of Carrickfergus, when Williamites surrounded the unpopular Jacobite garrison. He would lose his family in the Revolutionary War and his early years were turbulent ones. Gambling and drinking were not unknown to him.
But his negative points would be overshadowed by his victory at New Orleans during the War of 1812-15; in 1829 the Belfast News Letter reminded readers that "His exploits at New Orleans are fresh in most people's memory. When Jackson entered New Orleans on 23rd January 1814, after the retreat of the English and the death of Sir Edward Packenham, he was hailed as the saviour of his country, and a laurel crown placed on his head..."
That laurel crown remains there today. The founder of lacksonian Democracy, and the hero of the common man, Ulster's first President in the White House had his faults but they were greatly outweighed.
Sam Houston and he have a lot in common.
Not only did their ancestors once live a few miles from each other in East Antrim, and not only are they important representatives of the Ulster Scots race.
They also remain giants among men, and trailblazers for the new America which they helped to forge in their lifetimes.