![]() ![]() Woll instead took many of these prominent Texans as prisoners and marched them back 1,000 brutal miles to Perote prison. Though they killed 14 and wounded 27 in the initial skirmish, they were soon surrounded by 900 Mexican troops and were forced to surrender.įortunately for Maverick and his friends, Woll did not carry out orders to execute them, probably because they were more valuable alive. Maverick organized a resistance on the roof of the Maverick building. He sent General Adrian Woll to rattle his sabre in San Antonio and kill all those who took up arms against him. Six years after Independence, Santa Anna struck again. Santa Anna had not given up on getting Texas back and so kept a list of those who were his enemies. So he was a maverick on March 2, 1836, when he risked his life, along with 59 others Texans, by the act of signing what Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna considered a treasonous document.Īfter independence was won, Samuel Maverick served as mayor of San Antonio, again putting a target on his back as a leading citizen of a rebellious city. In fact, he would have died at the Alamo had he not been selected by his fellow volunteers to sign the Texas Declaration of Independence as their representative. He quickly became a trusted and admired man in San Antonio and joined the Alamo militia. He seemed to believe in the old folk wisdom that you should buy land when no one wants it and sell it when everyone does. He jumped in quickly and bought huge tracts of land around San Antonio and further east on along the Brazos. No one was buying land then because no one was sure they could hold it. He arrived in San Antonio in 1835 as the winds of war were blowing. He said that he was going to Texas to seek his fortune. He shocked them all when he chose a different path. In so being, he often lived up, quite impressively, to what his name would come to mean.Īs a rich lawyer in South Carolina (with a degree from Yale), everybody in the Maverick clan expected young Samuel would take over one of his father’s many businesses. ![]() He was a rare and unsung hero of the Texas revolution. I think it is a shame that Samuel Maverick became famous for his unbranded cattle because there are dozens of far more impressive ways that he demonstrated his maverick nature. There is even a county named for him – Maverick County. He at one time owned so much land in Texas that he ranked up there with Richard King and Charles Goodnight. He was more interested in acquiring land than actively farming or ranching it. He was a land baron, a real estate investor. The fact of the matter is that Sam was not all that interested in ranching. Some say that this was his clever means of claiming all unbranded cattle as his own. Ironic that his failure to brand his cattle branded his name in perpetuity. Those unbranded cows were Maverick’s cows. But what fewer people know is that the original herd of unbranded cattle that launched the expression was owned by a man named Samuel Maverick. Any cow that was unbranded was a maverick. Those are the more symbolic meanings of maverick, but most people know that the word’s original meaning referred to unbranded cattle. The word means one who shuns custom, the lone wolf, one who blazes their own trail and is willing to go against the crowd, an independent thinker. In the world of words, it is a star: James Garner played Maverick in the TV western of the same name in the ’50s and ’60s, Tom Cruise was Maverick in Top Gun, Senator John McCain’s nickname is Maverick, and in Texas have the world champion Dallas Mavericks basketball team. Maverick got its start in San Antonio, Texas, more than 150 years ago. It has now gone well beyond its modest roots as a simple noun and transformed itself into impressive, symbolic fame as a metaphor. It is about a word that was essentially born in Texas, grew up to achieve success here, and eventually became famous the world over.
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