An amazing eight months and one day and a little over two hundred miles in the same state separate two of the most important people for a different state's self identification.
Steve, the younger of the two, was born on November 3rd in 1793, in the south-east of the American state of Virginia. His ancestors can be traced back to arriving in Massachusetts in 1683 on a boat comically named the "Bevis". His father had obtained a land grant of sorts, allowing him to relocate 300 hundred families to some suitable tract of land in a province. Once the father, Moses, died, the son reluctantly took up the charge, and gathered people in New Orleans with the promise of cheap land. Machinations, revolutions, weird things, promises made and eventually battles were fought. Sam, with his military background, helped out, with the decisive battle against Santa Ana.
The man who had reluctantly brought the most legitimate Anglo settlement to this specific area, a varied mix of different landscapes named after a native word for "friend", Steve had been proclaimed by Sam as the Father of the land and, almost more importantly, the idea of this new republic, months after Sam had defeated Steve as her first President.
I saved Sam for last because to me he's more interesting, more colorful. Steve's background was more austere and refined, his people--his family--were merchants who'd been in America before America was an idea. Sam's family were Scots-Irish, and, having been pushed out of southern Scotland and moved to Northern Ireland, they decided to try out America, settled momentarly in Pennsylvania, before heading south to Virginia to get away from the German Catholics. Born on March 2nd, 1793, Sam was a bit more wild, and eventually proved a more sturdily built.
He enlisted in the army in 1812 for the War of the same year, was injured by an arrow in his thigh while serving under Andrew Jackson during his massacre of a native group, and went back out to the battle later the same week. Slaughtering natives may not have been on his mind, since Sam joined a Cherokee group, was taken in and accepted, and even took a wife. Jackson put him in charge of Tennessee's Indian Removal Program, and he showed up to meetings in full native dress, an act that angered Secretary of War John Calhoun, who urged an investigation into Sam's usage of Indian supplies. Offended, Sam quit the position.
He became a representative of Tennessee in the House, then became Governor of Tennessee, before a failed marriage to a much younger woman caused him to resign his post and join the Cherokee in exile in Arkansas. Then things got weird.
He was used by Jackson's rivals to smear Jackson (he'd resigned his gubernatorial post, the shame), and when his letters (from his trading post in the Cherokee Nation) in his defense went unanswered, he traveled to Washington DC and beat the main culprit in street with a hickory stick on Pennsylvania Avenue. The man he was beating pulled a gun and fired, but it mis-fired. Sam was arrested, acquitted (due to his powerful friends), and was sued in civil court. He was found liable in the physical assault, fined $500, and took off for Mexico without paying.
Later on, Sam defeats Santa Ana, thereby cementing the independence of a rather large piece of former Mexico for itself, and making the reluctant Steve the Father of Texas, the Craddo word for "friend".
Steve is (I've been working liberally with the name) Stephen F. Austin, born in Virginia in 1793, and Sam is Sam Houston, born in Virginia in 1793.
Sam won the first ever election to be the Republic of Texas' first President, then, after joining the Union to get military aid against a really pissed Santa Ana, he became a governor of Texas (after being a Senator).
In an interesting piece of trivia, Sam Houston is the only person to serve as governor of two different states in the United States.
When Texas' legislature had voted to secede and join the Confederacy, he refused to recognize the legitimacy, and was evicted from the governor's mansion.
Shot with an arrow and continued fighting soon after; showed up in full Cherokee dress for a meeting with the federal Secretary of War; beating a man in the street for talking trash; skipping out for Mexico instead of dealing with the fine; refusing to recognize the legitimacy of his state's secession from the Union during the Civil War... these are all events and scenarios that sound uniquely Texan, a mix of brash individualistic iconoclasm that is at once American, but so much more exemplifies that which Texans feel about themselves, or would like to believe how the characteristic Texan is defined.
Tough; self reliant; doing things there own way; standing up for themselves and for those they love, no matter what...
Not every segment of American population has this self image. Californians, and generally us westerners, tend to be laid back and individualistic, but ironically fiercely so, maybe a remnant of the Forty-niner days; back east folks are more traditional and family oriented, and even more chauvinistic.
It's an interesting thing they've got going in Texas, to be sure.
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