Lyman 
Born in 1798 in North Carolina, Burleson’s family moved on several occasions during his youth. One of these moves was to Missouri in 1814, to Virginia in 1815, then to Tennessee in 1824. Burleson gained a reputation as a military leader at an early age, first in command of a company of militia in Howard … Read more
Guy Bryan was only ten years old when he left Missouri and came to Texas with his family in 1831. He was in school in the settlement of Columbia when news of the fall of the Alamo came. Along with his mother and a few slaves, he quickly loaded up a wagon and headed eastward … Read more
John Henry Brown was born in Missouri on October 20, 1820. There, as a teenager, he worked for a country newspaper before moving to Texas to live with an uncle. He would later apply this early journalistic experience during his long, eventful and quite mobile life in Texas. After taking part in several Indian campaigns … Read more
Known for his famous “Bowie knife” and a sometimes reckless adventurer, Jim Bowie is now immortalized as one of the true folk heroes in early Texas. Bowie was born in Kentucky in 1796. While still very young, he moved with his family, first to Missouri, then in 1802 to Louisiana, where he spent most of … Read more
After a long string of business failures, Gail Borden in mid-life was left virtually penniless and abandoned by his second wife. His recovery and the magnitude of his ultimate success, however, would inspire any Texan. Born November 9, 1801 in New York state, Borden spent parts of his childhood in New York, Kentucky, and Indiana. … Read more
Peter Hansborough Bell participated in all of the military struggles of Texas from the Revolution to the Civil War. As statesman, he served two terms as governor and in the U. S. Congress. Born 12 May 1812 in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, Bell remained in Virginia until he left to join the fight for the Texas … Read more
Born in Virginia and raised in southeastern Missouri, Stephen Fuller Austin is considered the founder of Anglo-American Texas. At the age of eleven years, he attended school in Connecticut and later graduated with distinction from Transylvania University in Kentucky. In 1813, at the age of twenty-one years, he was elected to the territorial Legislature of … Read more
When Branch Tanner Archer came to Texas in 1831, he had already enjoyed a successful career in Virginia. Born December 13, 1790, he attended William and Mary College, then received a medical degree in 1808 from the University of Pennsylvania. He practiced medicine in Virginia and represented Powhattan County in the General Assembly of Virginia … Read more
In 1841, 35 delegates to the Union Baptist Association meeting voted to adopt the suggestion of Reverend William Milton Tryon and R.E.B. Baylor to establish a Baptist university in Texas, then a self-declared republic still claimed by Mexico. Baylor, a Texas district judge and onetime U.S. Congressman and soldier from Alabama, became the school’s namesake. … Read more
The shape of Texas is one of those things that, once seen, is hard to forget. Texas’ current shape evolved through a series of treaties, beginning with the 1819 Adams-Onis agreement between the United States and Spain that established the Red and Sabine rivers as boundaries. The Compromise of 1850, which established the Rio Grand … Read more