DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Williams-Tucker House. Now, if you want to talk about a man who had his hand in just about everything that made early Texas tick, you pull up a chair and you listen close — because Samuel May Williams was that man. The house itself was built somewhere between 1837 and 1840, right there in Galveston.
And already that's a story worth telling, because this house wasn't built the way most Texas houses got built. The whole frame was put together up in Maine — Maine, mind you, about as far from the Gulf Coast as you can get while still being on the same continent — and then it was loaded onto a schooner and shipped down to Texas. Somebody figured out how to bring a house to the frontier by sea, and that tells you something about the ambition of the man who ordered it.
Samuel May Williams was a founder of Galveston. He served as secretary to Stephen F. Austin.
He was postmaster and land agent of Austin's colony. He organized the first Texas bank. The marker calls him the father of the Texas navy and the shipping industry, and given that he shipped a framed house down from Maine on a schooner, you start to think that title fit him just fine.
But here's where the story gets weight. When Texas needed money to fight for its independence, Williams went as envoy to the United States to secure a loan. He failed to get it.
Another man might've come home empty-handed and called it done. Not Williams. He reached into his own pocket and gave one hundred and fifty thousand dollars of his own money to the cause — a tenth of the total cost of that war.
A tenth. Out of his own pocket. So the next time you drive through Galveston and you feel that salt air coming off the water, remember the man who framed a house in Maine, sailed it to Texas, built a bank, built a navy, and when his country needed him and the loan fell through, he didn't blink.
Samuel May Williams just wrote the check himself.
What the marker says
Built by Samuel May Williams, a founder of Galveston, secretary to Stephen F. Austin, postmaster and land agent of Austin colony. Organized first Texas bank, was father of Texas navy and shipping industry. As envoy to the U. S., failed to get loan for Texas War for Independence, but gave $150,000 of his own money (a tenth of the cost). House, framed in Maine, was shipped to Texas on a schooner. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1964