COUPLAND, THEODORE VAN BUREN (1836-1890). T. V. Coupland, military officer, lawman, and government official, was born on October 16, 1836, in Jefferson County, Alabama, the son of Hugh and Harriet (Macmillan) Coupland and a grand nephew of Texas governor Andrew Jackson Hamilton and Texas senator Morgan C. Hamilton.qqv He settled in Austin, Texas, before the Civil Warqv and served as deputy sheriff in Travis County until secession,qv when, along with other Unionists and Masons in Central Texas, he moved to Mexico and later New Orleans. In that federally occupied city, Coupland joined a socially and politically prominent group, accepted a commission as a major in the First Texas Cavalry, U.S.A.qv He was mustered out in 1865. On December 21 of that year he married Frances Flanders, daughter of a New Orleans ship owner and niece of a Louisiana governor. Until 1883 Coupland held appointments as collector of customs for the port of New Orleans and as deputy clerk of the United States circuit court. In 1883, Coupland, his wife, and their son Frank Hamilton Coupland returned to Texas to land the elder Coupland inherited from his uncle, Senator Hamilton, on Brushy Creek in Williamson County. There Coupland farmed and ranched until his death, on January 3, 1890. Ostensibly because of his and his wife's family's extensive connections with developing rail lines in Louisiana, Texas, and Mexico, the community of Coupland, in southern Williamson County on the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad, was named for him in 1887.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: History of Texas, Together with a Biographical History of Milam, Williamson, Bastrop, Travis, Lee and Burleson Counties (Chicago: Lewis, 1893). Vertical Files, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin. John L. Waller, Colossal Hamilton of Texas (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1968).
Glen E. Lich
