LANDRUM, WILLIS H. (1805–1865?). Willis H. Landrum, soldier and legislator, was born in Tennessee in 1805. He moved to Texas in 1834 and settled in what is now Sabine County. He was captain of a company that participated in the siege of Bexar in 1835. He also commanded a company of volunteers in the Third Regiment of the Third Brigade in the campaign for the expulsion of the Cherokee Indians in 1839. Landrum represented Shelby and Sabine counties in the Senate of the First Congress of the Republic of Texas. In 1838 he was appointed a member of the board of land commissioners of Shelby County, but in 1841 he returned to the Sixth Congress as a representative of Sabine County. At the time of the 1850 census he was living in Harrison County with his wife, Elizabeth, and six children. By 1852 he had moved to the Black Jack Grove area in Hopkins County. His will was filed for probate in Hopkins County on March 22, 1865.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Journals of the 6th Congress of the Republic of Texas, 1841–1842, ed. Harriet Smither (Austin: Von Boeckmann-Jones, 1940–45). John H. Reagan, "Expulsion of the Cherokees from East Texas," Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association 1 (July 1897). Texas House of Representatives, Biographical Directory of the Texan Conventions and Congresses, 1832–1845 (Austin: Book Exchange, 1941).
