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SAMUEL, WILLIAM G. M. (ca. 1815-1902). William G. M. Samuel, Bexar County lawman and folk painter, is believed to have been born about 1815 and to have come to Texas from Missouri sometime in the 1830s. His mother may have been Letitia Samuel from Tennessee. Samuel, an Indian fighter with William A. (Bigfoot) Wallace,qv was known for his fearlessness and marksmanship-"by common consent the bravest man of his day." He served in Gen. John E. Wool'sqv Army of Chihuahua in the Mexican War.qv In 1850 Samuel was farming in San Antonio and in 1852 was a city marshall. Sometime before 1856 he traveled by horseback from San Antonio to California. At the outbreak of the Civil Warqv he was an agent of the commissioners of Texas. During the war he served first as a captain of artillery in the Confederate States Army, then in 1863 as an ordnance officer posted at Bonham. He subsequently was transferred to the quartermaster post in San Antonio at the request of Col. John S. (Rip) Ford,qv who described Captain Samuel as "an efficient and zealous ordnance officer." After the war Samuel served as justice of the peace of Medina County. It may have been at this time that he lived at the old Garza Crossing of the Medina River, just above Von Ormy, at the site of one of the last Indian battles in that part of the state. He was a Bexar County court commissioner in 1877 and a deputy sheriff from about 1882 to 1900, known to the public from serving as auctioneer on the courthouse steps at sheriff's sales. He was a notary public from the late 1870s. In 1879 Samuel lived on Acequia Street (later named Main Avenue) in San Antonio, and afterward on San Pedro. For a time he had an office on Soledad; in later years a room in the sheriff's headquarters in the courthouse served as his office. Samuel painted a number of large portraits, some of which he presented to the county; they were hung along the second floor corridor of the courthouse. He made likenesses of Sam Houstonqv after the 1856 Frederick photograph; of Bigfoot Wallace, inscribed and dated the day of Wallace's death in 1899 and apparently taken from a photograph by A. A. Brack; of San Antonio mayor (1863-65) Pasqual Leo Buquor, dated 1889; and of José Antonio Menchacaqv (1800-1879) and Rip Ford, both of whose portraits are still in the courthouse. Also attributed to him are portraits of Erastus (Deaf) Smith, Stephen F. Austin,qv and a self-portrait. He painted copies of Charles Deas's painting The Trapper and a picture of San José y San Miguel de Aguayo Mission, which also hung in the courthouse. During the San Antonio International Fair in 1888, two of Samuel's oil paintings were on display. Most notable among his works are four views, dated 1849, of San Antonio's Main Plaza, which were also displayed in the courthouse. They show the buildings, residences, and landmarks of the lively central plaza, with San Fernando Cathedral,qv the Casas Reales, La Quinta (the town's first post office), and the people of San Antonio going about their activities. It is thought that Samuel probably painted the scenes from courthouse windows, looking out in the four directions. Some doubt that the paintings were actually done in 1849 and instead ascribe a later date to them. In any case, the four Main Plaza paintings have become valuable and vital records of San Antonio at mid-nineteenth century, frequently referred to and often published. They are in the collections of Bexar County on extended loan to the Witte Museumqv in San Antonio. Samuel died on November 7, 1902, at St. Francis Home for the Aged in San Antonio and was buried in the Confederate Cemetery in that city. It was said that his death was caused by taking household ammonia as an antidote for a tarantula bite, but his obituary gives the cause of death as locomotor ataxia, from which he had suffered for some years. Samuel received no academic training, and his paintings manifest an awkwardness that is offset in his best works by vigorous characterization and composition. His works are in the collections of Bexar County, the Daughters of the Republic of Texasqv Library at the Alamo, and the San Antonio Museum Association.qv BIBLIOGRAPHY: Frederick Charles Chabot, With the Makers of San Antonio (Yanaguana Society Publications 4, San Antonio, 1937). John S. Ford, Rip Ford's Texas, ed. Stephen B. Oates (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1963). Frontier Times, October 1930. Pauline A. Pinckney, Painting in Texas: The Nineteenth Century (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967). San Antonio Daily Express, November 16, 1888, November 8, 1902, May 16, 1900. San Antonio Express, July 19, 1931, March 15, 1935. San Antonio Express News, June 2, 1968. Cecilia Steinfeldt, Texas Folk Art: One Hundred Fifty Years of the Southwestern Tradition (Austin: Texas Monthly Press, 1981). The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington: GPO, 1880-1901).
Martha D. Utterback
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