WATROUS, BENJAMIN O. (ca. 1831-?). Benjamin O. Watrous, minister and delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1868-69,^qv was born in McMinn County, Tennessee, about 1831. He was known as Ben Carter while a young slave but took the name Watrous after his new owner, Daniel Watrous, of Alabama. He was a wheelwright by trade. Watrous had lived in Texas for twelve years before Washington County voters chose him as a delegate to the constitutional convention, where he served on the Committee on State Affairs. He introduced resolutions requiring a belief in God as a qualification for public office and prohibiting exclusion from office on the basis of race. Watrous voted against a proposal to divide Texas into more than one state and was one of five black delegates to sign the Constitution of 1869.^qv He also served as a member of the state central committee of the Republican party^qv in 1868; he was defeated by Matthew Gaines^qv in 1869 when he ran for the state Senate.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: J. Mason Brewer, Negro Legislators of Texas and Their Descendants (Dallas: Mathis, 1935; 2d ed., Austin: Jenkins, 1970). Harrel Budd, The Negro in Politics in Texas, 1867-1898 (M.A. thesis, University of Texas, 1925). Carl H. Moneyhon, Republicanism in Reconstruction Texas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980). Merline Pitre, Through Many Dangers, Toils and Snares: The Black Leadership of Texas, 1868-1900 (Austin: Eakin, 1985).

Paul M. Lucko