Dinsmore, Silas (ca. 1796–1846)

Silas Dinsmore, state and county official, was born around 1796 and moved to Texas from Mobile, Alabama. In 1810–11 he was a government agent for the Choctaw Indian Reservation in Alabama and Tennessee. He represented Mina Municipality at the Convention of 1832 and served on the 1833 Brazoria Committee of Safety, designed to protect citizens from Indians. Dinsmore was appointed by President Sam Houston as first chief justice of Matagorda County in December 1836, reappointed by President Mirabeau B. Lamar on January 23, 1839, and elected to the same office by the Fourth Congress in January 1840. He was also involved in establishing the Texas Navy. He later moved to Austin, where he was involved in the real estate business and witnessed the survey of the Montopolis area. Dinsmore had a wife and daughter and was an Episcopalian vestryman in 1839. He died on September 13, 1846, and was buried at his plantation, Wells Point, ten miles west of Palacios.