Samuel May Williams

Williams's house tells a different story from his ledgers. Construction began in the fall of 1839, supervised by his partner Thomas McKinney while Williams sat in Congress at Austin, and McKinney built an identical house nearby for himself. The Handbook says the lumber arrived precut from Maine and the bricks came as ballast, and puts Williams's own estimate of the cost at $7,472. A cupola let him watch the harbor through a telescope. After his death his executor, Philip Tucker Jr., bought the house, and it kept the Tucker name until 1954.

What the plaque says

Samuel May Williams Born the son of a ship captain in Rhode Island, Samuel Williams was apprenticed to his uncle in Baltimore after 1810 to learn business skills. After 1816 he lived in Buenos Aires, where he learned Spanish and its related culture. By 1819 he was working in New Orleans, where he might have met empresario Stephen F. Austin. Williams came to Austin's Texas colony in 1823, and became the empresario's translator and clerk. For his services and immigrant status, Williams received 11 leagues (48, 712 acres) of land. He married Sarah P. Scott in 1828; They had nine children. Williams and Thomas F. McKinney founded a mercantile firm in 1833 in Quintana at the mouth of the Brazos River. Williams had traveled to the United States in 1835 to sell bank stock when he learned of fighting in Texas. Using the partnership's credit, he made purchases for the Texas army. Williams and McKinney incurred expenses of $99,000 supporting the Texas revolution. By 1838 Williams was helping the Texas navy build seven ships. His firm had moved to Galveston, where the partners promoted development of the city with Michel Branamour Menard. Williams opened a bank in Galveston in 1848, and lived in this home until his death. He is buried in Galveston's Episcopal Cemetery. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Moody Mansion — 0.9 mi
  A four-story, 28,000-square-foot house on Broadway, finished in 1895, that W. L. Moody Jr. bought just after the 1900 storm and his family kept until Hurricane Alicia in 1983.
• 1859 Ashton Villa — 1.1 mi
  A brick Italianate house on Broadway, built with enslaved labor in 1859, whose lawn has held Galveston's Juneteenth commemoration of General Orders, No. 3 every year since 1979.
• Galveston Seawall and the 1900 Storm — 1.2 mi
  The concrete wall along the Gulf that Galveston built after the hurricane of September 8, 1900, which killed between 6,000 and 8,000 people in a city of 38,000.
• The Strand — 1.5 mi
  Five blocks of iron-front brick buildings near the harbor that were once called the Wall Street of the Southwest, emptied after 1900 and brought back by preservationists from the 1960s.

More markers nearby

• Gail Borden, Jr. — steps away
• Thomas Henry Borden — steps away
• The Mexican Telegraph Company_The Zimmermann Telegram — 0.3 mi
• Site of the Home of Michael Branaman Menard — 0.3 mi