Samuel McCulloch Jr. (statue)
*Samuel McCulloch Jr. was born on this date in 1810. He was a Black soldier who fought in the Texas Revolution.
He was born in Alabama. His white father, Samuel McCulloch Sr., had three daughters. There is no mention of Samuel's mother in any official record. His father moved the family to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1815. They relocated to Jackson County, Texas, on the Lavaca River in 1835, which made him a Freedman.
Five months after their arrival in the Texas territory of Mexico, the Texas Revolution broke out, and Samuel Jr. joined the Matagorda Volunteer Company. The unit was under the command of George M. Collinsworth. He fought in the Battle of Goliad. McCulloch attempted to storm into the officers' barracks and was shot, which shattered his shoulder. For the next year, the wound left him disabled, and even after the wound healed, it continued to affect him for the rest of his life. By April 1836, McCulloch could return home only to flee as the advancing Mexican Army drove the Texan revolutionaries north. On July 8 that year, McCulloch's wound finally removed the bullet from his shoulder.
McCulloch soon found that with the passing of the Texas Constitution in 1836, all African and Native Americans were denied citizenship. McCulloch petitioned the Congress of the Republic of Texas for an exemption to the law. In April, he was granted the exemption and the land grant he was entitled to for his service in the Texas army.
In August 1837, he married Mary Vess, a white woman, which violated the Texas ban on interracial unions. The couple was never prosecuted, had four sons, and lived most of their lives near Van Ormy, a town a few miles south of San Antonio. In 1840, McCulloch and his sisters were exempted from the Ashworth Act and lived in Texas until their deaths. Samuel McCulloch Jr. died on November 2, 1893.
