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Jane Houston lived in Ballybracken in 1725 and at a time of famine in the
north of Ireland found it hard to survive as a widow with four sons. She
managed to exist for a few more years and even married again but
eventually decided to take her family to America. Under the Ulster custom
of Tenant Right she was entitled to be paid for the improvements she had
made to the farm and this provided enough for the passage money to the New
World from Larne.
The boys grew up in New
York and like many other Ulster immigrants they moved south and west. One
went down through the Alleghenny Mountains to Virginia. Samuel Houston
married Elizabeth Paxton, and in 1793 at Timber Ridge Virginia, their
fifth child, Sam Houston was born. The Houstons moved on to Tennessee in
1807, and it was there that Sam Houston would come into contact with the
Cherokee Indians.
At that time
the dictator of Mexico, General Santa Anna led an army of 5,000 men
north to solidify Mexico's control of the vast Texas territory which was
being defended by a scattered force of American settlers. Sam Houston
became the Commander In Chief of this settler army. Once the powerful
Mexican army arrived in the settlement of San Antonio, it found itself
confronted by a force of 182 men, mostly of Ulster-Scots descent who had
taken up defensive positions in a ruined church at the Alamo. They were
led by the brave young Colonel William Travis and included Jim Bowie whose
ancestors came from Auchnacley and Davey Crockett whose roots were in the
Strabane. For the next 13 days they repulsed repeated assaults, delaying
the advance of the Mexican army, until they were finally overrun by the
superior force. The Mexicans paid a high price for taking the
Alamo loosing 1600 killed in the process. The Alamo defenders bought
precious time for the remaining American forces to consolidate and prepare
for an offensive strike. The Alamo defenders were to die before Houston
could reach them, but subsequently his forces defeated the Mexican
General Santa Anna at the battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836, and
thereby secured the independence of Texas. Sam Houston, descendant of the
Houstons of Ballyboley, was to become the first President of Texas and a
folk hero. Santa Anna was defeated and the future of Texas was secure as
part of the Union.
In his honor a village
was renamed, Houston, and was to grow with the discovery of oil and in
time became America's Space Centre. As Apollo touched down on the moon's
surface they received the message “Houston, the Eagle has landed” so the
first word spoken from the moon was the name of a poor family from Ballynure. |
