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Photographer: Tom Bosse
Taken: August 27, 2017
Caption: Sam Houston Statue - Source of Greatest Pride
Additional Description: In The Raven: A Biography of San Houston, Marquis James records that Houston recalls the time he spent in Blount County. An old Army friend asked Houston of all the various offices he had held, which one had been the source of his greatest pride. As he reminded Houston of those offices – governor, United States senator, commander in chief of an Army and president of a Republic – Houston reflected upon another. “Well, Burke,” replied Houston, “when a young man in Tennessee I kept a country school, being about eighteen years of age, and a tall strapping fellow. At noon after the luncheon, which I and my pupils ate together out of our baskets, I would go into the woods and cut me a ‘sour wood’ stick, trim it carefully in circular spirals and thrust one half of it into the fire, which would turn it blue, leaving the other half white. With this emblem of ornament and authority in my hand, dressed in a hunting shirt of flowered calico, a long queue down my back, and the sense of authority over my pupils, I experienced a higher feeling dignity and self-satisfaction than from any other office or honor which I have since held.” Houston returned to Blount County on at least two occasions after leaving in 1813. He returned to see his mother on her death bed in 1831 and visited the county fairgrounds here in 1845.
Submitted: September 4, 2017, by Tom Bosse of Jefferson City, Tennessee.
Database Locator Identification Number: p397434
File Size: 1.503 Megabytes

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