page_title: Samuel May Williams
section_title: Stephen F. Austin Colony
hierarchical_section_title: Samuel May Williams / Career / Stephen F. Austin Colony
caption_attribution_description: English: San Felipe de Austin State Historic Site replica log cabin, Austin County, Texas, United States
context_page_description: Samuel May Williams was an American businessman, politician, and close associate of Stephen F. Austin, who was an Anglo-American colonizer of Mexican Texas. As a teenager, Williams started working in the family's mercantile business in Baltimore. He spent time in South America and New Orleans, fleeing the latter because of debts. He landed in Mexican Texas in 1822, having learned French and Spanish. Stephen F. Austin hired Williams for his colony in 1824. Williams first worked as a clerk, and later assumed the title of secretary to the ayuntamiento, a local government established for the colony by the Mexican state of Coahuila and Texas. He worked for Austin for about a decade.
  In 1834, Williams quit as secretary of the Austin Colony to work as a merchant, then formalized a partnership with Thomas F. McKinney. The next year he also made deals with the provincial government in Monclova for a bank charter and for large tracts of land in Texas. At that time he was a representative in the Coahuila and Texas legislature. However, by 1836, Williams and his partner, Thomas F. McKinney, supported the Texas Revolution against Mexico.
context_section_description: Williams was with Austin when the new empresario selected a location for his colonial headquarters, San Felipe de Austin. Austin first hired Williams as a translator and clerk, whose language skills, both in English and Spanish, were necessary to fulfill his responsibilities. Another critical skill was his handwriting. In an era when all documents were written by hand, the ability to write legibly was critical to properly reading them later.  Williams' knowledge of Mexican culture and Spanish business practices were also assets. In the fall of 1824, Austin appointed Williams as a recording secretary for the Austin Colony. Though Mexico had not yet established an ayuntamiento (local government) in the colony, Austin had told Jose Antonio Saucedo about his intention to establish the recording secretary position with all of the responsibilities of a secretary for an ayuntamiento. Also in 1824, Williams received his own headright, which included two leagues (about 4,428 acres each) and three labores (about 640 acres each). Austin had promised Williams an annual salary of $1,000, ($24,434 in 2019) but the colony was not generating much revenue.
  Williams continued to accept additional responsibilities at the Austin Colony. He managed the Public Land Office, and he served as its postmaster from 1826. He served as secretary of the ayuntamiento from 1828 to 1832, a post requiring him to record official documents in Spanish and send them to the state government. Austin later claimed that Williams had been underpaid for his service and later compensated him with 49,000 acres (200 km²) of land in Texas. With his existing land grant of 9,387 acres (37.99 km²), Williams had accumulated more than 58,000 acres (230 km²) of land in Texas.
caption: Replica log cabin at San Felipe de Austin Historic Site
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