Sam Houston, one of the most political figures of Texas, was born on March 2, 1793, the fifth child of Samuel and Elizabeth Houston, on their plantation in sight of Timber Ridge Church, Rockbridge County, Virginia. He acquired rudimentary education during boyhood by attending a local school for less than six months. At thirteen years old, his father died. In the spring of 1807, he emigrated with his mother, five brothers, and three sisters to Blount County in Eastern Tennessee, where the family established a farm near Maryville.
Houston ran away from home as an adolescent in 1809 to live among the Cherokees, who lived across the Tennessee River. Between intermittent visits to Maryville, he sojourned for three years with the band
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