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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.
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