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The
Republic of Texas,
which existed only a decade, had its share of interesting characters.
But few of them were as colorful as Three Legged Willie, who passed
away some 146 years ago.
Robert McAlpin Williamson was born in Georgia. When his mother Rebecca
died while he was an infant, Willie and a brother were reared by grandfather
Micajah Williamson, who served in the Continental Army during the
revolution of 1776.
At the age of 15, Willie was crippled by what he called "white swelling."
The disease, probably polio, left his right leg permanently bent at
the knee. He built a shortened crutch-like device, strapped it to
his knee, and had his tailor sew an extra piece of cloth to the knee
of his trousers to cover the crutch. Hence, his nickname.
By the age of 19, Willie was admitted to the bar and began practicing
law. When he wounded an opponent in a duel, he fled to Texas, where
he met Stephen
F. Austin. Learning Spanish in less than a year, Willie began
practicing law and when Texans began to complain of Mexican abuses
of colonial rule, he was one of the first signers of convention to
protest to Mexico.
After Mexican officials placed a price on his head, Willie became
a moving spirit in the Texas revolution, fighting at Gonzales
and San Jacinto. A skilled
horseman, Willie wore a coonskin cap at San Jacinto, but it had a
difference; his cap was attached with nine tails instead of one.
When
he was named a district judge in the new Republic, Willie came to
East Texas, where outlaws
from all over the South were ruling an area known as the Neutral Zone.
Willie's trials became the stuff which inspire frontier movies today.
When he rode to Shelbyville
to hold a court session in the Neutral zone, Willie faced a mob of
men who had decided they would not be judged by any man. Seating himself
behind a dry goods box serving as a judge's bench, Willie read a resolution
from the mob and asked for the mob's lawyer to cite any law allowing
such a resolution.
The lawyer whipped out a Bowie knife, laid it on the bench, and said:
"This is the law that governs here."
Calmly, Willie pulled a long-barreled pistol from his coat, slammed
it down on the knife, and added: "This is the constitution that overrules
it." The court session continued without further delays.
When a mob burned down a courthouse where a judge was scheduled to
try several horse thieves, Willie set up court in a school room and
faced a lawyer who claimed the thieves should be freed because the
written charges had gone up in smoke.
Willis calmly reached inside his jacket, produced a duplicate of the
charges and warrants for the lawyer's clients, and went on with the
trial.
In another case, Willie arrived in a town just as a lunch mob was
about to hang a Cherokee Indian for raping a white woman. Willie rescued
the indian from the mob and ordered him to be tried the next day.
During the trial, Willie discovered there had been no rape and the
Indian was only in town to buy some tobacco. It seemed that Comanche
Indians had killed the woman's brother -- and she wanted revenge on
all Indians.
Willie dismissed the rape charges against the Indian and ordered the
woman's husband to buy the Indian all the tobacco he could chew.
Willie later served in the Republic's congress and later ran for several
other positions. But each time, he lost. He retired to his farm at
Independence.
When his wife Mary Jane died, he slipped into a prolonged depression.
He died December 22, 1859, at the age of 55. |
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