About Me

I am an amateur writer, former history and science teacher, and direct descendant of Sam Houston through his daughter, Nancy Elizabeth Houston. I’ve long been interested in the “Family History” as well as being a history buff in general. The impetus for creating this website came about by my being diagnosed with Stage III cancer in early 2022, suffering through the many treatments, and then a very long, and boring, period of healing and recuperation. In trying to escape my own “dark night of the soul,” I looked for inspiration in researching my family history. What began as some random googling, to relieve the boredom and ennui, soon became somewhat of an obsession in Sam Houston’s life and my family’s connection to it. I was able to find some decent information about Houston descendants, but found that there were numerous errors and, more importantly, the information was often disappointingly incomplete. The younger and most recent additions to the Houston Family Tree are missing. I would like to correct these issues, and through this website I hope to enlist the help of others to literally fill in the gaps. It is my hope that we “Houstons” can come together and both preserve and celebrate the unique history we share with our iconic ancestor. I can and will be wrong in laying out the facts, and for that I ask that you help me with my mistakes and misunderstandings. I ask for your patience and consideration in helping me find a voice that is fair to both the contextual history of the 18th and 19th centuries, and to our newer, more modern sensibilities. Finally, I’d like to dedicate my efforts in creating this website to my dear great-grandmother, Margaret John Decker Everitt, and my mother, Margaret Lea Houston Aurand. Thanks for reading!