JOSEPH HAMILTON, 1794.
Born in Rockbridge county, Virginia, 1763. Educated at Liberty Hall, Virginia (Washington and Lee University). Removed to Tennessee, 1784. Lawyer. Clerk of County Court of Caswell county, Franklin, 1785. Commissioner to lay off line between Knox and Jefferson counties, 1792. First Clerk of County Court of Jefferson county, 1792. Appointed Charter Trustee of Blount College, 1794; Charter Trustee of Greeneville College, 1794; Charter Trustee of Washington College, 1795; Charter Trustee of East Tennessee College, 1807; Trustee of Maury Academy. Jefferson county, 1807. Senator from Jefferson and Greene counties. 1823-1825. (Caldwells Bench and Bar.)
[Explanatory Note. The date set opposite the name of each Trustee indicates the year of his first connection with the University as Trustee; either by election by the Board of Trustees pending confirmation by the Legislature, or by direct Legislative appointment without previous election by the Board.
When the name of the State is not given the present State of Tennessee is to be understood. The terms Southwestern Territory or Territorial Government refer to the Territory of the United States South of the River Ohio.
The name of place given in italics at the end of the sketch of each living Trustee indicates his present address; the books cited in italics in parentheses refer to other sketches of the same person.]
[University of Tennessee record, Volume 1 By University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 1898- Transcribed by AFOFG]

Asher W. Harman, Jr.
On September 6, 1850, at Staunton, Virginia, the subject of this sketch was born, a son of Col. M. G. Harman, and a grandson of Lewis Harman, of Augusta county, Virginia. His mother's family were also honored residents of that county, she being Caroline V., daughter of L. L. Stevenson, Esq., of Staunton. Colonel Harman died in December, 1874, aged fifty-eight years: his widow survives him, living in Augusta county. At Lexington, Virginia, December 11, 1872, Asher W. Harman, jr., married Eugenia M. Cameron. The bride was born in Rockbridge county, July 19, 1851, the daughter of Col. Andrew W. Cameron, of Rockbridge county, born in Bath county, and now deceased. Her mother was Ellen Hyde of Rockbridge county. The children of Mr. and Mrs. Harman are: Nellie H., Michael G., GeorgeC., Carrie, Eugenia, Alex. II., Warwick C., Mattie and A. W.
Mr. Harman was educated at the Virginia Military Institute. Lexington, which he entered September 6, I868, graduating July 4, 1872. From July, 1872 until December, 1885, he was engaged in farming, mail contracting and railroad contracting. On January 1, 1885, he was elected to the office he is now ably filling, Treasurer of the State of Virginia.
[Virginia and Virginians: eminent Virginians ... History of ..., Volume 2 By Robert Alonzo Brock, Virgil Anson Lewis, 1888 - Transcribed by AFOFG]

Jacob Hepler was of German descent. He was born in Rockbridge county, Va., but married and settled in Ohio, where his wife died. Their children were—Obediah, John, Elizabeth, and Anna. Mr. Hepler was married the second time to Catharine Miller, of Ohio, by whom he had—Joseph, Edward, William H., Mitchell, Rebecca, Eliza, and Barbara. All of the children by his second wife settled in Audrain county.
(Source: A History of the Pioneer Families of Missouri: with numerous sketches, by William Smith Bryan, publ. 1876. Transcribed and submitted by Andrea Stawski Pack)

HOUSTON, SAMUEL
Samuel Houston was born on March 02 1793 on Timber Ridge, north of Lexington, in Rockbridge Co VA on his family's plantation.  He was the son of Major Samuel Houston and Elizabeth Paxton Houston.  He was one of nine children and of Scotish-Irish descent.  He attained only a basic education.  In 1807 his father died.  He moved with his mother to Baker Creek TN. He lived in TN where he was adopted into and married into the Cherokee Nation. He founded a one-room schoolhouse that was the first school ever built in TN.He reported to a atraining camp in Knoxville TN in 1812 and enlisted in the 7th Infantry Regiment to fight the British in the War of 1812.  In the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814, he was wounded in the thigh.  He volunteered when Andrew Jackson called for volunteers to fight a group of Red Sticks.  He was wounded in the shoulder and arm.  In 1830 and 1832, he visited Washington on the behalf of the Cherokees to expose the frauds against them.  He married Margaret Moffette Lea on May 09 1840 in Marion Alabama.  Together they would have eight children.  He died in Huntsville Texas on July 26, 1863.  He was also married to Eliza Allen & Tiana Rogers Gentry.
He has a US Army base, a historical park, a national forest, and a universtity named after him.  He was an American polition, soldier and statesman.  He was an important person in Texas History.  He was President of the Republic of Texas, governor, and a Texas Senator.  He refused to be loyal to the Confederacy even though he was a slaveholder and against abolitionism, because of his unionist convictions.  This played a part in ending his time as a governor.  He retired in Huntsville Texas and died before the Civil War ended.    He is the only person in the History of the US to have been governor of two different states.  The city of Houston was named after him during the time when he supported annexation by the United states rather than long term independence of Texas.
Huntsville TX is the home of the Sam Houston Memorial Museum, the Sam Houston State University and Houston's gravesite.  The Sam Houston Schoolhouse in Maryville TN is Tennessee's oldest schoolhouse.  The USS Sam Houston submarine is named after him. Liberty TX area has the Sam Houston Regional Library and Research Center.
7th Governor of TN & TX, 1st & 3rd President of the Republic of TX, United States Senator TX,
(Submitted by FOGT)

Samuel Houston was born in Rockbridge County, Virginia, March 2, 1793. At a very early ago he lost his father, and ho, with his mother, removed to the banks of the Tennessee River, then the outermost border of civilization. Here he grew up a wild youth, and very much attached to the Indian mode of living—a liking which seems never to have deserted him.
He tried his hand at book-keeping, but, not liking a mercantile life, commenced teaching school. At length, becoming disgusted with the ferule, he enlisted in the army in 1813, and served under the immediate eye of General Jackson to the close of the war; receiving an honorable discharge, with the commission of Lieutenant, having distinguished himself for his bravery and good soldiership on several occasions.
On leaving the army he studied law, and soon entered the political arena of his country, where he figured until his death. His Congressional career commenced in 1823, when he became a member of the House of Representatives, and continued a member of that body until 1828, when he was elected Governor of Tennessee.
In 1829, before the expiration of his Gubernatorial term, he resigned his office, and went to take up his abode among the Cherokees, in Arkansas.
During his residence among them, he undertook a mission to Washington, for the purpose of exposing the frauds practiced upon the Indians; but he met with little success, and returned in disgust to his savage friends.
During a visit to Texas, he was requested to allow his name to be used in the canvass for a convention which was to meet to form a constitution for Texas, prior to its admission into the Mexican Union.
He consented, and was unanimously elected. The constitution framed by the convention being too liberal, was rejected by Santa Anna, who ordered them to give up their arms, and acknowledge fealty to the Mexican Republic.
The Texans determined on resistance, and General Austin, the commander of the Texan forces, was soon succeeded by General Houston, who, by his indomitable courage and unsurpassed military sagacity, carried on the war with vigor and ability, and brought it to a successful termination by the battle of San Jacinto, which he fought in April, 1836; and, in May, Santa Anna signed a treaty of peace, acknowledging the independence of Texas. General Houston was then inaugurated first President in October of the same year, and again elected in 1841. In 1846 Texas was admitted into the American Union, and General Houston was elected United States Senator, serving until the close of the Thirty-Fifth Congress, and was elected Governor of Texas in 1859. On the breaking out of the Rebellion, General Houston took neutral grounds, and endeavored to prevent Texas joining the Southern Confederacy, preferring to establish a separate government by itself; but he was overruled; Texas joined the Confederacy, and the hero of San Jacinto retired to his plantation in Huntsville, where he died, July 85, 1863.
(Source: Biographies of 250 Distinguished National Men by Horatio Bateman. Published 1871)

Houston: The most famous character to come out of Rockbridge was General Samuel Houston, whose name and fame are inseparably associated with Texas. He was a grandson of John, the founder of the Rockbridge line of Houston’s, and a son of Samuel and Elizabeth (Paxton) Houston. In a log house that stood seventy years ago in the rear of Timber Ridge meeting house, the future general was born March 2, 1793. He lost his father in 1806, and three years later he accompanied his mother and his younger brothers and sisters to Blount County in the valley of East Tennessee. He was daring and ambitious from the first, and in his new home he soon showed the venture sameness which does not seem characteristic of the Houston’s as a family. He went for a while to the Cherokees, and was adopted as a son by one of their chiefs. After his return he taught school. When nineteen years old he enlisted to serve against the Creek Indians, and in the battle of Tohopeka he was several times wounded, both by arrow and ball. His gallantry in this engagement made the youth a lieutenant. About 1820 he took up the practice of law. In 1823 he was elected to Congress and served two terms in the lower house. Houston was a born leader of men. So rapidly and effectively did he rise in the attention of the public that in 1827 he was elected governor of Tennessee. He did not serve out his first term. Just after his first marriage he suddenly resigned his office, not making public any reason for doing so. He went beyond the Mississippi to live with an Indian chief whom he had known eleven years earlier. This chief owned a large plantation worked by a dozen slaves. Houston lived among the Cherokees at least three years. This period must be regarded as the low-water mark in his varied career, since it was now that he gave way to the vice of intemperance. But the friendship between himself and the Indians was never broken, and where they were wronged he was always ready to uphold their cause. So far back as 1817, he acted as a sub-agent in the removal of the Cherokees from Georgia, but resigned the following year because of some reflections on his official conduct, and also because of a reproof from Calhoun, Secretary of War, for coming into his presence in Indian attire. During his present residence among the Cherokees he twice visited Washington to protect them from fraud and greed.
At the very close of 1832, when Houston was in his fortieth year, there began the most eventful period of his life. By request of the Federal government he visited Texas to make treaties with the border tribes for the protection of traders. Deciding to remain, the Texans sent him to their constitutional convention of April 1833, and he took a leading part in its deliberations. Near the close of 1835, when there was war with Mexico, Houston was made commander-in-chief of the armies of Texas. April 21, 1836, he won the decisive battle of San Jacinto, fighting 1800 men with 700, and inflicting a loss of 1690 against thirty-one on his own side. The invading army was annihilated. Santa Anna, who was not only its leader but also president of Mexico, was taken prisoner. It shows a humane spirit in General Houston that he did not cause the Mexican commander to be executed because of his atrocious cruelty on several occasions. The victory of San Jacinto established the independence of the republic of Texas and is a holiday in that commonwealth. When Texas was admitted as a state in the Federal Union, Houston was chosen senator and in this capacity he represented his state at Washington from 1846 until 1859. He was then elected governor of Texas, but because he was inflexibly opposed to secession, General Houston was removed from office in March, 1861. He ignored the secession convention, refused to swear allegiance to the Confederacy, and believed in fighting within the Union if there was to be any war at all. In 1860 he ran next to John Bell in the presidential convention of the Constitutional Union party. After being deposed, Houston went to his home at Huntsville, where he lived quietly until his death, July 26, 1863.
General Houston was of commanding presence. He was six feet three inches tall, large-framed, and well-proportioned. In manner he was courteous and pleasing. As a senator he wore coat and breeches of the best broadcloth, a tiger skin vest, a sombrero, and a bright-colored blanket. He did not care to make money, although he did not lack opportunity. His habits were simple. He lived plainly in a log house and went to bed at nine o'clock. Houston had a melodious voice and was a fine orator. He was a good stump speaker, and could address the borderers in their own dialect. As a legislator he was noted for impartiality and unusual foresight. In the Senate chamber at Washington, he had the curious habit of whittling all day long, fashioning darts, crosses, and other objects that he gave away as curios. As a military leader he was wary, yet brave, able and resolute. In 1854, General Houston became a member of the Baptist Church. By his second wife, Margaret M. Lea, he had four sons and four daughters. Of these, Nettie P. has a record in prose and poetry, while Samuel, Jr., a physician has written for the periodicals.
John Houston, the pioneer, figured in an exploit during his voyage from Ireland to Philadelphia. He and his fellow passengers became convinced that the captain and crew meant to rob them. So the passengers put the suspects in irons and navigated the vessel themselves.
Samuel, Sr., the father of General Houston, was himself a soldier, having served in the Revolution as one of the famous riflemen of Daniel Morgan. Afterward he was an inspector-general of troops on the frontier and held the rank of major. A first cousin was the Reverend Samuel Houston born on Hays Creek, January 1, 1758. He was a graduate of Liberty Hall and was licensed as a Presbyterian minister about 1784. He spent several years in the proposed state of Franklin, which he took a leading part in trying to establish, being a member of the committee that drafted its constitution. Returning in 1789 he now became pastor of the churches at Falling Springs and Highbridge. Mr. Houston was a polished writer and for about twenty years he taught a classical school in a building on his own place. He was original in his ideas and was the inventor and patentee of a threshing machine. His house and barn were built on plans of his own, and his farm of six hundred acres was tilled on more scientific methods than were usual in his day. During his long pastorate he perhaps united more couples than any other minister in Rockbridge. He became blind near the close of his long life, but was to have preached the day he died, which was January 29, 1839. He was tall, erect, and square-shouldered, dignified in manner, and was both particular and old-fashioned in the matter of dress.
A son of the last-named, and therefore a second cousin to the general, was the Reverend Samuel R. Houston, born March 12, 1806. He was graduated from Dickenson College in 1825, and after teaching six years at Philadelphia in a school for the deaf and dumb, he was ordained to the Presbyterian ministry, and sailed in 1835 as a missionary to Greece. At historic Sparta he conducted a large mission school. In 1841 he returned to America because of ill-health in his family. During forty-four years he was pastor at Union, W. Va. The diaries that Doctor Houston kept during his residence in foreign lands and as a non-combatant in the war of 1861 are of much historical and descriptive value. He was the father of the late Judge William P. Houston, of Lexington, a gentleman who was a cyclopedia of the local history of Rockbridge. Doctor Houston was also the author of "A History of the Houston Family." In this work he relates that of the progeny of John, the pioneer, nearly fifty were Presbyterian elders, and more than thirty were ministers of the same or other communions. Many of the connection had held civil or military office, while many in the female line married men engaged in the learned professions, or who were otherwise of force and influence. Few had become wealthy and none had fallen into gross crime.
(Source: The History of Rockbridge County, Virginia, By Olen Morton, Publ. 1920. Transcribed by Andrea Stawski Pack)

HYMAN, SAMUEL:
Samuel Hyman was another early settler from Rockbridge County, Virginia. Here he was born on November 12, 1812, and he came to this county in his early manhood, and married Miss Elizabeth Webb, daughter of Benjamin Webb, and settled on the Hyman homestead, below Smithville, which is still owned by his heirs.
He was a blacksmith by trade and a noted hunter. He died on April 6, 1904, at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Martha Holt, near Morgantown, and was laid at rest in the Webb cemetery by the side of his wife.
The children of this family were as follows: Mrs. Minerva, late wife of John P. Kennedy, of Smithville; Mrs. Mary Roberts, Mrs. Martha Holt, wife of the late William Holt, of Morgantown; Hattie died in youth; Benjamin, in the Civil war; and John resides near Smithville.
Mr. Hyman was the son of Hyman and Mrs. Rachel Hostetter Hyman—his mother being the sister of John Hostetter, senior. Both his parents sleep in Virginia. His mother was married a second time to Aldridge Evans, of Rockbridge county, and they were the parents of the late A. J. Evans, of the Cross-roads: J. M. of Lamb's run; Mrs. Margaret (Morgan) Rcxroad, Mrs. Martha Mitchell, and Elizabeth, who died single. After the death of the mother all the rest of the family came to this county, and here they sleep. The father lies on the McNeill homestead where most of the other members of the family rest.
Source:  History of Ritchie County: with biographical sketches publ. 1911 by Minnie Kendall Lowther pg. 86 submitted by Andrea Stawski Pack