Sam Bell Maxey

Samuel Bell Maxey was born in 1825 in Tompkinsville, Kentucky, to Rice and Lucetta Bell Maxey. In 1842 he received an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point. Although he ranked near the bottom of his class, he developed an appreciation for the form and ceremony of military life. He also made contacts among fellow cadets which would be important in his later career. Upon graduation from West Point in 1846, Maxey was assigned to the Seventh Infantry Regiment and served with distinction in the Mexican War. He also commanded a company of occupation forces in Mexico City.
Maxey returned to the United States after the war and in 1849 resigned his commission from the army. He moved back to Albany, Kentucky, where he studied law under his father and became involved in state politics. In 1851 he joined his father's law firm and was elected clerk of the circuit and county courts of Clinton County. In 1853 Sam Bell married Marilda Cass Denton. Finding the family law practice increasingly unprofitable in Kentucky, Maxey and his father moved their families to Texas in 1857. They chose Paris, the county seat of Lamar County as their new home and settled on five acres south of town. Soon after opening the new law office, Sam Bell became the District Attorney of Lamar County. In 1861 he was elected to the Texas Senate, but declined the office so that he might serve the Confederacy in the War Between the States. At the outbreak of the war, Maxey volunteered his services to the Confederacy and formed the Lamar Rifles, a company from Paris. In 1861 he organized the Ninth Texas Infantry Regiment, numbering 1120 men. The Ninth Texas Infantry joined P.G.T. Beauregard at Corinth, Mississippi in March 1862 and suffered heavy losses at the Battle of Shiloh in April. Maxey, however, had earlier been assigned to John B. Floyd's command at Chatanooga, Tennessee guarding bridges and roads. On December 1, 1863 Maxey assumed command of the Indian Territory (Oklahoma) where his primary concerns were blocking any Union invasion of North Texas through the Territory and acting as superintendent of Indian affairs. As a result of his role in the capture of a 170-wagon Union supply train in 1864, Maxey was promoted to Major General. In February 1865 Maxey was given a new command in Houston, but asked to be relieved so that he might go back home to Paris where he formally surrendered to U.S. General E.R.S. Canby in July 1865.
In the fall of 1865 Maxey began his long struggle to obtain the special presidential pardon required of high ranking ex-Confederate officers. With the help of Ulysses S. Grant, one of his West Point classmates, Maxey finally received his pardon in July 1867. He then was able to resume his law practice and to participate in Texas politics. Maxey reopened his law office in Paris with his father and William Henry Long. He also completed plans for the construction of a new home on his five acre site south of town. Having put his home and business affairs in order, Maxey turned his attention to politics. Though he lost his 1872 bid for a House seat in Congress, in 1874 the state legislature elected him to the first of two terms as United States Senator. Characterized as "the beaver of the Senate" for his work in getting bills passed, Maxey nevertheless played no large role in government or party affairs. His only leadership position was a one-session chairmanship of the Committee on Post Offices and Post Roads. In 1887 after losing his bid for a third term , he returned to his family and law practice in Paris. He lived there until his death in Eureka Springs, Arkansas in 1895. Sam Bell Maxey is burried in Evergreen Cemetery one mile south of his Home.