Samuel May Williams (October 4, 1795 – September 13, 1858) was an American businessman, politician, and close associate of Stephen F. Austin, who was an Anglo-American colonizer of Mexican Texas. As a teenager, Williams started working in the family's mercantile business in Baltimore. He spent time in South America and New Orleans, fleeing the latter because of debts. He landed in Mexican Texas in 1822, having learned French and Spanish. Stephen F. Austin hired Williams for his colony in 1824. Williams first worked as a clerk, and later assumed the title of secretary to the ayuntamiento, a local government established for the colony by the Mexican state of Coahuila and Texas. He worked for Austin for about a decade.
In 1834, Williams quit as secretary of the Austin Colony to work as a merchant, then formalized a partnership with Thomas F. McKinney. The next year he also made deals with the provincial government in Monclova for a bank charter and for large tracts of land in Texas. At that time he was a representative in the Coahuila and Texas legislature. However, by 1836, Williams and his partner, Thomas F. McKinney, supported the Texas Revolution against Mexico. Williams borrowed money against his family's lines of credit, which the partners applied to ships and ammunition on behalf of the rebel government.
After Texas gained independence, Williams focused most of his business activities in Galveston, and represented Galveston County for one term in the Republic of Texas legislature. Through his partnership with McKinney he was invested in the Galveston City Company, and established diverse business interests there. The partnership ended when their business was acquired by Henry Howell Williams in 1842.
After 1842, Williams worked toward establishing a bank in Texas. He briefly returned to public service when he accepted a diplomatic mission to negotiate a treaty with Mexico, which had still not recognized the sovereignty of the Republic of Texas. In the first year of Texas statehood, he ran twice for the U.S. House of Representatives, losing both times. In 1848 Williams succeeded in introducing the first bank in Texas: the Commercial & Agricultural Bank (C & A Bank). This was the only institution to legally issue paper money, though his charter and the bank's practices faced legal challenges throughout its existence, including anti-banking legislation and scrutiny from various Texas Attorneys General. Favorable decisions rendered by the district courts saved Williams and his bank for about four years. C & A Bank remained solvent during the Panic of 1857, but anti-banking politics were on the rise. Many of Williams' friends and allies distanced themselves from the bank and encouraged him to give up the project, but he resisted their advice. He died in 1858 after a short illness.
Early life
Samuel May Williams was born October 4, 1795, in Providence, Rhode Island, to Howell and Dorothy (Wheat) Williams. His ancestors arrived in New England in the 1630s, and his family tree included a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a president of Yale University. Williams had four brothers and three sisters. His immediate family consisted of sailors and merchants; Howell Williams was a ship captain, and Samuel's uncle, Nathaniel Felton Williams, was a commission merchant in Baltimore. After some schooling in his native city, Samuel apprenticed to Nathaniel. A younger brother, also named Nathaniel Felton Williams, succeeded him as their uncle Nathaniel's apprentice.
The Williams family conducted a robust trade with Argentina, shipping food in exchange for cash or hides. Williams left Baltimore to oversee freight bound for Buenos Aires, where he stayed to conduct further business in South America. There Williams learned the Spanish and French languages, and his business dealings gave him experience in navigating Spanish business and political customs. In 1818, Williams boarded at a hotel in Washington, D. C. (where pirate and New Orleans denizen Jean Lafitte had been a resident), and the next year, Williams was living and working in New Orleans. Historians disagree about the timing of Williams's return to the United States from South America. While Joe B. Frantz and Ruth G. Nichols estimate his arrival to New Orleans as the year 1815, Margaret Swett Henson disputes this as a possibility, though she is less certain about timeline.