Richardson A. Scurry (1811-1862)

    Richardson A. Scurry was born November 11, 1811 in Gallatin, Tennessee, the eldest of five children. His father was a lawyer, and Scurry apparently received a privately tutored education, after which he studied law under a Tennessee judge. He was admitted to the bar around 1830 and began practicing law in Covington, Tennessee. Like other young Tennesseans, Scurry was drawn by the promise of adventure to join a group of men headed to Texas to fight for Texas independence. He arrived in time to fight in the battle of San Jacinto and earned the rank of first lieutenant for his bravery and good conduct. When he left the Texas army in October 1836, he settled in Clarksville, practiced law, and served in various leadership roles in the Texas Republic. He was secretary of the Senate of the First Congress in the fall of 1836, and by the end of the first session that fall, President Sam Houston had appointed him district attorney of the First Judicial District. 

    The Congress of the Republic elected him judge of the Sixth Judicial District on January 20, 1840, automatically making him an associate justice of the supreme court. He held the post until February 5, 1841, when he resigned to become district attorney of the Fifth Judicial District. In 1843 Scurry married; he fathered nine children. Following his marriage he served as a member of the House of Representatives of the Seventh and Eighth Congresses (1842-44), serving as speaker of the House of the Eighth, and was elected to the House of Representatives of the Thirty-second United States Congress in 1851. In 1853 he returned to law practice near Hempstead in Austin County. In 1861, Scurry was appointed adjutant general in the Confederate army. Scurry had accidentally shot himself while hunting in the summer of 1854; the wound had never healed, and eventually his leg was amputated. He never recovered from the surgery and died on April 9, 1862. Source 


Hempstead Cemetery
Hempstead

COORDINATES

30° 05.020, -096° 04.073