Birth of a Navy by Dallam Masterson
September 14
5:30 p.m.
$5 for Members
$15 for Non-Members

It may surprise you to learn that from 1835 to 1837 the Republic of Texas had its own Navy. Dallam Masterson, a 7th generation Texan and descendant of the first Secretary of the Navy for the Republic of Texas, will speak about the creation of that Navy and the role his ancestor, Samuel Rhoads Fisher, played in the process. Fisher was a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence before being appointed by President Sam Houston to command the newly formed Texas Navy. Come hear about the life of this remarkable man!

Adm. Wilmer Dallam Masterson IV is a 7th-generation Texan whose ancestors immigrated to Matagorda in the 1830s. He is a retired geologist with degrees from Yale University, the University of Texas at Austin, and a PhD from the University of Texas at Dallas. His 4th great grandfather was Samuel Rhoads Fisher, the first Secretary of the Navy for the Republic of Texas, and his 3rd great grandfather was James Wilmer Dallam, who published the rulings of the Republic’s Supreme Court in “Dallam’s Digest of the Laws of Texas.” Dallam married Secretary Fisher’s daughter Annie and they had a daughter named Annie Wilmer Dallam who perished in the 1900 Galveston storm; fortunately for the speaker, her 16-year-old son Wilmer Dallam Masterson survived the storm.

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