For the benefit of the first time visitor, here’s the story about how I came to be a Texian, rather than a Texan.  It’s a story which has been unfolding since the year 2001, when I discovered family in Texas I’d never heard about and decided to put our history together.

In 1830, when what we now call Texas was part of the Mexican province of Coahuila y Tejas, my maternal 5th Great Grandfather and horse trader Daniel Davis, his wife Elizabeth ( née Davidson), and his four children, Zacharia, John, Eizabeth Jane, and George Washington Davis left their home in Tennessee with their stock of fine-blooded horses.  In 1831, they joined the Dewitt Colony in Gonzales, Texas, and set up a family-operated stud farm.

During the War of Independence (1832 -1836), my 4th Great Grand Uncle George Washington Davis distinguished himself as one of the Old Gonzales 18

http://www.tamu.edu/faculty/ccbn/dewitt/oldgonzales18.htm

A second 4th Great Grand Uncle – George’s brother John – died in the Alamo during the siege which began on February 23, 1836  and ended on March 6, 1836 when the garrison fell to Mexican dictator General Antonio López de Santa Anna and his troops.

In those days, the term Tejano, denoted a Texan of Mexican descent, thus a Mexican Texan or a Texas Mexican and the term Texian (which has fallen out of common usage) generally applied to a member of the Anglo-American section of the province of Coahuila y Tejas or of the Republic of Texas (1835 – 1845).

So, Texian today is clearly an honorific, but with a history like that, how could I possibly be just another Texan?