"General Lamar and Mrs. Juan N. Seguin, wife of the Mayor, opened the ball with a waltz. Mrs. Seguin was so fat that the General had great difficulty in getting a firm hold on her waist, and they cut such a figure that we were forced to smile. The General was a poet, a polite and brave gentleman and first rate
conversationalist but he did not dance well.
At the ball, Jack Hays, Mike Chevalier, and John Howard (Texas Rangers) had but one dress coat between them, and they agreed to use the coat and dance in turn. The two not dancing would stand at the hall door watching the happy one who was enjoying his turn and they reminded him when it was time for him to step out of that coat. Great fun was it watching them and listening to their wit and mischief as they made faces and shook their fists at the dancing one."
So said Mary Maverick in her memoir. She was a straightforward writer and gave it a straightforward title: The Memoirs of Mary A. Maverick.
Mary was the first American woman to set up house in San Antonio. She witnessed the Council House fight, the Comanche Invasion of 1840, and knew most of the famous Texans of her day. In case you didn't know, Mary was the wife of Samuel Maverick, the man who refused to brand his cattle, and thereby branded future independent thinkers with his name. They lived at the Northwest corner of Alamo Plaza, where the Gibbs Building (Hotel Indigo) now stands.
Mary Maverick kept a diary of her life in Texas from 1837 through the 1850s. It's one of the most important narratives of the republic era.
John Jenkins included it in his Basic Texas Books, a bibliography of the books essential to any serious library of Texas. He called it "...engrossing and colorful. Her vivid eye-witness account of the Council House Fight is our best source of information on the event. Her description of social life in early Texas is particularly interesting and useful. She recounts many Indian fights, particularly those in which her husband and Jack Hays took part."
