Lubbock, Thomas Saltus

Thomas (some sources say Thompson) Saltus Lubbock was born 1817 in South Carolina. When the Texas Revolution started, he marched to Nacogdoches with Capt. William G. Cooke’s company of New Orleans Greys and participated in the Siege of Béxar. Thereafter he took employment on a steamboat on the upper Brazos River and did not learn of Antonio López de Santa Anna’s incursion into Texas until after the battle of San Jacinto. After working for a time with Samuel May Williams and Thomas F. McKinney, Lubbock joined the Texan Santa Fe expedition as a lieutenant of one of the military companies. He and his men were captured in New Mexico and confined in Santiago Convent, Mexico City. Lubbock escaped by jumping from the convent’s balcony and made his way back to Texas. After Adrián Woll seized San Antonio in 1842, Lubbock was elected first lieutenant of Gardiner N. O. Smith’s company of Harris and Milam county volunteers and, due to Smith’s illness, marched at the head of the company to San Antonio de Béxar to join in driving the Mexicans back across the Rio Grande. Lubbock and his men were among the 189 Texans who followed Alexander Somervell back to Texas on December 19, 1842, after declining to join William S. Fisher on the Mier Expedition. He died in January 1862. He was the brother of Texas governor Francis R. Lubbock. Lubbock County was named in his honor.

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