Meriwether Woodson “Poker” Smith was born circa 1807. At Harrisburg on June 4, 1835, he and fifty-seven others signed an agreement to assemble in Harrisburg on June 6, elect officers, and proceed to Anahuac to attack the Mexican garrison there. Notations on the document made after the garrison’s capitulation at the end of the month indicate that he decided against participating in the attack. He did, however, carry Travis’s account of the event from San Felipe to Henry Smith in Columbia.
He represented Harrisburg at the Consultation in the fall of 1835, and on his motion on November 12, 1835, Sam Houston was elected major general of the armies of Texas. Two days later he moved that the Consultation adjourn and that all members who were able to do so should repair to San Antonio to assist in the siege. On December 12, 1835, Smith, James W. Fannin, Jr., and other “citizens of Matagorda and its vicinity” addressed a recommendation of port officers for the port of Matagorda to Governor Henry Smith and the General Council. He served in the army during the Texas Revolution from October 1, 1835, to April 5, 1836. He participated in the Siege of Béxar in December 1835 and on December 20 of that year 1835 was elected a first lieutenant of the Legion of Cavalry by the General Council. He was sent to recruit men in Alabama and left there in mid-February 1836. In March sixteen recruits deserted in New Orleans because He had not been allotted sufficient funds for provisions to get them to Texas. Pursuant to Houston’s orders, He positioned his thirty-two-man force on the prairie east of the Brazos opposite Thompson’s Ferry in late March and early April. He was then suffering from a lingering illness that he had contracted while recruiting. He tendered his resignation on April 5, 1836, due to his illness, and sent twenty-six of his men to join Houston’s force. He died in Harrisburg on July 26, 1837.
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