William Gamble

On Friday, July 13th, 1877, in Corpus Christi, at the residence of Col. N. Gusset, Hon. William Gamble, a veteran of the Texas Revolution, breathed his last, and on the same day his mortal remains were consigned to mother earth with appropriate Masonic and military ceremony. The Star Rifles, under command of Capt. S. T. Foster, the Masonic fraternity, and a numerous concourse of friends and acquaintances, preceded by a band of music, moved in procession to the cemetery, to pay the last sad tribute to a good man gone.

His health had been failing for a considerable length of time: but not until a week or so previous to his death did his symptom excite unusual apprehensions. His sufferings were intense; but the fiat had gone forth and could not be recalled. His spirit took its flight to “ The undiscovered country, from whose born know traveler returns.”

Judge Gamble, as he was familiarly known, was born in Ireland about the year 1810, and was brought by his parents to Baltimore, Md., at an early age. He removed to Cincinnati when a young man and at a time when the Northwest was an almost unbroken wilderness, where he followed cabinet making, accumulating some means.

The Texan War of Independence attracted his attention and enlisted his sympathy; and in 1836 he joined a company formed in Cincinnati that afterward rendezvoused at Louisville, with which, with the rank of First Lieutenant, he preceded to New Orleans in route for Texas. His company was attached to a regiment then forming in New Orleans, and which was being recruited under the personal direction of the late Col. Thomas William Ward, who was then a major of the regular army of Texas, acting under orders from the Texas War Department at Velasco. He came to Texas with this command, served under Gen. Felix Huston throughout the struggle and attained the rank of captain.

At its close he settled in Victoria County and held for a time the office of Chief Justice. Then he married. We next find him a resident of San Patricio and Chief Justice of San Patricio County about the year 1847. He removed to what is now Live Oak County (then a portion of San Patricio) in 1853, where he resided until a few weeks previous to his death.

He lost his wife in Live Oak long ago and never remarried. Judge Gamble was noted for his hospitable and charitable qualities. Genial and frank in his social intercourse with his fellow-men, he was honored and respected by all who were so fortunate as to enjoy his acquaintance. He was intelligent and practical; one whom the world would call self-made. Naturally dignified in his manner and address, his individuality was both marked and agreeable; yet he was possessed of much quiet good humor that found expression on proper occasions.

Corpus Christi Free Press as quoted by the Victoria Advocate Aug. 4, 1977 p. 1 col. 4
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