Gov. Francis Richard Lubbock

About

FRANCIS RICHARD LUBBOCK was born in Beaufort, South Carolina. He attended private schools in South Carolina until the age of fourteen, when his father’s death forced him to seek employment. He declined appointment to West Point, working instead as a hardware clerk and then managing a cotton warehouse. He lived for several years in New Orleans and then moved to Texas in 1836, where he operated several drug stores and engaged in the mercantile business as well as in farming and ranching. He became clerk of the House of Representatives of the Republic of Texas in 1837 and served for a time as the Republic’s Comptroller of the Treasury. He then served for sixteen years as District Clerk of Harris County and for two years as Lieutenant Governor of Texas. Although a Democrat, he won the governorship in an election held without political party affiliation. Serving as governor during the Civil War, Lubbock sought to raise money for the empty state treasury by selling some of the U.S. indemnity bonds that had been acquired from the sale to the federal government of Texas’s claim to the Santa Fe region and by the exportation of cotton through Mexico. After leaving office, he was appointed a Colonel in the Confederate Cavalry and became an aide-de-camp to Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Richmond, Virginia. Imprisoned for eight months at the end of the Civil War, he returned to Texas after his release, engaging in ranching. He was tax collector of Galveston for three years and served for more than a decade as State Treasurer of Texas. He was also a member of the Board of Pardons under Governor James S. Hogg before retiring from public service at the age of eighty. He spent his final years in Austin, where he was buried in the state cemetery.

Source

Sobel, Robert, and John Raimo, eds. Biographical Directory of the Governors of the United States, 1789-1978, Vol. 4. Westport, CT: Meckler Books, 1978. 4 vols.

The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. 9. New York: James T. White & Company.

Texas State Library & Archives Commission

Governors of Texas, 1846-present