George Whitfield Terrell

Texas Ancestor of John Loven

Member of the Emphraim M. Daggett Chapter #36 of Fort Worth

Of the Sons of the Republic of Texas

George Whitfield Terrell, son of James Terrell, was born in Nelson County, KY in 1803. As a youth he moved to Tennessee. He was admitted to the bar in 1827 and was married around the same year. He and his wife had three children, one of whom died in infancy. Sam Houston, then governor of Tennessee, appointed Terrell district attorney in 1828. Terrell served as a member of the Tennessee legislature from 1829 to 1836. During this time he became friends with Andrew Jackson, as well as Sam Houston. At one point, Houston appointed Terrell as his State Attorney General. In 1837 he left Tennessee and lived briefly in Mississippi.

Terrell migrated to Texas in 1839 and made his home in San Augustine County in east Texas. Within months, Republic of Texas President, Mirabeau B. Lamar, appointed him a District Attorney and later the First District Judge, serving in east Texas. Terrell was Secretary of State in Texas under President David G. Burnett in 1841. In December of 1841, Republic of Texas President Sam Houston made Terrell Attorney General of Texas. From 1842-1844 Terrell was Indian Commissioner of Texas and negotiated the Indian Treaty at Bird’s Fort on September 29, 1843, near Fort Worth. Terrell remained a close friend of Sam Houston’s during Jone’s tenure. General Houston gave Terrell’s son Sam Houston Terrell, a personal flag from the Republic of Texas. This became a family Heirloom, but, sadly, one of Sam Houston Terrell’s great, great, grand daughters accidentally threw it out when instructed to clean up her room.

In December of 1844 Terrell was appointed Charge d’Affairs to France, Great Britain, and Spain and continued in that capacity under President Anson Jones. Upon his return to Texas in 1845, Terrell was again made Indian Commissioner. He was known as an opponent of the proposal for the United States to annex Texas.

George Whitfield Terrell died in Austin, Travis County, Texas on May 13, l846. He is buried in an un-marked grave believed to be in Oakwood Cemetery in Austin. The Commission of Control for the Texas Centennial Celebration had a monument erected in Oakwood Cemetery in his memory.