Yoakum, Henderson King, 1810-1856

Historian, lawyer, politician and soldier Henderson King Yoakum was born in Claiborne County, Tennessee, in 1810 and graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1832. The following year, he married Evaline Cannon, with whom he fathered nine children, and began practicing law in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. He served as mayor of the city in 1837 before reentering the military as a colonel in the volunteer Tennessee infantry in 1838.

After briefly serving in the Cherokee War, Yoakum won a seat in the Tennessee Senate, which he held from 1839 to 1845. During his tenure, Yoakum urged the annexation of Texas before moving to Huntsville, Texas in October 1845. He was admitted to the Texas bar the same year, though he left his practice to volunteer in the Mexican War, where he served at Monterrey. With the end of his enlistment, Yoakum returned to his law practice and befriended Sam Houston. He completed the two-volume History of Texas from Its First Settlement in 1685 to Its Annexation to the United States in 1846 in 1855. Unfortunately for Yoakum, he caught tuberculosis and died in 1856.

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