Joseph Draper Sayers served as governor of Texas from January 17, 1899 to January 20, 1903. Sayers was born in Mississippi in 1841. When he was ten, Sayers' family moved to Bastrop, Texas, where he attended the Bastrop Military Institute until 1860. Sayers advanced from private to major in the Confederate army. At the war's end, he taught school and studied law at night in Bastrop. Sayers became a law partner of George W. Wash Jones in 1866. He was elected to the state senate in 1872, to the lieutenant governorship in 1879, and to the U.S. Congress in 1885. As Congressman (1885-1898) Sayers helped to gain federal pensions for Texas Rangers for the Indian Wars. Colonel E.M. House, who had run the campaigns of Governors Hogg and Culberson, selected Sayers to break the pattern of attorneys general succeeding to the governor's chair.
Sayers was elected governor in 1898, and re-elected in 1900. He coped with three major disasters: the Huntsville Penitentiary fire of 1899, the Brazos River flood of 1899, and the Galveston storm of 1900. Sayers returned to law practice after his retirement, and was on the University of Texas Board of Regents during its power struggle with Governor James E. Ferguson in 1916. He served on the Industrial Accident Board (1915-1917), the Board of Legal Examiners (1922-1926), and the Board of Pardon Advisors (1927). Sayers died in Austin on May 15, 1929.
From the guide to the Records, 1886-1903, (bulk 1899-1903), (Texas State Archives)
