Peg Leg: The Improbable Life of a Texas Hero, Thomas William Ward, 1807-1872 (review)

On his first and last day of combat in the Texas Revolution, Irish-born Thomas William ("Peg Leg") Ward, a twenty-eight-year-old artillery officer in the famed New Orleans Grays, lost his right leg to Mexican cannon fire. Four years later, Peg Leg suffered another maiming when an accidental cannon firing left him without a right arm. Focusing primarily on the period after those injuries, David C. Humphrey develops two themes in his fascinating account of Ward's improbable life. One of the themes emphasizes Peg Leg's overcoming his traumas and building a remarkable career of public service in Texas and elsewhere. The other theme highlights the tragic nature of Ward's tumultuous, ill-fated marriage to Susan Marston.

Humphrey divides his well-written, chronologically organized book into two parts, with the first part covering Peg Leg's life before marrying Susan and the second part focusing on the couple's respective lives after their wedding. Although Peg Leg's professional life is discussed throughout the book, the two-part division aids the author's arguments by allowing him to stress Peg Leg's professional life first and then add an emphasis on the Wards' marriage. After devoting four chapters to Peg Leg's immigration to Texas, his brief military career, and his role in launching the new city of Houston, Humphrey uses the last three chapters of part one to discuss Peg Leg's role as commissioner of the General Land Office of Texas in the 1840s. The nine chapters of part two focus on Ward's service as a U.S. Consul to Panama and as a federal customs official in Texas as well as his relationship with Susan.

The unusually extensive and meticulous research reflected in more than fifty pages of endnotes and a sixteen-page bibliography makes Humphrey's work particularly compelling and leaves no doubt that it is a definitive account of Ward's life. The author makes a particularly skillful use of his sources in examining Land Commissioner Ward's response to a defective land-title system that prevented Texas from timely honoring its promise of free land to early settlers. The description of Peg Leg's actions to improve that system, together with discussions of his conscientiousness in the U.S. government positions he later filled, convincingly show that he overcame his physical injuries to become an unusually able public servant.

When Humphrey turns his attention to the Wards' personal lives, he continues his exhaustive examination of primary sources, especially the pleadings and other documents filed in their divorce litigation. In so doing, he demonstrates that their bitterly-fought, drawn-out lawsuits, one in Texas and the other in New York, had significant, adverse effects on each of them and their extended families. Adding his own speculation that Peg Leg suffered from alcoholism and post-traumatic stress disorder, the author also confidently and plausibly argues that Peg Leg's psychological and physical abuse of Susan formed the crux of their marital discord. However, the scarcity of evidence to confirm the conjectured illnesses, together with evidence that conflicts with allegations made by Susan and her supporters, make the abuse argument more suggestive than conclusive.

Humphrey's enlightening discussion of shortcomings in the Texas land system during the Republic era may provide scholars with interesting ideas for further study. They also may find many of the author's sources, especially the Thomas William Ward Papers and certain records of the Texas General Land Office, of considerable interest. Nevertheless, Peg Leg seems intended mainly for a general audience, and anyone interested in nineteenth-century Texas should find the book highly informative and entertaining.