Maverick: The American Name that Became a Legend by Lewis F. Fisher (review)

This short book attempts to sort through the facts and fictions surrounding a legendary Texas name that has become part of the American lexicon: Maverick. Lewis F. Fisher notes that the origins of the word were debated even while Texas pioneer Sam Maverick was still alive. People in various media have confused its origins since the nineteenth century, from the Chicago Republican newspaper in 1867 to Wiktionary, the online dictionary, and American Public Media, the public radio producer and distributor, in 2016.

Depending on which of many sources is accurate, Maverick was German, French, Irish, a southerner, or a New Englander, and was a cattleman, a lawyer, an engineer, or a cattle thief. A great many sources insisted that Maverick refused to brand his cattle, though the reason used to explain this varied; alternatively, some sources insisted that Maverick branded every loose cow he could lay hands on, thus building one of the largest herds in Texas.

It is a tall order to cut through all the tall tales, but Lewis F. Fisher is up to the task. The book is loosely organized as a brief history of the family, and the author discusses how the legends might be based on some kernel of truth. He draws appreciatively on Paula Mitchell Marks's Turn Your Eyes Toward Texas: Pioneers Sam and Mary Maverick (Texas A&M University Press, 1989) for the early part of the book, and he turns to Richard B. Henderson's Maury Maverick: A Political Biography (University of Texas Press, 1970) for the most famous twentieth-century Maverick.

Fisher explains that Sam Maverick's main preoccupation was land and, secondarily, politics, because he served as mayor of San Antonio and as a senator in the Texas legislature. Cattle were a tertiary interest at best when in 1847 Maverick bought a herd of around 450 cattle on Matagorda Peninsula. However, he was an absentee rancher, leaving one undertrained and overwhelmed slave named Jack in charge of the entire herd. The next year Maverick and two of his sons drove the cattle from the coast to a ranch closer to San Antonio. Although the herd continued to dwindle, Maverick hated to walk away from the investment, not selling the herd until 1854.

Fisher hypothesizes that the word Maverick came into common use around cowboy campfires and spread from there. It is difficult to prove this, but the notion seems plausible. He further notes that in 1872 Maximilian Schele de Vere discussed the word in his book Americanisms: The English of the New World. Schele de Vere was a professor at the University of Virginia, where two sons of Sam and Mary Maverick had recently attended. This scholarly book apparently gave a boost to its popular usage.

Fisher also identifies the year when the term first went political—1888—in the presidential election between Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison: a critical article in the St. Louis Republican suggested that Edwin H. Terrell, a former San Antonio mayor and Harrison supporter who had married a Maverick daughter, had joined a dynasty founded by a cattle thief. At this time Maverick's son George was living in St. Louis and wrote a rebuttal in a letter to the editor. George Maverick later republished the letter as a pamphlet in 1905.

Aside from an amusing aside about Maury Maverick's promotion of the word "gobbledygook," which strays from the main path of the book, Fisher maintains his theme with a discussion of the word Maverick in American popular culture. Three instances are most notable. The television program Maverick: Legend of the West, starring James Garner, ran from 1957 to 1962. In 1969 the Ford Motor Company introduced the Ford Maverick, which was sporty yet economical—i.e., a down-market Mustang. Finally, an article in the New York Times in 2000 asked which presidential candidates wanted to be a Maverick. The article suggested that Senators John McCain (Republican) and Bill Bradley...