Maverick is the name

Speaking of American history, I’ve been enjoying the blog Boston 1775, which today has a post about The “Maverick” Heritage. And yes, it does involve, sort of, James Garner, in his avatar as that independent-minded, non-violent trickster of a Texas gambler named Maverick.

Seems there really are Mavericks in Texas, and they consider that they have a long tradition of being free-thinking liberals.

I think I remember reading once upon a time that the term maverick, used to describe an unbranded stray, came from Samuel Augustus Maverick, a Texas rancher who neglected to brand his cattle. Some say this was more greed than neglect, allowing him to claim any unbranded strays, but others say he just wasn’t that good a rancher. Some even claim that it wasn’t a compliment to call somebody a maverick until after James Garner charmed us all.

Be that as it may, according to the New York Times, the Mavericks of Texas have raised objections to John McCain’s calling himself one.

�I�m just enraged that McCain calls himself a maverick,� said Terrellita Maverick, 82, a San Antonio native who proudly carries the name of a family that has been known for its progressive politics since the 1600s, when an early ancestor in Boston got into trouble with the law over his agitation for the rights of indentured servants.

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Sam Maverick�s grandson, Fontaine Maury Maverick, was a two-term congressman and a mayor of San Antonio who lost his mayoral re-election bid when conservatives labeled him a Communist. He served in the Roosevelt administration on the Smaller War Plants Corporation and is best known for another coinage. He came up with the term �gobbledygook� in frustration at the convoluted language of bureaucrats.

This Maverick�s son, Maury Jr., was a firebrand civil libertarian and lawyer who defended draft resisters, atheists and others scorned by society. He served in the Texas Legislature during the McCarthy era and wrote fiery columns for The San Antonio Express-News. His final column, published on Feb. 2, 2003, just after he died at 82, was an attack on the coming war in Iraq.

Terrellita Maverick, sister of Maury Jr., is a member emeritus of the board of the San Antonio chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas.

Considering the family�s long history of association with liberalism and progressive ideals, it should come as no surprise that Ms. Maverick insists that John McCain, who has voted so often with his party, �is in no way a maverick, in uppercase or lowercase.�

And what of those Boston Mavericks? Well, according to Boston 1775, the first Samuel Maverick was

one of Massachusetts Bay�s earliest English settlers, proprietor of trading posts and farms on islands in Boston harbor and then along the Piscataqua from 1624 to about 1676. That Samuel Maverick was also one of New England�s earliest slaveholders. Even before Massachusetts law explicitly allowed slavery, he was keeping people from Africa imprisoned on his island and forcing them to have children.
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Boston�s first Samuel Maverick was undoubtedly a maverick: adhering to the Church of England in the midst of Puritans, defending Thomas Morton�s rules-breaking Mare Mount settlement, complaining to London about the local government. He spoke up for the rights of a religious minority (which he belonged to). But I can�t find how Maverick championed the �rights of indentured servants,� and he obviously oppressed enslaved servants.

I think being a political �maverick� matters only if one is serving the people and the country well; there�s no honor in standing out just for the sake of one�s self-image as a contrarian.

Possibly related posts:

Samuel Shepard

The plantation wife

Thou bright spot on earth

The 19th century housewife

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