Samuel May Williams (October 4, 1795 – September 13, 1858) was an American businessman, politician, and close associate of Stephen F. Austin, who was an Anglo-American colonizer of Mexican Texas.

Williams first worked as a clerk, and later assumed the title of secretary to the ayuntamiento, a local government established for the colony by the Mexican state of Coahuila and Texas.

Williams borrowed money against his family's lines of credit, which the partners applied to ships and ammunition on behalf of the rebel government.

He briefly returned to public service when he accepted a diplomatic mission to negotiate a treaty with Mexico, which had still not recognized the sovereignty of the Republic of Texas.

[6] Williams left Baltimore to oversee freight bound for Buenos Aires, where he stayed to conduct further business in South America.

While Joe B. Frantz and Ruth G. Nichols estimate his arrival to New Orleans as the year 1815,[3][8] Margaret Swett Henson disputes this as a possibility, though she is less certain about timeline.

By 1822, the opening of Mexican Texas to Anglo-colonization offered these distressed families an opportunity to escape debts by moving outside the jurisdiction of American law.

During meetings at the state capital, Williams bought 100 leagues of land in northeast Texas from the Monclova government at an eighty percent discount.

His participation in the Monclova government aroused the resentment of such persons, many of whom were already suspicious of Williams because of his former position of power in granting land in the Austin Colony.

[21] With santanista General Martín Perfecto de Cos marching from Saltillo, the Monclova legislature ended its session in late-May 1835 with most of its members fleeing the region.

Williams arrived in San Felipe de Austin as an enemy of Santa Anna and Cos. At the same time, his actions in Monclova made him unpopular with Anglos in Texas.

Menard hatched the development scheme in 1833, coordinating to acquire a Mexican title to bayside land at the east end of Galveston Island from Juan Seguin.

[38] Williams once used his position in the House to assert the interests of the Galveston City Company, challenging the election of John M. Allen, the town's first mayor.

He led the passage of a bill to change Galveston's charter, which imposed a requirement of land ownership in order to vote in municipal elections.

[41] The two envoys accepted their official orders in September 1843, but they lacked the authority to stand behind their own agreements, which would be subject to approval by the President and the Texas Congress.

Meanwhile, unknown to Williams and Hockley, Texas negotiated an annexation treaty with the United States and appealed for sovereign recognition from Great Britain.

Their counterparts, Cayetano Montero and Alexander Ybara, did not consent to the Texans' proposal that Mexico withdraw troops beyond the Rio Grande River.

The Commercial and Agricultural Bank opened in Galveston on December 30, 1847, and later established a branch in Brownsville, as well as agencies in New Orleans, New York City, and Akron, Ohio.

The company cut a channel through the shallow, sandy bottoms, from the coast at the west end of Galveston Island to the mouth of the Brazos River.

By the end of the year, a new attorney general, Thomas J. Jennings sued officers of the C & A Bank, though it was dismissed by District Judge Peter W. Gray.

By 1830, Williams had already moved his family from Calle Commercio to a lot on the outskirts of town, and added onto this wood-framed house, then finished it with locally milled siding and brick, and with imported sash from New Orleans.

[57] For the four years ending in the summer of 1839, business travels on behalf of his own interests and in support of the Texas cause kept him occupied in the United States.

[60] As a Freemason, Williams became a member of a fraternity that included a number of other early Texas patriots like Stephen F. Austin, Sam Houston, Jose Antonio Navarro and Lorenzo de Zavala.

[64] Thomas McKinney managed the construction of Williams's house and his own on a large nearby suburban lots outside of Galveston, a project he started in 1839.

[74] Biographer Margaret Swett Henson writes, "The ten-year court battle with its political overtones had eroded his once robust health, and despairing of vindication, he relinquished the struggle and allowed despondency to triumph.

"[76] Williams, through his business partnership with McKinney, supported the war for independence with cash, and with goods and services in-kind, including ships, mercenaries, and ammunition.

The city of Galveston is tireless, almost shameless, in its devotion to its heroes, but there is no street, no park, no school or building or monument that bears the name Samuel May Williams.

Williams was labelled a "Monclova speculator" by some of his Texian contemporaries, a reference to his advantageous land acquisitions from the rebelling anti-Santanista faction in Coahuila.

[80] After Texas independence, the Republic brokered a deal acknowledging a legacy land grant from the Monclova government and conveying it to the Galveston Town Company, which included Williams as one of its business partners.

Leading up to the election, McKinney and Williams offered favorable exchange rates for Texas treasury notes compared to their local business rivals, which Cartwright suggests was a successful attempt to buy votes.