Micajah Autry

Micajah Autry (1793 – March 6, 1836) was an American merchant, poet and lawyer who died in the Texas Revolution at the Battle of the Alamo.

Autry was born, 1793 of a Quaker family, in Sampson County, North Carolina, to Theophilus and Elizabeth (Crumpler) Autry. Between the ages of 17 and 18, he volunteered for military service against the British in the War of 1812. He marched to Wilmington, North Carolina, as a member of a volunteer militia company and later joined the United States Army at Charleston, South Carolina. He remained in Charleston in the company of Captain Long until the Treaty of Ghent was signed in 1815. After the war, bad health forced Autry to quit farming and become a teacher. Then in 1823, he moved to Haysboro in Davidson County, Tennessee, and studied law. At the end of that year, he married a widow, Martha Wyche Putney Wilkinson. They had two children of their own who survived to adulthood; and they raised Martha's daughter from her first marriage. In 1828, Autry was admitted to the bar in Nashville. He practiced law in Jackson, Tennessee, between 1831 and 1835, in a partnership with Andrew L. Martin. Autry and Martin later started an unsuccessful mercantile business in Nashville.

During a subsequent business trip to New York City and Philadelphia, he heard of the opportunities in Texas. In 1835 he left his family and slaves in the care of Samuel Smith, his stepdaughter's husband, and set out for Texas by steamboat from Nashville.

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