First Blood

Samuel McCullough (McCulloch) was a former slave that was born in South Carolina and arrived in Texas in May of 1835. Five months later he was a soldier with George M. Collinsworth's Matagorda Volunteer Company. He participated in the attack on Goliad when the Texans stormed the Mexican officers' quarters.

Late in the evening of October 9, 1835, McCullough was seriously wounded. A musketball shattered his right shoulder, left him an invalid for nearly a year, and crippled him for life. Incapacitated by his wound, McCulloch remained at Goliad for three weeks after the battle and was then carried by John Polan to Victoria, where he stayed a short while. He was subsequently transported to his home in Jackson County, where he remained until April 1836, when he and other settlers in the area fled in an attempt to get ahead of the retreating Texan army during the Runaway Scrape.

On July 8, 1836, after the battle of San Jacinto, a surgeon in the Texan army, possibly Dr. Nicholas D. Labadie, removed the musketball from McCulloch's shoulder. He was the only soldier wounded that night of October 9, and later the Texas Congress recognized that he was "the first whose blood was shed in the Texas War for Independence."