proximity to the Texans of Santa Anna's troops heading toward San Jacinto. On 3 March 1836, David Thomas was amongst those appointed to the Constitutional Committee for the nascent Republic of Texas and is thought to have been a principal drafter of the Constitution of the Republic of Texas: on the committee were, inter alia, David Thomas and Sam Houston of Refugio, Texas, and Robert Hamilton of Red River and James Collinsworth of Brazoria. Death and legacy Thomas died 1836 after suffering a mortal wound from a musket ball in the leg on the steamship Cayuga when fleeing troops of Santa Anna (Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna) with the new government of the Republic of Texas as part of the Runaway Scrape. David Thomas is buried in a hero's grave in the de Zavala Cemetery in the San Jacinto battlefield state shrine near Houston. David Thomas's land grant from the State of Texas was posthumously claimed by his nephew in West Tennessee John Edwin McCorkle (1839–1924), Tennessee state legislator and son of Jane Maxwell Thomas (Mrs. Edwin Alexander McCorkle), on behalf of all the nieces and nephews of David Thomas. One of them was David E. Thomas, by then an attorney in Austin, Texas, who responded to an inquiry from McCorkle that the land grant was not worth claiming, for it was subject to Indian depredations and back taxes amounting to more than its fair market value. Nevertheless, McCorkle claimed the land for the heirs of the decedent David Thomas. References 1795 births 1836 deaths Texas Attorneys General People of the Texas Revolution 19th-century American politicians American lawyers admitted to the practice of law by reading law Signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence