 His grandfather, Thomas Steele, a native of Dublin, Ireland, had served on the schooner "General Putnam" in defense of New York during the Revolutionary War and had settled in Kentucky with his family in 1798.At seventeen, Steele traveled to Lake Providence Louisiana, where he joined Captain Ephraim Daggett's volunteers bound for Texas in 1835.Upon arriving New Year's Day 1836 at Washington-on-Brazos, he found that Texas had not yet declared independence from Mexico.