In the early 1800s, a man from South Carolina wound up on Texas’s Gulf Coast. Unlike most of his neighbors this newly transplanted Texan had no interest in cattle. However, when he was owed a debt of $1,200, he was paid with – you guess it – cattle. Four-hundred head to be exact.
Because he had no interest in raising cattle, he didn’t even bother to brand them so they all ran wild. Later on nearby ranchers knew that an unbranded cow was “one of Maverick’s,” because the man’s name was Samuel Maverick.
As time wore on, and the Texas cattle country expanded, it came to be that any and all unbranded cow were called mavericks. (Now in the lower case.) From there the term came to apply to any independent type personality – a rover, a free spirit, or any person who would sooner follow conscience than conform.
I guess you might say most all we novelist/authors are, by our very nature, true mavericks.
Thanks to Samuel Maverick, we have our own distinctive moniker. And now you know the rest of the story.
(Don’t you just love words and their origins?)
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