Edward Mandell House was the seventh son of a seventh son. According to House, "We originally came from Holland and the name was Huis, which finally fell into House. Father ran away from home and went to sea when a child, and did not return to his home until he had become a man of property and distinction. He came to Texas when it belonged to Mexico. He joined the revolution, fought under General Burleson, and helped make Texas a republic. For his services in this war he received a grant for land in Coryell County. He lived to see Texas come into the Union, secede, and return to the Union. He lived in Texas under four flags."13 According House's biographer, Charles Seymour, "Thus wrote Colonel House in the summer of 1916, when a brief lull in his political activities gave opportunity for him to reconstruct on paper something of the background that lay behind his rapid rise to national and international eminence. Although the family was in its origin Dutch, his forbearers were for some three hundred years English, and it was from England that his father ran away. House himself, a seventh son, was born in 1858, at Houston, Texas, and this State he has always regarded as his home. Even more than those of Wilson or Walter Page, with whom he later was so closely associated, his first years were touched by the excitement and turmoil of the times."14 The turmoil of the times was the Civil War (1861 - 1865). Thomas House had become a millionaire growing Cotton on his Coryell County land. Thomas House used some of his money to buy ships. The ships carried goods that were bought and sold. Two commodities House traded in were cotton and slaves. Some Southerners managed to profit from the Civil War. Thomas House was one. When the war began Lincoln blockaded the Southern coast. Thomas House increased his wealth by using his ships to run the blockades. Thomas House became rich and avoided risk by hiring men to run the blockades while he observed safely from shore. According to Edward House, "During the war he sent many ships out from Galveston with cotton, to run the blockade to near-by ports, such as Havana and Belize Honduras. At that time we had a house in Galveston as well as in Houston. The Galveston home covered an entire block. The house was a large red brick Colonial one, with white pillars, and an orange grove took up most of the grounds, and oleanders encircle them.