Cannons on the Lower Brazos and at Anahuac

  Cannons on the lower Brazos river began arriving in 1830, and at Anahuac in 1831.  More arrived in 1835 when Mexican troops established Fort Velasco in April, and when a Mexican ship grounded there in July.  In September of 1835 a small swivel gun from Brazoria was sent to Gonzales; it fired the first shot in the Battle of Gonzales.  This same gun had fired the first shot in the Battle of Velasco in 1832; it is on display today in the Gonzales Memorial Museum.  All of the artillery remaining on the lower Brazos at the end of March, 1836, was sent to Galveston, and from there the Twin Sisters were sent to Sam Houston's army for use at San Jacinto.

       Read all about the history of these cannons in the following link:

Cannons on the Lower Brazos and at Anahuac 

The Treasure of Punta de Llano

Stories of buried treasure have captivated people throughout the ages. Texas has an ample number of these legends, from lost silver mines on the San Saba to treasure buried by pirates near Houston, or by John Singer on Padre Island. Many people have searched for these treasures, but so far none have been found - at least not yet. The little town of Oakland, Texas, has its own unique and fascinating legend of buried gold. They call it the Treasure of Punta de Llano, Spanish for Prairie Point, the original name of Oakland. Immerse yourself in this legend — it is a fascinating story even if you never hoist a shovel and go digging! 

The Treasure of Punta de Llano 

The Lost San Saba Silver Mine

Indians told the Spaniards there was silver in the Texas Hill Country.  Hoping for another bonanza like they had discovered in northern Mexico, Spanish officials sent out several expeditions to find the mines.  They did locate the source of the Indian tales, on a creek near the mouth of the Llano River near Kingsland.  They called it Los Almagres (hills of ocher, a brownish-red hematite, a pigment associated with silver ore).  They took samples from the mine to Mexico for testing, and then dug larger quantities, smelting it to test for silver concentration at the newly established presidio on the San Saba river.  All of the tests yielded low to no silver content; the Spanish effort halted with these negative results and the destruction of the nearby mission by Comanches in 1758, and later abandonment of the presidio..  

Then came the Americans.  Steven  Austin heard of the silver mines and listed them on his early maps of Texas.  Jim Bowie in San Antonio made expeditions to the San Saba presidio in search of the mines, finding the slag from the earlier Spanish testing of Los Almagres ore but no silver.  Bowie’s reports firmly planted in the minds of future treasure seekers that the lost mine was at or near the "mission", as the presidio ruins had become known.  Over the remainder of the 1800’s and into the early 1900s many Texans canvassed the area between the San Saba and Llano rivers, with no success. 

Read all about this fascinating legend of buried treasure in the Texas Hill Country.

Los Almagres Silver Mine 

Roads and Places of the Texas Revolution

Indulge in your passion for Texas history by using the following interactive map to examine roads and places that played important roles in early Texas.  Study the mission period during Spanish Colonial times, and learn about each location and its associated history.  See how the American colonists established towns and roads when Texas was a Mexican state.  Follow Sam Houston as he led his rag-tag “army” from Gonzales to San Jacinto in 1836; do likewise for the Mexican army as it swept across Texas in an attempt to forcibly quash the incipient revolution and punish the Texian colonists.  See where and learn about every significant battle that has taken place on Texas soil, from a major defeat of Apaches by Comanches in 1724, to the bloodiest single engagement in the Battle of Medina in 1813, to Gonzales, the Alamo, Goliad and San Jacinto, to the Civil War and the Red River War with the Comanches in 1874.

Click on the following two links to go to the interactive map, and a description and user guide.

Interactive map

Description and user guide

Caney Creek Camp Meetings

Organized religion among the American settlers in Mexican Texas began with itinerant preachers who organized group gatherings called camp meetings.  No churches had been built in this sparsely settled wilderness, and the only religion allowed by the government was Catholicism.  Most of the immigrants were Protestants, although in order to acquire land grants they had all professed allegiance to the state church.

The first camp meeting in Austin’s Colony took place in September of 1834, organized by Methodist preacher and Texas resident John Wesley Kenney, and itinerant Methodist preacher Henry Stephenson.  The site they chose for their meeting was near a reliable spring in northern Austin County on a tributary of Caney Creek that had been a routine camp site on the old Spanish Orcoquisac Road that supplied the presidio and mission complex of that name on the lower Trinity River from 1754 to 1771.  A year later a similar meeting was held in which William Barrett Travis participated in his last church service and communion before he left for his destiny at the Alamo.  From 1885 to 1917 these Caney Creek camp meetings were one of the largest and most important religious events in Texas.  Click on the link below to learn the whole story.

Caney Creek Camp Meetings 

The Atascosito Road

The Atascosito Road was one of the two main roads to Texas used by Americans responding to the colonization efforts of empresarios Stephen Austin and Green DeWitt.  It and the Coushatta Trace led directly to San Felipe, the colonial capitol, where newcomers were required to register their presence, thus placing their names in the queue for a land grant.  The eastern part of this important early road was blazed in 1754 as a supply line for the new Orcoquisac complex, a presidio and mission on the lower Trinity River.  The full length of the road was used extensively during the decade following the Louisiana Purchase, to supply a Spanish garrison on the Trinity called Atascosito.  During the Republic years portions of this road fell into disuse as other routes were developed to connect the new settlements.  Today only a few miles of the original road that ran from La Bahia to the Sabine River remain in use.   Click below to read about the Atascosito road.

The Atascosito Road.  

The Twin Sisters

     They are among our most revered icons of the Texas Revolution.  These two cannons, made in Cincinnati especially for use in the struggle for independence from Mexico, served admirably as Sam Houston's only artillery in the Battle of San Jacinto.  For over a century, Texas history advocates have heatedly debated the details of these cannons.  Were they iron or brass?   Were they 4-pounders or 6-pounders?  And what happened to them?  Were they buried at Harrisburg?  Extensive archival research in 2014 and 2015 has revealed information that indicates the likely answers to these questions.  They were iron 6-pounders, and in addition to San Jacinto, they fought in the last battle of the Civil War at Palmetto Ranch and were given to the Mexican army in Matamoros, but later returned to Fort Brown.

     The detailed story of the Twin Sisters, along with that of all of the other artillery used in 1836 by both sides, is included in my book titled Cannons of the Texas Revolution.   Click on the following link to learn the full story of the Twin Sisters.

The Twin Sisters