Addison Litton
Cedar Creek, Bastrop County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Star and Wreath Came to Texas in 1827. Served in the Army of Texas, 1836. Member of Captain Gibson Kuykendall's company at Harrisburg. Died in Bastrop County in 1847. Erected by the State of Texas, 1956
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Addison Litton arrived in Texas in 1827, in the years when Anglo colonists were streaming into the Mexican province. When revolution came he served in the Army of Texas in 1836 as a member of Captain Gibson Kuykendall's company at Harrisburg during the campaign that won independence. He lived out his remaining years in Bastrop County, where he died in 1847, and the state later marked his grave with the Republic's star and wreath.
Why it matters
Litton was one of the ordinary volunteers whose service in the Texas Revolution turned a Mexican province into an independent republic, a foundational chapter in the American Southwest.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In 1827, when Addison Litton came to Texas, the land was still a far northern province of Mexico. Just a few years earlier, Stephen F. Austin had begun settling Anglo-American families along the rivers of the coastal plain under contracts with the Mexican government, and a steady stream of newcomers from the United States followed. They came for cheap, fertile land, and they arrived as colonists and citizens of Mexico, not yet as Texans in any national sense.
Bastrop County sits in that early colonial heartland, along the Colorado River on the frontier road that linked the interior settlements. It was a country of blackland prairie and cedar breaks, thinly populated and far from any government that could protect it. Settlers built cabins, cleared fields, and lived with the constant uncertainty of a border region where Mexican authority was distant and often contested.
By the mid-1830s that uncertainty had hardened into crisis. Disputes over centralized power, immigration, and self-government pushed the Anglo colonists and their Tejano allies toward open revolt. A man who had already spent nearly a decade putting down roots in the province would have watched, and then been swept into, the war that turned Mexican Texas into something new.
People & events
Addison Litton's story is told in only a few lines, but each one marks a turning point. He reached Texas in 1827, one of the colonists of the founding generation, and by 1836 he had taken up arms in the Army of Texas during the revolution.
The marker places him in Captain Gibson Kuykendall's company at Harrisburg. Harrisburg, on Buffalo Bayou near present-day Houston, was a critical point in the 1836 campaign—the young Texas government paused there as it fell back ahead of the advancing Mexican army, and the town was burned during those tense weeks. To serve there in that spring was to be part of the decisive campaign, the one that ended in independence.
Litton survived the war and lived on in Bastrop County for another decade, dying in 1847—by then a citizen of the Republic of Texas he had helped bring into being, and soon after, of a Texas newly joined to the United States. In 1956 the state marked his grave with its star and wreath, the emblem it reserves for those who served the Republic in its founding struggle.
Its place in the American story
The Texas Revolution is often told through its famous set pieces and larger-than-life figures, but it was won by ordinary volunteers—farmers and settlers who left their fields to fill the ranks of companies like Kuykendall's. Addison Litton was one of them, and his life traces the whole arc: colonist under Mexico, soldier of the revolution, citizen of an independent republic.
That republic did not stay independent for long. Within a decade Texas joined the United States, and its annexation helped ignite the war with Mexico that carried the American flag to the Pacific. The independence Litton and his comrades secured in 1836 was the first link in a chain that reshaped the map of the continent and the future of the American Southwest.
His grave is a reminder that national history is built from individual service. The names on such markers are not generals; they are the rank and file whose collective effort decided the outcome, and whose ordinary lives afterward filled in the new country they had made.
If you visit
This is a memorial and a grave, not a museum, so come for quiet reflection rather than exhibits. Look for the star-and-wreath emblem the State of Texas placed here in 1956—it is the state's way of saluting a veteran of the Republic, and spotting it is part of the point of the visit.
Take in the surroundings. Cedar Creek and the wider Bastrop County countryside still carry the feel of the early frontier settlements, a landscape of gentle hills, oak and cedar, and open sky. Standing here, it is easy to picture the thinly settled province a colonist would have known in the 1820s and 1830s.
On a road trip through Central Texas, a stop like this pairs naturally with the region's other revolution-era and Republic sites. It rewards travelers who like their history in the specific and the personal—one man, one company, one campaign—rather than only in the grand sweep.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Addison Litton
- · Gibson Kuykendall
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Samuel Wolfenberger
Rockne, TX
Samuel Wolfenberger came to Texas in 1831, while it was still part of Mexico, as one of Stephen F. Austin's colonists, and received a Spanish league of land — some 4,444 acres — in this area. When revolution came he took up arms, joining the storming of Bexar in 1835 and riding with Robert Coleman's Rangers in 1836. He settled at Bastrop, helped campaign to make it capital of the young Republic, and served as a town official before his death in 1860.
Samuel Wolfenberger
Rockne, TX
Samuel Wolfenberger came to Texas from Virginia in 1831, arriving as Anglo colonists and Mexican authorities edged toward open conflict. He fought under Lt. W. J. Russell at the 1832 clash at Velasco, took part in the 1835 storming and capture of Bexar, and served in Colonel Robert M. Coleman's Rangers during the 1836 revolution. His grave and that of his wife Caroline were marked by the State of Texas in 1956.
Martin Walker
Bastrop, TX
Martin Walker enlisted from the Mina district — the early name for the Bastrop area — and fought in the Texas War for Independence in 1836. The State of Texas placed this 'Star and Wreath' marker in 1962 to commemorate his role among the volunteers who secured the Republic.
Thomas Osborn
Red Rock, TX
Thomas Osborn was one of the settlers-turned-soldiers who took up arms in the Texas Revolution of 1835–1836, the uprising that severed Mexican Texas from Mexico. The battles named here trace the war's arc: the early clash at Gonzales and the fight at Velasco, the grinding Siege of Bexar that drove Mexican forces from San Antonio, and the disastrous defeat at Coleto that led to the Goliad massacre. Texas erected the marker in 1962 to honor a veteran of that founding struggle.