Andrew Jackson Montgomery
Stoneham, Grimes County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Born in Alabama in 1805. Came to Texas in 1830 with his brother John. Participated in the Battle of San Jacinto as a member of Captain James Gillaspie's Company. Erected by the State of Texas 1957 [supplemental plate: Born in Tennessee in 1801 Came to Texas in 1819]
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Andrew Jackson Montgomery came to Texas around 1830 and took his place in the fight for its independence, serving in Captain James Gillaspie's company at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836, the decisive victory that won the Republic of Texas its freedom. The marker, erected by the state in 1957, carries a supplemental plate offering differing dates for his birth and arrival, a reminder of how uncertain early frontier records could be.
Why it matters
Montgomery was one of the ordinary settler-soldiers whose service at San Jacinto secured Texas independence and set the stage for the region's eventual entry into the United States.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Andrew Jackson Montgomery's story unfolds in the turbulent years when Texas was passing out of Mexican hands and into its own brief life as a republic. In the 1820s and 1830s, thousands of settlers from the United States crossed into the Mexican province of Texas, drawn by cheap, abundant land. They came young, often as brothers or families, staking their futures on a frontier still being contested.
By the mid-1830s, tensions between these settlers and the Mexican government had hardened into open revolution. The fight for Texas independence in 1835 and 1836 was waged largely by volunteer companies — ordinary men who left their farms to take up arms, organized under captains rather than career officers. It was a settler's war, fought by the people who had only recently arrived to build lives in the region.
The area around present-day Grimes County, where this memorial stands, lay within that settlement frontier, the kind of country from which such volunteers were drawn into the decisive campaign of the revolution.
People & events
According to the marker, Andrew Jackson Montgomery was born in Alabama in 1805 and came to Texas in 1830 with his brother John — two young men joining the wave of newcomers to the province. When the revolution came, he took his place in it, serving in the company of Captain James Gillaspie at the Battle of San Jacinto.
San Jacinto, fought in the spring of 1836, was the battle that decided everything. It was there that the Texan army won the independence the revolution had been fighting for, and Andrew Jackson Montgomery was among the men in the ranks who made that victory possible.
The marker also carries a small honest complication: a supplemental plate gives a different birth year — 1801, in Tennessee rather than Alabama — and an earlier arrival in Texas, 1819. Rather than hide the discrepancy, the state left both versions standing. It's a candid acknowledgment that the records of frontier lives were often uncertain, assembled long after the fact from imperfect sources.
Its place in the American story
The victory that Andrew Jackson Montgomery shared in did more than end a single war. It created the Republic of Texas, an independent nation that would exist for nearly a decade before joining the United States — an annexation that reshaped the map of North America and helped set the stage for the great national dramas that followed.
His significance lies precisely in how ordinary he was. San Jacinto was not won by a professional army but by volunteer companies of settlers, men who had arrived only a few years earlier and who returned to their farms afterward. The American story of the western frontier is full of such people: not generals or presidents, but the rank-and-file whose collective service turned a rebellion into a republic.
That the state of Texas chose to erect a memorial to him in 1957, more than a century later, speaks to how much value a young nation and its successor state placed on remembering these founding soldiers by name — even when the details of their birth and arrival could no longer be pinned down with certainty.
If you visit
This is a memorial marker in the Grimes County countryside, so come for quiet reflection rather than a developed attraction. Standing before it, you're honoring one individual settler-soldier — a chance to make the sweeping story of Texas independence feel personal and human-sized.
Read the supplemental plate closely. The differing dates are not a flaw to be embarrassed about but part of what makes the marker interesting: you're looking at the honest limits of frontier record-keeping, where a single man's birth year and arrival could be remembered two different ways. It's a small lesson in how history is actually pieced together.
If you're touring the sites tied to the Texas Revolution, a marker like this one deepens the picture. The famous battlefields tell you where independence was won; a country memorial like this reminds you who won it — and that they came from places like this, and returned to them when the fighting was done.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Andrew Jackson Montgomery
- · John Montgomery
- · Capt. James Gillaspie
Related events
- · Battle of San Jacinto
Themes & tags
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Andrew Jackson Montgomery
Stoneham, TX
Andrew Jackson Montgomery came to Texas in 1819 with the ill-fated James Long Expedition and, by 1823, opened a trading post where two Indian trails crossed — becoming the first known settler in what is now Montgomery County. The town and county both grew from that post and took his family name. He later fought at the Battle of San Jacinto, married Mary Mahulda Farris, and raised nine children.
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A native of Alabama, John Montgomery came to Texas about 1830 with his brother Andrew and joined the struggle for independence. Like his brother he served in Captain James Gillaspie's company at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836, the battle that secured the Republic of Texas. The state placed this marker in 1957 to honor his part in that founding moment.
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