Andrew Ponton

🏛️The era

In the autumn of 1835, Texas was still part of Mexico, and relations between its Anglo-American colonists and the government in Mexico City were fraying fast. Mexico's leaders were pulling power back toward the center, and many colonists felt their promised local self-government was slipping away. Arguments over troops, customs duties, and political authority had been building for months.

Gonzales was the heart of Green DeWitt's colony, a small settlement on the Guadalupe River at the western edge of Anglo settlement. Life there was exposed and hard. Years earlier, Mexican authorities had lent the town a small cannon so it could defend itself against raids. That was an ordinary frontier arrangement, and it was about to become a symbol.

In 1835 Mexican officials asked for the cannon back. To the colonists, the demand looked less like the recall of a piece of hardware and more like disarmament at a dangerous moment. A town official's reply suddenly mattered well beyond one small river town.

👥People & events

Andrew Ponton was Gonzales's alcalde, an office that combined the roles of mayor and local magistrate under the Mexican system. When the demand for the cannon arrived, he was the one who had to answer it. On September 26, 1835, he wrote the reply the marker remembers: the colonists would not simply hand over the gun.

His letter did what the community needed at that moment. It declined to comply and bought time. While Mexican soldiers waited, word spread to nearby settlements, and armed volunteers began riding toward Gonzales. A small cannon had turned into a test of whether the colonists would stand their ground.

On October 2, 1835, the two sides met near Gonzales. The Texans had hauled out the very cannon in dispute and flew a homemade banner showing it under the words 'Come and Take It.' The skirmish was brief and casualties were few, but the Mexican troops withdrew without the gun.

The marker says Ponton did more than write the letter: he was among the defenders that day. A man who had put the town's refusal on paper then stood in the field to back it up.

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

The fight at Gonzales is widely remembered as the first shot of the Texas Revolution. Within months came the siege of Béxar, the Alamo, and San Jacinto, and then an independent Republic of Texas. Ponton's letter sits at the very start of that chain.

The episode is often called the 'Lexington of Texas,' and the comparison fits. In both places, a local community would not give up its arms, and a small clash became the opening of a revolution. It is a pattern that runs deep in American history: ordinary local officials making decisions whose weight they could not have fully known.

The Republic of Texas later joined the United States, and that annexation helped set off the U.S.–Mexican War and reshaped the map of the continent. It is a long road from one alcalde's reply to all of that, but the road does start here.

🧭If you visit

Gonzales has not forgotten its role, and the 'Come and Take It' spirit shows up all over town. As you stand at Ponton's memorial, picture a frontier community of a few hundred people deciding, very quickly, how far it was willing to go.

This marker pairs naturally with the town's other Texas Revolution sites. Together they let you follow the story from the demand for the cannon to the clash itself. Take time to look at how the town tells its own origin story. Few places in America are so closely tied to a single moment.

Gonzales also makes a good stop on a wider Texas Revolution road trip. From here you can head toward San Antonio and the Alamo, and later toward the San Jacinto battleground near Houston. You would be tracing the war from its first shot to its last.