Andrew Ponton
Gonzales, Gonzales County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Born in Virginia to William and Isabella (Mooreland) Ponton, Andrew Ponton came to Texas in December 1829 and settled in Green DeWitt's Colony, receiving a land grant near Hallettsville. He became active in area politics, and in 1834 he was named alcalde, or mayor, of the municipality of Gonzales. The following year, after the community began to experience political unrest as a result of differences with the Mexican government, the community formed a Committee on Safety and appointed Ponton as a member. As the local leader, he was actively involved in what became known as the Battle of Gonzales, or the "Come and Take It" incident. His reluctance to turn over a cannon to Mexican forces, while the community gathered reinforcements, led to the incident, considered an opening event in the Texas Revolution. Ponton was also responsible for gathering Gonzales soldiers to answer the call by Col. William B. Travis for help in defending the Alamo. The men, known as the Immortal 32, went to aid Texan forces in San Antonio and lost their lives in the 1836 battle. After the revolution, Ponton served as the county's Chief Justice and was later elected to the Republic of Texas Congress. He wed Mary Berry in 1841 and in 1846 became Chief Justice for newly formed Lavaca County. The couple lived near Hallettsville, where they reared four sons: William, briefly assigned to Whitfield's Legion during the Civil War; Andrew, who served in Terry's Texas Rangers; Thomas, an attorney for many years in Gonzales; and Samuel, who died as a child. Ponton died in 1850 and is though to be buried on a farm north of Hallettsville. A Centennial marker in Gonzales' Masonic Cemetery honors his contributions to the Republic of Texas. (2004)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Andrew Ponton came to Texas in 1829, settled in Green DeWitt's colony, and by 1834 served as alcalde—mayor—of Gonzales. When Mexican forces demanded the town's cannon in 1835, his delay in surrendering it helped spark the "Come and Take It" fight now remembered as the opening battle of the Texas Revolution. He also helped rally the Gonzales men, the "Immortal 32," who answered Travis's call and died at the Alamo, and he later served the Republic of Texas as a legislator and judge.
Why it matters
Ponton stood at the flashpoint of the Texas Revolution, embodying the local self-governance and defiance that turned an Anglo colonist community into the birthplace of a new republic.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the 1820s and 1830s, the wide grasslands of south-central Texas were a borderland in the fullest sense. Mexico had won independence from Spain in 1821 and, eager to populate its far northern frontier, invited American empresarios to bring settlers. Green DeWitt received one such contract, and his colony took root along the Guadalupe River, with the little town of Gonzales as its heart. The families who came were promised land and a fresh start; in exchange they became Mexican citizens, at least on paper.
By the mid-1830s that bargain was fraying. Settlers chafed against a government far to the south that was growing more centralized under Antonio López de Santa Anna, and cultural and political differences hardened into open distrust. Frontier towns organized "Committees of Safety" to coordinate their response — part militia, part town council, part rumor mill.
Into this charged moment stepped Andrew Ponton, a Virginia-born colonist who had come to Texas in 1829 and, by 1834, held the office of alcalde — a Spanish-Mexican post blending the duties of mayor and local judge. When crisis came, leadership fell to men like him not because they sought glory, but because they held the offices the community already trusted.
People & events
The spark was almost comically small: a single small cannon. Years earlier, Mexican authorities had given Gonzales a bronze cannon to fend off raids. In the autumn of 1835, with tensions high, those same authorities sent soldiers to take it back. What they met instead was delay — and defiance.
As alcalde, Ponton is remembered for his reluctance to simply hand the gun over. His stalling bought the town precious time to gather reinforcements from the surrounding country. When enough men had assembled, the townsfolk reportedly hoisted a homemade banner bearing a cannon and the taunt "Come and Take It." The skirmish that followed on the prairie was brief and nearly bloodless, but its meaning was enormous: it is remembered as the opening battle of the Texas Revolution.
Ponton's role did not end there. When Colonel William B. Travis sent out his desperate plea for reinforcements at the Alamo, it was Ponton who helped rally the Gonzales men who answered. That band — remembered as the "Immortal 32" — slipped into the besieged mission in San Antonio and died there in the 1836 battle. Ponton lived on to serve the young Republic he had helped call into being, as a county chief justice and a member of the Republic of Texas Congress, later marrying Mary Berry and raising a family near Hallettsville.
Its place in the American story
The story told here is really the story of how a nation can begin with an act of stubbornness rather than a grand declaration. The "Come and Take It" incident has become American shorthand for grassroots defiance — the moment ordinary settlers decided a government could not simply disarm them.
What makes Ponton's part so telling is that he was not a general or a firebrand orator. He was a local officeholder doing a local job. The Texas Revolution, and by extension the larger American saga of westward expansion, was carried forward by exactly this kind of person: colonists who governed their own affairs, organized their own defense, and, when pushed, refused to yield.
The men of Gonzales who died at the Alamo tie this quiet prairie town to one of the most enduring rallying cries in American memory. "Remember the Alamo" was, in part, a promise made over their graves. Ponton stood at both ends of that arc — the fight that started the revolution and the sacrifice that steeled it.
If you visit
Gonzales wears its nickname — "The Lexington of Texas" — with quiet pride, and a memorial marker like this one invites you to slow down and picture the town as it was: a scatter of cabins on the Guadalupe, a community that decided its small cannon was worth standing behind.
Read the marker with an eye for the human scale of it. This was not a battlefield of massed armies but a frontier settlement where the mayor's decision to stall changed history. Look for the way the text carries Ponton from that single autumn standoff all the way through his later service to the Republic and the lives of his sons.
If you're building a road trip around the Texas Revolution, Gonzales is the natural starting point — the beginning of a thread that runs on to San Antonio and the Alamo. Give yourself a few unhurried minutes here first. Knowing that the men who answered Travis's call marched out from this very ground makes the rest of the journey land harder.
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
- · Andrew Ponton
- · William B. Travis
- · Mary Berry
Related events
- · Battle of Gonzales
- · Come and Take It
- · Fall of the Alamo
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Plaza
Gonzales, TX
When Gonzales was laid out as a four-league town tract, its inner city held 49 squares, seven of them reserved for public use. This particular square was meant for a municipal building but instead became a public plaza. Today it bears the name Texas Heroes Square, honoring the men of Gonzales who took up arms in the Texas Revolution.
James W. Robinson
Gonzales, TX
Indiana-born James W. Robinson came to Texas in 1833 and was elected the Republic's first lieutenant governor in 1835, briefly serving as governor before shouldering a musket as a private at the Battle of San Jacinto in April 1836. He later settled in Gonzales, sat as a district judge, and served on the state Supreme Court. The office he first held became the second-highest in Texas, wielding broad power over the Senate and legislation.
Gonzales Cannon Burial Site
Gonzales, TX
At this spot in a peach orchard, the colonists of Gonzales buried their contested cannon to hide it from 150 Mexican dragoons sent to seize it in September 1835. Two days later they dug it up, mounted it on ox-cart wheels, loaded it with chains and scrap iron, and fired what is remembered as the first shot of the Texas Revolution.
Jail Square
Gonzales, TX
First mapped in 1825 as Market Square, this Gonzales public square had become known as Jail Square by 1836. That year, as Santa Anna's army advanced, Gonzales was burned by order of General Sam Houston to keep its buildings and supplies from falling into enemy hands—part of the desperate retreat known as the Runaway Scrape. Gonzales, already famed as the site of the war's opening 'Come and Take It' clash, thus sacrificed itself in the campaign for independence.