Anthony Drew Kennard
Roans Prairie, Grimes County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Served in the Army of Texas 1835 Born in Tennessee July 9, 1788 Died in 1848 His wife Sallie Moore Kennard Born in Tennessee September 16, 1790 Died December 6, 1877. Erected by the State of Texas 1936
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Anthony Drew Kennard, born in Tennessee in 1788, served in the Army of Texas in 1835 during the struggle for Texas independence, and lies buried here with his wife Sallie Moore Kennard. The State of Texas erected this marker in 1936, the centennial of the Republic, to honor his service. His grave ties this quiet Grimes County spot to the revolution that made Texas a nation.
Why it matters
The volunteers of the 1835–36 Texas Revolution won the independence that reshaped the map of North America, and grave markers like this one keep their individual sacrifices from fading into legend.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the 1820s and 1830s, Mexican Texas pulled in settlers from across the American South. Families from Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama and the Carolinas came for cheap, fertile land, and many arrived through the colonization contracts Mexico offered to people willing to farm its thinly settled northern frontier. The rolling prairies and timber of what is now Grimes County, between the Brazos and the Trinity, were part of that wave.
By 1835 relations between the settlers and the Mexican government had broken down. Arguments over political rights, the centralizing of power in Mexico City, trade and immigration, and slavery all fed the anger. That autumn the fighting began. Volunteers who often brought their own rifles and horses formed what was loosely called the Army of Texas, and they fought the opening battles of a revolution that ended with Texas independence in the spring of 1836.
After the war, the Republic of Texas lasted almost a decade before joining the United States in 1845. Those were the years when men who had answered the call in 1835 went back to farming, building churches and courthouses, and raising families in counties that were still new on the map.
A century later, Texans set out to remember them. For the 1936 Centennial the State of Texas paid for hundreds of markers and monuments across the state, many of them at the graves of veterans of the Revolution. This stone belongs to that statewide effort to make sure the founding generation was not forgotten.
People & events
Anthony Drew Kennard was born in Tennessee in the summer of 1788, while the United States was still ratifying its Constitution. Like so many Texas pioneers, he grew up in a young country that kept pushing west, and at some point he made the long journey from Tennessee to Texas. His wife, Sallie Moore Kennard, was also a Tennessean, born two years after him.
In 1835 Kennard served in the Army of Texas. That was the first year of the Revolution, when ordinary settlers left their fields to take up arms against the Mexican government's forces. The marker does not say which campaigns he took part in, and we should not guess. What we do know matters: he was already in his late forties, well past the age of most soldiers, when he chose to serve.
Kennard died in 1848, only a few years after Texas became a state. Sallie lived almost three decades longer and died in December 1877. She had been born when George Washington was president, and she lived to see Texas become an independent republic, join the Union, leave it during the Civil War, and come through Reconstruction. Her life is a whole chapter of Texas history in one person.
Their names together on this marker are a reminder that the Revolution belonged to families as well as soldiers. Behind every volunteer was a household that kept going while he was away, and that went on building a community long after the fighting ended.
Its place in the American story
The Texas Revolution changed the map of North America. The independent Republic it created was annexed by the United States in 1845. Annexation led to the U.S.-Mexican War, and that war ended with the United States taking a huge stretch of the Southwest. Few frontier conflicts reshaped a continent so quickly.
The Revolution was also part of a larger American story of migration. Southerners like the Kennards carried their farming practices, churches, laws and, often, the institution of slavery into Mexican territory. Historians still argue about how much each grievance drove the break with Mexico, and that debate is part of what makes the period worth understanding rather than just celebrating.
The 1936 Centennial markers are history in their own right. In the depths of the Great Depression, Texas spent public money to mark its founders' graves across the state. That says a lot about how Texans of the 1930s saw their past and wanted it remembered.
Standing at a grave like this one brings that big story down to human scale. The Revolution was not only fought by the famous names in the history books. It was also fought by middle-aged farmers from Tennessee who answered a call in 1835 and then went home to live out their lives on the prairie.
If you visit
Roans Prairie is a quiet corner of rural Grimes County, where open pasture runs into stands of oak and pine. Don't expect a busy historic district. This is a place for slowing down, and that suits a marker that honors a single life.
Look for the gray granite style of the 1936 Centennial markers, which you'll come to recognize all over Texas once you've seen a few. Read both sets of dates, his and Sallie's, and notice how long she outlived him. Please be respectful of the graves and of any nearby private property.
This stop fits naturally into a drive through the Brazos Valley, where the early history of Anglo-American Texas is close to the surface. Nearby counties hold more sites from the colonial and Revolutionary era, and you can easily spend a day following the story of how Texas became a republic.
Take a moment before you drive on. Many of the people who fought for Texas independence lie in small, out-of-the-way graves like this one, and visitors who stop to read their names are a big part of what keeps that history alive.
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
- · Anthony Drew Kennard
- · Sallie Moore Kennard
Related events
- · Texas Revolution
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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