Arthur Pendleton Bagby
Hallettsville, Lavaca County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(May 17, 1833 - February 21, 1921) Star and Wreath Native Alabamian, last surviving member of West Point class of 1852, lawyer, colonel in 7th Texas Confederate Cavalry, participant in Sibley's New Mexico campaign, commanded volunteer land troops on board Confederate ship Neptune during Battle of Galveston, wounded and commended for role in engagement near Berwick Bay in Louisiana, led brigade at battles of Mansfield and Pleasant Hill in Louisiana, major-general in Confederate Army. Buried in city cemetery, Hallettsville. 1963
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Arthur Pendleton Bagby was an Alabama-born West Point graduate who cast his lot with the Confederacy, rising from colonel of the 7th Texas Cavalry to major-general. He rode in Sibley's ill-fated 1862 New Mexico campaign, helped defend Galveston, and led a brigade at the Louisiana battles of Mansfield and Pleasant Hill during the 1864 Red River Campaign. He lived to become the last surviving member of his 1852 West Point class and is buried at Hallettsville.
Why it matters
Bagby's career traces the Trans-Mississippi theater of the Civil War, the often-overlooked western fighting that decided the fate of Texas and the lower South.
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Related people
- · Arthur Pendleton Bagby
Related events
- · Sibley's New Mexico Campaign
- · Battle of Galveston
- · Battle of Mansfield
- · Battle of Pleasant Hill
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
City Cemetery
Hallettsville, TX
In 1889 the Hallettsville town council, worried about the poor state of its scattered graveyards, set out to establish a proper city cemetery, buying 4.5 acres from Antonia Kuhn the next year and reinterring existing burials there. Around it, the Odd Fellows, Catholic, and Jewish citizens laid out their own grounds, and a nearby tract became an African American cemetery—a patchwork mirroring the town's diverse population. Its headstones inscribed in Czech, German, and English, the cemetery counts Confederate Maj. Gen. Arthur Pendleton Bagby among its notable dead.
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