At the Forks of the Agua Dulce
Banquete, Nueces County, Texas
Marker Inscription
At the forks of the Agua Dulce fifteen miles southwest of San Patricio fell Dr. James Grant, Major Robert C. Morris, Captain Thomas Lewellen, Dr. Charles P. Heartt, Stephen Dennison, J.T. Howard, Joseph Smith Johnston, H. Obed Marshall, John C. McLanglin, J.W. Wentworth, Stephen Winship, and two or three other Texan volunteers who were killed in a running fight with General Jose Urrea's Mexican Cavalry March 2, 1836. Erected by the State of Texas 1936
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In the opening weeks of the Texas Revolution, a party of Texan volunteers under Dr. James Grant was caught by General José Urrea's Mexican cavalry near the forks of the Agua Dulce on March 2, 1836. Grant, Major Robert C. Morris and roughly a dozen others were killed in a running fight across the coastal brush country southwest of San Patricio. The State of Texas raised this marker in 1936 to name the fallen on the revolution's centennial.
Why it matters
The skirmish was part of the bloody southern campaign that, alongside the Alamo and Goliad, steeled Texan resolve in the fight for independence that reshaped the map of North America.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the winter and early spring of 1836, Texas was in open revolt against the government of Mexico, and the coastal brush country south of San Patricio was one of the war's most dangerous corners. This is flat, thorny, sun-scoured land laced with creeks like the Agua Dulce — good country to be ambushed in, and hard country to flee across.
The rebellion was young and disorganized. Bands of volunteers, many of them recent arrivals to Texas, moved through the region with grand ambitions and thin coordination. One such ambition was a planned strike southward toward Matamoros on the Rio Grande, a venture that drew adventurous men down into exactly the exposed borderlands where the Mexican army was strongest.
Against them advanced one of Mexico's most capable field commanders, General José Urrea, sweeping up the coast with a fast-moving column of cavalry. In the opening days of March 1836, Urrea's advance turned this quiet stretch of the plains into a killing ground, catching scattered Texan parties before they could concentrate or escape.
People & events
The men named on this marker were caught at the forks of the Agua Dulce, about fifteen miles southwest of San Patricio, on March 2, 1836. Their leader was Dr. James Grant, a physician and land speculator who had thrown himself into the revolution's southern campaign. With him fell Major Robert C. Morris and Captain Thomas Lewellen, the officers of the party.
The rest of the roll is a cross-section of the volunteers who fought and died in these early skirmishes: Dr. Charles P. Heartt, Stephen Dennison, J.T. Howard, Joseph Smith Johnston, H. Obed Marshall, John C. McLanglin, J.W. Wentworth, Stephen Winship, and two or three others whose names the record does not preserve. They were killed in what the marker calls a running fight — not a set-piece battle but a pursuit, Urrea's cavalry overtaking men on the open ground.
A quiet chance of the calendar gives the day its weight. On that very same March 2, 1836, far to the northeast at Washington-on-the-Brazos, delegates were signing the Texas Declaration of Independence. As the new nation was being written into existence on paper, these men were dying for it in the coastal brush, almost certainly without ever knowing the declaration had been made.
Its place in the American story
The fight at Agua Dulce Creek belongs to a string of disasters that defined the revolution's darkest weeks. It came just days after a clash at San Patricio and only a few days before the fall of the Alamo on March 6, and it foreshadowed the far larger catastrophe at Goliad later in March. Together these blows nearly extinguished the rebellion in its cradle.
Yet defeat has a strange power in the story a people tells about itself. The men lost in Urrea's coastal campaign, like the defenders of the Alamo, became part of the roll of the fallen that hardened Texan resolve rather than breaking it. The war that ran through this creek bottom would end that spring at San Jacinto, and its outcome reshaped the map of North America — detaching a vast territory from Mexico and setting in motion the events that carried the United States to the Pacific.
That larger consequence is why a skirmish involving a dozen men still merits a stone. The independence of Texas was not won in a single famous stand; it was paid for in scattered, half-forgotten fights like this one, across country most travelers now cross without a second thought.
If you visit
This is battlefield ground, but don't expect the drama of a fortress or a monument park. What you'll find is the land itself — low, open coastal plain cut by the forks of a modest creek. Stand and look at how few features there are to hide behind, and the phrase running fight will suddenly make grim sense. This was a place where mounted pursuers held every advantage.
Give the marker's list of names the time it asks for. This plaque exists chiefly to do one thing: to keep a dozen men from vanishing entirely from memory. Reading the roll aloud is the whole point of stopping here — most of these men have no other monument anywhere.
The marker was raised by the State of Texas in 1936, on the hundredth anniversary of the revolution, part of a great wave of centennial markers that fixed the state's founding story onto its landscape. If you're tracing that revolutionary history on a road trip through South Texas, this is one of its quieter, more sobering stops — a reminder that independence was declared in a hall far away, but bought on ground exactly like this.
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
- · James Grant
- · Robert C. Morris
- · José Urrea
Related events
- · Battle of Agua Dulce Creek
- · Texas Revolution
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Battle of Agua Dulce
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In the winter of 1835–36, as Texas fought for independence from Mexico, a freelance expedition led by Dr. James Grant and Frances W. Johnson set out to seize Matamoros — a scheme Sam Houston distrusted and that bled away recruits before it reached the Nueces. General José de Urrea's cavalry ran the scattered volunteers down, overwhelming Johnson's camp at San Patricio and then surprising Grant's horse-hunting party at Agua Dulce Creek. The clash fell on March 2, 1836 — the very day delegates at Washington-on-the-Brazos signed the Texas Declaration of Independence.
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