City named for Confederate General General H.B. Granbury (1831-1864) and Granbury's Texas Brigade
Granbury, Hood County, Texas
Marker Inscription
A Mississippian. Came to Texas early 1850s. Lawyer in Waco, recruited Waco Guards, Confederate Army, 1861. Elected Major 7th Texas Infantry. Beat back Federals some miles, Fort Donelson, Tenn., Feb. 1862. Captured there, exchanged Aug. Colonel in Vicksburg campaign to prevent split of Confederacy along Mississippi River. Took 306 men into battle, lost 158. Chickamauga, Sept. 1863 severely wounded. Had brigade command Missionary Ridge. Promoted Brigadier General 1864. Led Granbury's Texas Brigade into Tennessee with Hood. Was one of 6 Confederate Generals killed at Franklin, Tenn. Buried in Granbury Cemetery. (Back of Gen. H.B. Granbury) Granbury's Texas Brigade Formed in Autumn 1863 from remnant of Deshler's Brigade. Texas units included 6th, 7th, 10th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 24th, 25th Infantry, with 3rd, 5th Confederate Regiments of Memphis. Nov. 1863 battles of Lookout Mountain, Missionary Ridge, Granbury's men repulsed Sherman's attacks repeatedly. C.S.A. Congress thanked unit for valor at Ringgold Gap at Kennesaw Mountain, this and fellow Brigade counted 700 enemy casualties at their front after one charge. In bayonet combat, yells in the dark from Granbury's men were sufficient to rout Federals. Before troops of equal number in open field the unit was unconquerable. Fought intrenched army, Franklin, Tenn. Battle. Flags flying, drums rolling, but with no cover Granbury's men ran forth on the double. Courage inspired by the leader named it forever: Granbury's Brigade. Erected by the State of Texas 1964
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The town of Granbury bears the name of Hiram B. Granbury, a Mississippi-born lawyer who came to Texas in the early 1850s and raised the Waco Guards for the Confederacy in 1861. He rose from major to brigadier general, was captured at Fort Donelson and severely wounded at Chickamauga, and led Granbury's Texas Brigade until he was among six Confederate generals killed at the Battle of Franklin, Tennessee, in 1864. The state erected this marker in 1964 to the general and the brigade that carried his name.
Why it matters
Granbury and his Texas brigade embody the heavy toll the Civil War took on the men of the far Confederacy, and how those losses were memorialized in the towns they left behind.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the early 1860s the United States had split in two, and Texas — admitted to the Union only fifteen years earlier — had cast its lot with the Confederacy. The state was far from the great eastern battlefields, but it sent its young men eastward by the thousands to fight in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Georgia, campaigns that would decide the war in the West.
The man this town is named for was part of a common frontier pattern: born elsewhere, drawn to Texas in its restless early years, and swept up in the conflict that defined his generation. A Mississippian by birth, he came to Texas in the early 1850s and built a life as a lawyer in Waco before the war remade everything.
The struggle for the Mississippi River and for the mountain gateways into the Deep South formed the backdrop of his service. Control of that river meant cutting the Confederacy in two; the campaigns around Chattanooga meant opening or closing the door to Georgia. These were the theaters where Texas soldiers, far from home, spent themselves.
People & events
Hiram B. Granbury raised a company known as the Waco Guards in 1861 and entered Confederate service, elected major of the 7th Texas Infantry. His war was a hard one from the start. At Fort Donelson in Tennessee in early 1862 his men pushed Federal troops back before the fort itself fell; captured there, he was exchanged that August and returned to the fight.
What followed reads like a catalogue of the war's costliest days. As a colonel in the Vicksburg campaign — the fight to keep the Confederacy from being severed along the Mississippi — he is recorded as taking 306 men into battle and losing 158, roughly half. At Chickamauga in September 1863 he was severely wounded. He held brigade command at Missionary Ridge and rose to brigadier general in 1864.
His name became permanently attached to the Texas brigade he led. Formed in the autumn of 1863 from the remnant of Deshler's Brigade, it gathered numerous Texas infantry regiments together with Confederate regiments from Memphis. The inscription remembers the unit's fierce reputation — repulsing assaults at Missionary Ridge, earning the thanks of the Confederate Congress for its stand at Ringgold Gap. That story ended at Franklin, Tennessee, in the closing months of 1864, a frontal assault against an entrenched enemy in which Granbury was one of six Confederate generals killed. He was brought back and buried in the town that carries his name.
Its place in the American story
The Battle of Franklin is remembered as one of the most terrible hours of the entire Civil War — a headlong attack across open ground that shattered an army and killed an extraordinary number of its commanders in a single afternoon. That a Texas general lies at the center of this town's memory because of that day says a great deal about how deeply the war reached into the far corners of the Confederacy.
Texas was distant from the fighting, yet its regiments bled in Tennessee and Mississippi alongside everyone else. The arithmetic on this marker — hundreds of men taken into a fight, half of them lost — is the arithmetic of the war in the West as a whole, repeated battle after battle.
The monument also belongs to a particular moment in American memory. It was erected by the State of Texas in 1964, during the war's centennial, when communities across the South were formally recording their Confederate dead. Reading it today means reading both the events of the 1860s and the way a later century chose to remember them.
If you visit
This is a courthouse-square kind of town, and a monument like this rewards standing and reading both sides — the general on one face, the brigade that took his name on the other. Take the time to read it slowly; the language is that of the 1960s honoring the 1860s, and the tone tells you something about both eras.
Because the general is buried in the town's cemetery, a visit here can naturally extend to his grave, where the local and the national threads of the story come together. If you are traveling with an eye for Civil War history, this stop connects a Texas town to distant battlefields — Fort Donelson, Vicksburg, Chickamauga, Franklin — whose names appear on the stone.
Approach it as history rather than cheerleading. The most honest way to stand before a Civil War monument is to hold the courage and the loss it records alongside the cause it served, and to let the sheer human cost — half a regiment lost in a day — sit with you. That reckoning is part of what these places are for.
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
- · Hiram B. Granbury
Related events
- · Battle of Franklin
- · Battle of Chickamauga
- · Battle of Fort Donelson
- · Battle of Missionary Ridge
Themes & tags
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Erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, this monument honors Brigadier General H.B. Granbury and the soldiers who served under him during the Civil War. Granbury, for whom the town is named, was a Texas-born Confederate officer who rose to brigade command before being killed in action in 1864. Monuments like this one, raised by the UDC in the decades after the war, shaped how Southern communities publicly remembered the Confederacy.
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