Col. Lewis Miles Hobbs Washington
Austin, Travis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(Dec. 2, 1813 - Feb. 1857) Georgia native Lewis Washington came to Texas about 1835 and joined the Revolutionary forces at San Antonio. A member of Col. Fannin's staff, he served with the Georgia Battalion at Refugio and Goliad. He was appointed to an office in Sam Houston's presidential administration during the days of the Republic. Washington was killed in Nicaragua while in Central America as a news reporter. His body was not receovered, but his wife, Rebecca, is buried here. Recorded - 1983
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Georgia native Lewis Washington came to Texas around 1835 and joined the revolutionary forces at San Antonio, serving on Colonel Fannin's staff with the Georgia Battalion at Refugio and Goliad. He held an office in Sam Houston's administration during the days of the Republic of Texas. Years later he was killed in Nicaragua while working as a news reporter in Central America; his body was never recovered, though his wife Rebecca is buried here.
Why it matters
Washington's story links the fight for Texas independence to the restless mid-century adventurism that carried Americans—and their conflicts—into Latin America.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Lewis Washington arrived in Texas around 1835, at the very moment the region tipped into revolution. Anglo-American settlers and their allies were breaking with the Mexican government, and by the mid-1830s that quarrel was turning into open war for independence.
San Antonio, where Washington joined the revolutionary forces, was a focal point of the fighting — a place fought over more than once as both sides struggled for control of Texas. Volunteers were streaming in, many of them young men from the United States drawn by the cause, by land, and by the sheer pull of adventure on a distant frontier.
The war would prove short, brutal, and decisive. Out of it came the Republic of Texas, an independent nation that had to build a government almost overnight — and that would need men who had fought for it to help run it in peace.
People & events
Born in Georgia in 1813, Washington threw himself into the revolution as a member of Colonel James Fannin's staff. He served with the Georgia Battalion — one of the volunteer units raised in the United States — at Refugio and at Goliad, names that loom large and tragic in the story of Texas independence. Fannin's command at Goliad met a famous and terrible fate during the war, and these places are remembered with sorrow in Texas history.
Washington survived to serve the nation he had helped win. During the days of the Republic he was appointed to an office in the administration of Sam Houston, the revolution's great commander and the young country's foremost leader. That put him among the small circle of men staffing an entirely new government.
His life ended far from Texas and far from where you might expect. Washington was killed in Nicaragua while in Central America working as a news reporter. His body was never recovered. What this Austin memorial marks is not his grave but his wife Rebecca's, who is buried here.
Its place in the American story
Washington's life ties together two great currents of nineteenth-century American history. The first is the fight for Texas independence, a war that reshaped the map of North America and set the stage for Texas to enter the United States. Volunteers like him, crossing from other states to join the struggle, show how deeply that cause reached into the wider country.
The second current carried him to his death. In the middle decades of the century, restless Americans pushed south into Latin America — as settlers, adventurers, journalists, and armed expeditioners. Nicaragua in particular became a magnet for that turbulent, often reckless energy, and it drew in men who had cut their teeth in earlier conflicts.
That a veteran of the Texas Revolution should die in Central America as a reporter captures something essential about his generation: the same drive that pulled Americans into Texas kept pulling them onward, into new lands and new conflicts, long after the first fight was won.
If you visit
This is a memorial, not a battlefield, and knowing that changes how you stand before it. The man it honors lies somewhere unrecovered, far to the south; what rests here is his wife Rebecca. The stone speaks to absence as much as to memory.
Let yourself feel the distance built into this quiet Austin spot. A Georgia-born volunteer, a veteran of the revolution that made Texas, is commemorated on ground that holds his spouse while his own remains were lost in Nicaragua. Few markers carry that much geography and that much longing in so few lines.
If you are threading together the sites of the Texas Revolution on a road trip, this memorial is a fitting, contemplative stop. It reminds you that the people who won independence were not statues — they had families, they scattered across the world, and their stories often ended somewhere no one planned.
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
- · Lewis Miles Hobbs Washington
- · James Fannin
- · Sam Houston
Related events
- · Texas Revolution
Themes & tags
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