Dr. George Moffit Patrick
Austin, Travis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
A volunteer at Anahuac, 1832 Member of the Consultation, 1835 Commander of the Schooner "Flash" 1836 Most Worshipful Grand Master Grand (Masonic) Lodge of Texas, 1848-49 Born in Virginia, September 30, 1801 Died in Grimes County, Texas June 28, 1889 His Wife Martha Scaife Patrick Born in England in 1813 Died in Grimes County, Texas September 26, 1855 Erected by the State of Texas 1936
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
George Moffit Patrick joined the Texan cause early, standing among the volunteers at Anahuac in 1832 and serving in the 1835 Consultation before commanding the schooner Flash in 1836. Virginia-born, he later led Texas Freemasonry as grand master and died in Grimes County in 1889.
Why it matters
His service spans the agitation, convention, and naval defense of the Texas Revolution, the many-sided effort that won independence.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
George Moffit Patrick's life tracked the entire arc of Texas's fight to become its own nation. He was born in Virginia in 1801, part of the great wave of settlers from the American South who poured into Mexican Texas in the 1820s and early 1830s, drawn by cheap land and open country.
Those newcomers arrived as citizens of Mexico, but tension built quickly — over taxes, customs enforcement, self-government, and the reach of a distant central authority. By the early 1830s, that friction was turning into open resistance in the Anglo-American settlements along the coast.
Patrick stepped into that current early. His wife, Martha Scaife Patrick, was born in England in 1813 — a reminder that the people building lives on this frontier came from far-flung origins, crossing an ocean and then a continent to end up in a young and unsettled land.
People & events
The marker traces Patrick's service like a timeline of the revolution itself. In 1832 he was among the volunteers at Anahuac, a coastal disturbance over the heavy-handed rule of a local commander and the enforcement of customs duties — one of the earliest flashpoints of Anglo-Texan resistance, years before the war proper.
In 1835 he served in the Consultation, the convention where Texas leaders debated and organized their break from Mexican authority. Then, in 1836, he commanded the schooner Flash. Texas had almost no navy, and small vessels like this were pressed into vital service during the chaos of the revolution's climax, when the fledgling government and fleeing families were scrambling along the coast.
His life after independence was long and full. He rose to lead Texas Freemasonry as its Grand Master in 1848–49 — a mark of standing in a society that leaned heavily on fraternal bonds. He died in Grimes County in 1889, having outlived his wife Martha by more than thirty years; she died there in 1855.
Its place in the American story
We tend to remember revolutions through their battles, but they are won as much by the men who agitate, organize, and supply as by those who fire the shots. Patrick's résumé is a portrait of exactly that many-sided effort: protest at Anahuac, politics in the Consultation, and service at sea aboard the Flash.
That spread matters to the larger American story, because Texas independence set in motion events that reshaped the continent — the birth of the Republic of Texas, its later annexation, and the westward expansion of the United States that followed.
Patrick reminds us that the people who built that outcome were not professional soldiers or statesmen but volunteers and citizens who kept showing up, in one role after another, across years of uncertainty.
If you visit
This memorial stands on the grounds of the Texas State Cemetery in Austin, where the state has gathered and honored the figures of its founding generation. Markers like this one — erected by the State of Texas in 1936, the centennial of independence — were part of a deliberate effort to fix these lives in public memory.
Walk the grounds and you feel the intent of the place: rows of names, dates, and terse summaries of service, each one a whole life compressed to a few lines. Patrick's marker names his revolutionary roles, his leadership in Freemasonry, and, tellingly, his wife Martha beside him.
Come for the quiet more than the spectacle. This is a place to slow down and read carefully. The dates alone — Virginia in 1801, Grimes County in 1889 — trace a man who arrived in a Mexican borderland and lived long enough to grow old in a very different Texas.
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
- · George Moffit Patrick
- · Martha Scaife Patrick
Themes & tags
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