Elisha Clapp
Crockett, Houston County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The son of a veteran of the American Revolution, Elisha Clapp was born in Tennessee and came to Texas in 1822. He served in the army at San Jacinto in a cavalry company during the Texas revolution. He was in charge of a company of mounted rangers near his home on Mustang Prairie in 1836, and in 1837 was among the petitioners for the organization of Houston County. President Sam Houston nominated Clapp for a commission as captain and appointment to the command of the ranger company at Nacogdoches County in 1837. Clapp later returned to Houston County, where he helped to organize and became one of the first trustees of Trinity College in the Alabama community in 1841. Clapp and his family moved to Leon County by 1849. He died in 1851. (2000)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The son of an American Revolution veteran, Tennessee-born Elisha Clapp came to Texas in 1822 and served in a cavalry company at the Battle of San Jacinto during the Texas Revolution. He captained mounted rangers on the frontier and, in 1837, was among the petitioners who organized Houston County, later receiving a captain's commission from President Sam Houston. He also helped found and served as an early trustee of Trinity College in the Alabama community before moving on to Leon County, where he died in 1851.
Why it matters
Clapp's life traces the founding generation of Anglo Texas—from the fight for independence to the building of counties, ranger companies, and schools on the new republic's frontier.
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Related people
- · Elisha Clapp
- · Sam Houston
Related events
- · Battle of San Jacinto
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Captain Elisha Clapp
Houston County, TX
Elisha Clapp came to Texas in 1822, among the earliest Anglo-American settlers, and fought in the Battle of San Jacinto that won Texas its independence in 1836. He went on to serve as a captain in the Texas Army during the young republic's fragile early years. He died in 1856; his wife, Rebecca Robbins Clapp, outlived him until 1875.
Collin Aldrich
Austonio, TX
Collin Aldrich, born in 1801, fought at the Battle of San Jacinto in the war that won Texas its independence, then served as the first chief justice of Houston County from 1837 to 1841 under the Republic of Texas. He died in 1842, and the State of Texas erected this memorial to him in 1936, the centennial of independence. His life bridged the battlefield and the founding of civil government on the Texas frontier.
Bynum Cemetery
Crockett, TX
When Stephen and Keziah Box brought their family from Alabama to Mexican Texas in 1826, they were among the first Anglo settlers of what would become Houston County, and the acreage they set aside for their dead became one of the region's oldest burial grounds. The earliest grave belongs to their daughter Dicy, wife of a veteran of the 1836 Battle of San Jacinto, and the cemetery later passed to James Bynum, who gave it his name. Generations of the family kept it, and its rows hold veterans of every American war from the Civil War through Korea.
Homesite of Samuel Cartmill Hiroms
Austinio, TX
Samuel Cartmill Hiroms was born in 1836 to parents among Stephen F. Austin's 'Old Three Hundred,' the first Anglo-American colonists of Mexican Texas. A schoolteacher and county surveyor, he served in the Confederate Army before moving his family to Houston County and settling the Creek community — later Austinio — in 1878, where he received land for his teaching and helped lead the local Methodist church.