Enrique Esparza (September, 1824-December 20, 1917)

San Antonio, TX

This San Antonio cemetery traces its origin to the Battle of Medina of August 18, 1813, when a Republican Army of the North — Mexicans, Anglo-Americans, and Indians seeking to free Mexico from Spanish rule — was crushed by the Royalist army, and hundreds of the dead were interred here. A chapel built over the soldiers' burial crypt grew into the church of Nuestra Señora del Carmen, and the site became a community cemetery for the surrounding land-grant families. Among those later buried here are Alamo survivor Enrique Esparza and French immigrant naturalist Gustave Toudouze.

San Antonio, TX

When Major Benjamin Foulois scouted farmland south of San Antonio in 1917, he found the site that became Kelly Field, opened the day before the U.S. declared war on Germany. Named for the first military pilot killed in a crash, it trained aviators and mechanics for two world wars and taught fliers including Charles Lindbergh and Curtis LeMay. Through the Korean War, the Cold War, and Desert Storm it grew into San Antonio's largest employer before realigning in 2001.

San Antonio, TX

This marker honors a Vermont-born soldier who served in the army of the Republic of Texas from 1836 to 1837, the perilous first years of Texas independence. Like many volunteers who came from the Northern states, he stayed on after the fighting, and he lived in Texas until his death in 1876.

San Antonio, TX

Built in 1810 as a military barracks in San Antonio de Béxar, El Quartel became a flashpoint in the struggle over Spanish rule. Here in January 1811 Juan Bautista de las Casas raised forces to arrest the royal governor in Texas's first overthrow of Spanish authority, only for Juan Zambrano to muster a counter-revolt that restored the crown weeks later. The barracks were apparently destroyed during the Texas Revolution, when defenders chose instead to make their stand at the Alamo.