Five Signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence from Red River County
Clarksville, Red River County, Texas
Marker Inscription
On March 2, 1836, members of the Convention of 1836 signed the Texas Declaration of Independence at Washington-on-the-Brazos, declaring Texas independent from Mexico. Of the 59 signers, five were from Red River County, more than from any of the other old Spanish-Mexican districts or the new Republic of Texas counties. The five signers were Richard Ellis, Robert Hamilton, Albert Hamilton Latimer, Samuel Price Carson and Collin McKinney. Richard Ellis (1781-1846) was born in Virginia and moved to Pecan Point on the Red River by 1834, establishing a plantation. He was President of the Convention of 1836 and served two terms as Senator (1836-40) of the Republic of Texas. Robert Hamilton (1783-1843) immigrated from Scotland to North Carolina in 1807. He fought in the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812 and came to Texas in 1834, settling on Pecan Bayou near Lagrange (later Madras). In 1836, he became Chief Justice of Red River County. Albert Hamilton Latimer (c. 1800-1877) settled near Pecan Point in 1833 and served two terms (1840-42) as Representative for Red River County. A Unionist, Latimer was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1866, and was appointed State Comptroller (1857) and Associate Justice of the Texas Supreme Court (1869). Samuel Price Carson (1798-1838) served as a state and U.S. Representative for North Carolina before coming to Texas. He was elected Secretary of State for the Texas ad interim government. Collin McKinney (1766-1861) was born in New Jersey. He served three terms (1836-38, 1839-40) as a Texas State Representative. Both Collin County and the City of McKinney are named for him. Today, these Red River County pioneers continue to be remembered as leading figures in Texas Independence. (2009)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
On March 2, 1836, delegates at Washington-on-the-Brazos signed the Texas Declaration of Independence, breaking from Mexico. Of the fifty-nine signers, five came from Red River County — Richard Ellis, who presided over the convention, Robert Hamilton, Albert Hamilton Latimer, Samuel Price Carson, and Collin McKinney — more than from any other old district. These men went on to shape the government of the young Republic, and one, McKinney, lent his name to both a county and a city.
Why it matters
It records the founding moment of the Republic of Texas and the outsized role one frontier county's leaders played in bringing Texas into the American story.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the winter and early spring of 1836, Texas was in open revolt against Mexico. For a decade, Anglo-American colonists and Tejanos had been settling the Mexican province of Texas under a series of shifting arrangements, and tensions over governance, rights, and centralized power in Mexico City had finally boiled over into armed rebellion.
Against that backdrop, delegates gathered at a rough settlement called Washington-on-the-Brazos to decide the province's future. They met in haste and under threat — even as they debated, a Mexican army was on the march. The convention that assembled there had to do the work of founding a nation while the outcome of the war was still very much in doubt.
Among the districts sending delegates was Red River County, in the far northeastern corner of Texas along the river that gives it its name. This was old settled country by Texas standards, part of the tangled borderland where the United States and Mexican Texas met, and its leading men were about to play a role out of all proportion to the region's size.
People & events
On March 2, 1836, the fifty-nine members of the Convention of 1836 signed the Texas Declaration of Independence. Remarkably, five of those signers came from Red River County — more than from any other of the old Spanish-Mexican districts or the new Republic's counties.
One of them presided over the whole undertaking. Richard Ellis (1781–1846), Virginia-born, had established a plantation at Pecan Point on the Red River by 1834 and was chosen President of the Convention; he later served two terms as a Senator of the young Republic. Beside him signed Robert Hamilton (1783–1843), a Scot who had immigrated to North Carolina, fought at the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812, and come to Texas in 1834, becoming Chief Justice of Red River County.
The others each carried the new nation forward in their own way. Albert Hamilton Latimer (c. 1800–1877), who had settled near Pecan Point in 1833, went on to a long public career and, as a Unionist, was still serving Texas decades later at the Constitutional Convention of 1866 and on the state Supreme Court. Samuel Price Carson (1798–1838) had already been a state and U.S. Representative for North Carolina before coming to Texas, where he became Secretary of State of the ad interim government. And Collin McKinney (1766–1861), New Jersey-born and by then a man in his sixties, served multiple terms as a Texas Representative — his name preserved today in both Collin County and the city of McKinney.
Its place in the American story
The Texas Declaration of Independence set in motion one of the more unusual chapters in the American story: the birth of an independent Republic of Texas that would exist as its own nation for nearly a decade before joining the United States. The document signed that March day is a founding text, Texas's counterpart to the parchment signed in Philadelphia sixty years earlier.
That one thinly populated frontier county supplied five of the fifty-nine signers is a striking reminder that history often turns on the initiative of a handful of determined people in an out-of-the-way place. These were not distant statesmen but local planters, judges, and legislators who stepped onto a national stage.
Their influence outlasted the Republic. Their names ended up on courthouses, counties, and cities, and their careers ran straight through the great questions that followed — statehood, union, and the constitutional struggles of the mid-1800s. To trace these five men is to watch a frontier district help write the opening lines of Texas's, and eventually America's, larger story.
If you visit
This is a monument to read carefully — five lives compressed onto a single stone, each with its own arc. Take your time with the individual names and dates, and notice how far these men had already traveled before 1836: from Virginia, Scotland by way of North Carolina, New Jersey. Their biographies are a map of early American migration converging on one river county.
Let the local pride of the place register. Standing in Clarksville, the seat of Red River County, you are in the home ground of the district that sent more signers to the Convention of 1836 than any other — a genuine distinction that the monument rightly claims.
If you are planning a Texas history road trip, this stop pairs naturally with a larger pilgrimage to Washington-on-the-Brazos, where the signing itself took place. Seeing the county that produced the signers and the site where they signed gives you both ends of the story. And keep the two names that traveled farthest in mind — Collin County and the city of McKinney — a reminder that a signer's legacy can end up on the road signs you pass for generations afterward.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Richard Ellis
- · Robert Hamilton
- · Albert Hamilton Latimer
- · Samuel Price Carson
- · Collin McKinney
Related events
- · Signing of the Texas Declaration of Independence
- · Convention of 1836
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The Rev. William Stevenson
Clarksville, TX
A Methodist circuit rider in the Missouri Conference, William Stevenson crossed into the Red River country in 1815 and preached to the Claiborne Wright family and their neighbors — sermons remembered as the first Protestant worship ever held in Texas, then part of Catholic New Spain. A friend of empresario Stephen F. Austin, Stevenson helped plant the seed of religious pluralism on the frontier decades before Texas independence.
Home of Col. Charles DeMorse
Clarksville, TX
Charles DeMorse (1816–1887) was a pioneer soldier, statesman, and newspaperman who founded and edited the Northern Standard from 1842 to 1887, the region's first and most influential newspaper. Around two log rooms built in 1833 he raised a larger home where he lived until his death, and which his descendants long occupied afterward.
First Presbyterian Church of Clarksville
Clarksville, TX
This Presbyterian congregation traces its roots to Old Shiloh in 1833, when Anglo settlers were streaming into what was then Mexican Texas, and relocated to Clarksville in 1858. The present church building went up in 1905. It stands among the oldest congregations in Red River County, a corner of Texas settled early via the routes down from the north and east.
Red River Courthouse
Clarksville, TX
Red River County's records reach back to 1836, and this Italian Renaissance–style building, completed in 1885, is the fifth courthouse to serve the county. It stands as the civic anchor of Clarksville, one of the oldest settled areas of Northeast Texas.