Home of Col. Stephen William Blount
San Augustine, San Augustine County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Born Feb. 3, 1808 in Burke County, Georgia. Came to Texas in 1835. Joined the Army of Texas after signing the Declaration of Independence. First county clerk of San Augustine County First district clerk of the First Judicial District Died, February 7, 1890 at San Augustine, Texas. Erected by the State of Texas 1936
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Born in Georgia in 1808, Stephen William Blount came to Texas in 1835 and signed the Texas Declaration of Independence before joining the Army of Texas in the fight for independence. He went on to serve his adopted home as the first county clerk of San Augustine County and the first district clerk of the First Judicial District, living out his life in the town until 1890.
Why it matters
Blount was one of the founding citizens who put their names to Texas independence and then stayed to build the civic institutions of the new republic and state.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Stephen William Blount belonged to the generation of Southern-born Americans who poured into Texas in the 1830s, drawn by cheap land and the promise of a fresh start on the frontier. Born in Burke County, Georgia, in 1808, he came to Texas in 1835 — arriving, as it turned out, on the very eve of revolution.
Within months of his arrival, the tensions between Anglo-American settlers and the Mexican government boiled over into open war. Men who had come west looking for land and opportunity suddenly found themselves choosing whether to stake their lives on a bid for independence.
San Augustine, where Blount settled, was one of the gateway towns of early Texas and a hotbed of the independence movement. For a newcomer of 1835, it placed him at the center of the events that would create a new republic — and, before long, a new American state.
People & events
Blount did not merely witness the birth of Texas; he signed for it. He put his name to the Texas Declaration of Independence, joining the delegates who formally severed Texas from Mexico. Then, as the marker records, he joined the Army of Texas — moving from the meeting hall to the field, from declaring independence to fighting for it.
When the fighting was won, Blount turned to the unglamorous work of building a government. He became the first county clerk of San Augustine County and the first district clerk of the First Judicial District — the kind of offices that turn a revolution's paper promises into functioning courts, records, and civic order.
He lived out the rest of his long life in San Augustine, dying there on February 7, 1890, just days after his eighty-second birthday. From his arrival in 1835 to his death more than half a century later, his life traced the whole arc of early Texas — colony, revolution, republic, and state. The marker over his home was erected by the State of Texas in 1936, the centennial of the independence he helped declare.
Its place in the American story
The founders of new governments are usually remembered for the dramatic act — the signature, the battle, the declaration. But nations survive because some of those same people stay to do the patient work afterward: keeping records, running courts, holding the ordinary machinery of government together. Blount did both, and that is what makes his life representative of something larger.
Texas is unusual in the American story for having been an independent republic before it became a state, and the men who signed its declaration hold a place in Texas memory much like the signers of the Declaration of Independence hold in the national one. Blount is among that founding company.
His path from Georgia to the Texas frontier also embodies the great westward migration of the nineteenth century — Southern settlers carrying their institutions, ambitions, and conflicts west, and remaking the map of the United States as they went. In one man's biography you can read the making of a state.
If you visit
This marker stands at the home of a Texas founder, in a town that helped launch the republic, so let it anchor a walk through historic San Augustine. The pleasure here is in connecting a single life to enormous events — a man who signed a nation into being and then spent decades as its county clerk lived right here.
As you stand at the site, trace the span of his years: arriving in 1835, signing in 1836, serving through the republic and the early state, and living all the way to 1890. Few lives so neatly contain the entire early history of Texas, and standing at his home lets you feel that arc in a single place.
San Augustine rewards the unhurried visitor, with early-republic markers and old buildings clustered within easy walking or driving distance. Make Blount's home one stop among several, and you'll come away with a vivid sense of the small frontier town that produced signers, soldiers, and the first officials of a brand-new republic.
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
- · Stephen William Blount
Related events
- · Texas Declaration of Independence
Themes & tags
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