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Jacob Harmon Garner

Sabine Pass, Jefferson County, Texas

Marker Inscription

(1814-1887) Louisiana native Jacob H. Garner, son of Bradley and Sarah Harmon Garner, settled in Jefferson, a village on Cow Bayou in present-day Orange County, Texas, in 1825. In 1835 he took part in the Grass Fight and Siege of Bexar while serving one of two enlistments in the Texas Army for which he later received land and bounty grants. He married Matilda Hayes in 1838. A prominent citizen of Jefferson County, he served as Jefferson County justice of the peace in 1843, district clerk from 1846 to 1850, Sabine Pass alderman in 1857, and as a third lieutenant in the Confederate Army in 1861. Sesquicentennial of Texas Statehood 1845 - 1995

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

A Louisiana native, Jacob H. Garner settled as a boy in southeast Texas in 1825, a decade before the fight for independence. In 1835 he joined the Texas Army and took part in the Grass Fight and the Siege of Bexar, service for which he later received land grants, then went on to hold a string of local offices from justice of the peace to district clerk. When war came again in 1861, he took up arms once more as a Confederate officer, a life of service spanning Texas's earliest struggles through the Civil War.

Why it matters

Garner's life traces the arc of a frontier Texan across two wars and the founding of a county, from the revolution that created the Republic to the Confederacy.

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Related people

  • · Jacob Harmon Garner
  • · Matilda Hayes Garner

Related events

  • · Grass Fight
  • · Siege of Bexar

Themes & tags

Military & WartimeFrontier HistoryLandmark

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Benjamin Johnson

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Benjamin Johnson, born in Louisiana in 1815, settled in Texas in 1832 and took up arms in the fight for independence. He fought in the Texas army's capture of Bexar in December 1835 and served in Captain James Gillaspie's company at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto in April 1836. He lived out his days as a respected farmer and stockman in the Sabine Pass area.

Niles F. Smith

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A New Yorker who came to Texas with Robertson's colony in 1834, Niles F. Smith fought in the Texas Revolution and then helped build the young Republic, serving as its first banking commissioner along with posts as customs collector and land agent. Settling at Sabine Pass in 1841, he erected Jefferson County's first steam sawmill and its first church, and backed annexation to the United States in 1845. He rests here beside his wife Abigail and their two sons.

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The oldest continually used cemetery in Jefferson County has served the Sabine Pass area since the 1840s, its earliest documented grave dating to 1847. Now a union of five once-separate burial grounds, it holds veterans of the War of 1812, the Texas Revolution, and both sides of the Civil War—including Union sailors killed in the 1863 naval fight off the pass and Kate Dorman, the "heroine of Sabine Pass." A former "Colored Peoples Cemetery" section includes the unmarked grave of Louis Williams, born enslaved in 1813 and buried at age 108.

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