James English
Houston County, Houston County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(1810 - 1871) A native of Tennessee who settled in East Texas in the 1820s, James English fought in the siege of Bexar (1835) and served as comissioner for the Shelby County Militia during the Texas Revolution. English received a land grant in Houston County for his service to the Republic of Texas. He and his wife, Mary Lucinda (Walker), settled on this land about 1842 and later set aside part of the property for this cemetery. (1983)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
A Tennessean who settled in East Texas in the 1820s, James English fought in the 1835 siege of Bexar and served as a militia commissioner during the Texas Revolution. For that service the Republic granted him land in Houston County, where he and his wife Mary Lucinda settled around 1842. Part of that property became this family cemetery.
Why it matters
His life traces the path of the Anglo colonists who fought for Texas independence and were rewarded with the land they then settled.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When James English arrived in East Texas in the 1820s, the land was part of Mexico. The young Mexican republic had opened its northern frontier to settlers from the United States, hoping they would farm the land and help hold a thinly populated region. Thousands of families came, many of them from Tennessee and the other states of the Upper South. They brought cotton, cattle, and a strong habit of governing themselves.
By the mid-1830s, tension between those colonists and the government in Mexico City had grown sharp. Arguments over immigration, trade, slavery, and central authority turned into open conflict in the fall of 1835. That began the Texas Revolution, and within months Texas declared itself an independent republic.
The new Republic of Texas had plenty of land and very little money. One of its main tools was to pay the men who had fought for it in land grants. That policy sent veterans and their families out across East and Central Texas in the late 1830s and 1840s, filling in counties like Houston County. It was among the first counties the Republic created, and it carries the name of Sam Houston.
People & events
James English was born in 1810 and grew up in Tennessee. While he was still a young man, he joined the migration west and settled in East Texas in the 1820s, well before the break with Mexico. When fighting began in 1835, he was already a Texan by long residence.
That fall he was part of the siege of Bexar, the campaign in which Texian volunteers surrounded the Mexican garrison at San Antonio de Béxar. After weeks of waiting and then several days of street fighting, the garrison surrendered in December 1835. It was one of the first major victories of the revolution. During the war English also served as commissioner for the Shelby County militia. That was the unglamorous work of organizing and supplying the local citizen soldiers that the fight depended on.
The Republic of Texas rewarded his service with a land grant in Houston County. Around 1842, he and his wife, Mary Lucinda Walker English, settled on that land and built a life there. Later they set aside part of their property as a burial ground, and it became this cemetery. James English died in 1871, having lived through Mexican Texas, the Republic, statehood, the Civil War, and the start of Reconstruction.
Its place in the American story
English's life follows a path that thousands of Americans took in the early 1800s. They moved from the settled South into the borderlands and eventually helped pull those lands into the United States. The Texas Revolution led to the annexation of Texas in 1845, and annexation helped bring on the war with Mexico. That chain of events reshaped the map of North America.
His story also shows how new governments paid for their wars with land. The United States did the same with bounty-land warrants for its soldiers, and Texas did it on an even larger scale. For the veterans, a grant meant a farm and a future. For the frontier, it meant permanent settlement.
Keep in mind that this land was not empty before the grants. Native peoples lived in and moved through East Texas, and Tejano families were rooted in places like San Antonio. Anglo settlement of Texas came at their expense, and that part belongs in the story too.
If you visit
This is a quiet family cemetery. Its roots go back to a couple who chose this ground in the early 1840s and later gave part of it to their community for burials. Walk slowly and read the stones. In small rural cemeteries like this one, the dates and family names often tell of the generations who followed the first settlers.
The Piney Woods country around Houston County is good for an unhurried drive. You'll find wooded back roads, small towns, and markers that tell the story of early Texas. If you're following the Texas Revolution, this is a chance to see what its veterans did after the war: they went home, cleared land, and raised families.
Please treat the grounds with respect. It is a burial place, and rural cemeteries sometimes sit on or near private land. Check access before you go, stay on obvious paths, and leave everything as you found it.
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
- · James English
- · Mary Lucinda Walker English
Related events
- · Siege of Bexar
- · Texas Revolution
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Alfred M. Hallmark
Houston County, TX
Alfred M. Hallmark (1817-1880), born in Madison County, Alabama, came to Texas with his parents in 1834 and settled in present-day Houston County. He enlisted in the Texas Army on March 6, 1836, and fought in the decisive Battle of San Jacinto that April, later farming and helping run the post office in the Mustang Prairie community. In 1842 he married his cousin Sarah, with whom he raised twelve children.
Andrew Edwards Gossett
Crockett, TX
Andrew Edwards Gossett (1812–1890) moved from Tennessee to Texas in 1833 with his wife Rhoda and a large Mexican land grant. He helped defend the frontier in the unsettled years after the revolution by serving in the Texas Army, and in 1836 he donated land for a townsite, naming it Crockett for his old family friend David Crockett—soon to die at the Alamo. Gossett went on to serve as a peace officer and county judge and raised eleven children by two marriages.
Major Isaac Watts Burton
Crockett, TX
Isaac Watts Burton was a soldier of the Texas Revolution who fought at San Jacinto in 1836 and then led a cavalry company nicknamed the "Horse Marines" for its daring seizure of Mexican supply vessels along the Gulf coast. He went on to serve in the Congress of the young Republic of Texas from 1836 to 1839, one of the founding generation who tried to build a functioning nation out of a hard-won independence. The State of Texas raised this marker in 1936, the centennial of the revolution he helped win.
George G. Alford
Crockett, TX
A New York native and War of 1812 officer, George G. Alford came to Texas in 1836 and served as quartermaster general under Sam Houston during the Texas Revolution. Captured by Mexican forces on a later supply mission for the young Republic, he won his release through the intervention of President Andrew Jackson, then settled into life as a plantation owner and county judge.