James Washington Winters
Bigfoot, Frio County, Texas
Marker Inscription
San Jacinto veteran, went on Somervell Expedition. Loyal to former general Sam Houston, did not sign Oath of Allegiance to the Confederate States at Oakville, July 4, 1861. Capt. 29th Brig. T.S.M., Provost Marshall, scout between Nueces and Rio Grande rivers. 8 yrs. in Tuxpan Mexico. Wife, Piercy Tullos. Children; James, Josephus, Adeline, Susan, John, Marion, William B. and Sallie. His 2nd wife was Elizabeth Wier. (1968)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
James Washington Winters fought at San Jacinto in the 1836 revolution that won Texas independence and later joined the Somervell Expedition. A loyal follower of Sam Houston, he refused to sign the oath of allegiance to the Confederacy at Oakville on July 4, 1861, yet served as a captain, provost marshal, and scout in the militia patrolling the country between the Nueces and Rio Grande. He spent eight years in Tuxpan, Mexico, and raised a large family with his wives Piercy Tullos and Elizabeth Wier.
Why it matters
His life spans the whole turbulent making of Texas — from the battlefield of independence to the divided loyalties of the Civil War frontier — embodying the Unionist Texans who resisted secession.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The life remembered on this monument runs straight through the most turbulent decades in Texas history. It begins in the era of the Texas Revolution and the young Republic, when Anglo and Tejano settlers broke from Mexico and tried to build a nation on the southwestern frontier, and it carries forward into the Civil War, when Texas — by then a state — was torn between loyalty to the Union and the pull of secession.
Frio County and the broad country south and west of it were the raw edge of that world. The land between the Nueces and the Rio Grande, the so-called Nueces Strip, was contested, sparsely settled, and dangerous — a borderland where national loyalties, raiding, and the simple business of survival all collided. A man who scouted this country lived close to the bone.
Against that backdrop, the marker records a Texan whose loyalties were tested more than once, and who made choices that set him apart from many of his neighbors. His story sits at the seam between the heroic founding myth of Texas and the harder, more divided reality of the Civil War years.
People & events
James Washington Winters earned his place in Texas memory on the field of San Jacinto, the short, decisive battle in 1836 where Sam Houston's outnumbered Texans routed the Mexican army and secured Texas independence. To have stood in that line was, for the rest of a man's life, a mark of distinction. He later joined the Somervell Expedition, the Republic-era campaign that marched toward the Rio Grande in answer to Mexican incursions.
But the marker's most striking detail belongs to 1861. On the Fourth of July, at Oakville, Winters refused to sign the Oath of Allegiance to the Confederate States — an act of conscience, tied to his loyalty to his old general Sam Houston, himself a famous Unionist who lost the governorship rather than embrace secession. And yet Winters did not simply withdraw: he served as a captain in the state militia, as a provost marshal, and as a scout patrolling the hard country between the Nueces and the Rio Grande. He also spent eight years in Tuxpan, Mexico.
Around the public man stood a family. His wife Piercy Tullos bore a houseful of children — James, Josephus, Adeline, Susan, John, Marion, William B., and Sallie — and after her he married Elizabeth Wier. The roll of names is its own kind of history, the private life that outlasts the battles.
Its place in the American story
Winters embodies a truth about the Civil War that the tidy map of blue and gray tends to hide: the South was not of one mind. Texas held many Unionists — German immigrants, hill-country farmers, and old settlers loyal to Sam Houston — and a man could refuse the Confederate oath and still be his neighbors' captain and scout. His life shows how tangled loyalty, community, and service could be on the frontier, where the enemy might be a raider from across the river rather than an army in uniform.
His span of service also traces the arc of Texas itself. From the battlefield that won independence to the militia patrols of the Civil War frontier, one life touches the founding of the Republic, its absorption into the United States, and the crisis that nearly tore the nation apart. Few careers compress so much of a place's making into a single obituary carved in stone.
That his refusal at Oakville is recorded at all matters. It preserves the memory of Texans who dissented from secession — a quieter strand of the national story, easy to forget beside the louder one, but no less real.
If you visit
This is a monument near the small community of Bigfoot, in the ranch country of Frio County, and part of its appeal is simply the setting: the wide, dry, working landscape of South Texas that Winters himself scouted. Standing here, it is not hard to imagine a rider covering long, lonely miles between the Nueces and the Rio Grande.
Read the marker as a compressed biography and let the details do their work. Notice how it moves from a famous battle to a private act of conscience to the long list of a family's names — that sweep, from public glory to quiet dissent to ordinary domestic life, is the whole point. The Fourth of July date on the refused oath is worth pausing over; it carries its own irony.
Make it a stop on a slow loop through South Texas history, where the past tends to hide in small towns and roadside stones rather than grand museums. Come without expecting crowds or amenities. What you get instead is the feel of the borderland and the memory of a man whose loyalties, tested again and again, left a mark worth reading.
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
- · James Washington Winters
- · Sam Houston
- · Piercy Tullos
- · Elizabeth Wier
Related events
- · Battle of San Jacinto
- · Somervell Expedition
Themes & tags
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