Jethro Russell Bancroft

Houston, TX

This marker remembers John Viven, who served in Captain William Wood's company at the Battle of San Jacinto, the decisive 1836 victory that won Texas its independence. He later died in Houston in 1856, one of the revolution's veterans who lived to see the republic become a state.

Houston, TX

John Cheevers came to Texas in 1829, in the years when Anglo colonists were streaming into what was then Mexican territory. When the fight for Texas independence reached its climax in 1836, he stood among the men of Captain Thomas H. McIntire's company at the Battle of San Jacinto, the short, decisive clash that secured the Republic. He lived out his remaining years in the growing town of Houston, dying there in 1846.

Houston, TX

Robert Barr fought at San Jacinto, the 1836 battle that won Texas its independence, and went on to serve the young Republic of Texas as postmaster general under both Sam Houston and Mirabeau Lamar. An Ohio native, he died of yellow fever in Houston in 1839, a reminder of how disease stalked the coastal republic. His burial by the Masonic and Odd Fellows lodges and the Milam Guards reflects the tight civic fraternity of frontier Houston.

Houston, TX

David Grieves was a Scottish immigrant who cast his lot with the Texas struggle for independence, serving in Captain Henry Teal's company at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836. That short, decisive fight secured Texas's break from Mexico. Grieves lived only briefly afterward, dying in the raw new town of Houston in 1837.