Jose Antonio Navarro
Corsicana, Navarro County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Lover of liberty. Foe of despotism. Born in San Antonio, Texas, February 27, 1795. Died January 13, 1871 and buried there. Member of the Legislature of Coahuila and Texas, 1821; land commissioner of De Witt's colony 1831 and of Bexar District, 1834-1835; signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, 1836; member of the Congress of the Republic of Texas, 1838-1839; a commissioner of the Santa Fe Expedition, 1841; member of the Constitutional Convention of 1845; senator in the Legislature of Texas, 1846-1849. Navarro County gratefully bears his name. Corsicana was named by him for the isle of his father's birth - Corsica. Erected by the State of Texas 1936 with funds appropriated by the federal government to commemorate one hundred years of Texas Independence.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
José Antonio Navarro was a San Antonio–born statesman who bridged Spanish, Mexican, and Texan governments across a revolutionary generation, serving in the legislature of Coahuila and Texas and then signing the Texas Declaration of Independence in 1836. He went on to help write the state constitution and sit in the Texas Senate, and he lent his name both to Navarro County and to Corsicana, which he called after his father's native Corsica. This 1936 centennial marker honors a rare native-born Tejano leader of the Republic.
Why it matters
Navarro's career shows that Texas independence was not solely an Anglo-American story but also carried forward by Tejano leaders who staked their standing on the new republic.
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Related people
- · Jose Antonio Navarro
Related events
- · Signing of the Texas Declaration of Independence
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Navarro County Courthouse
Corsicana, TX
Created by the first Texas Legislature in 1846 and named for independence signer José Antonio Navarro, Navarro County shuffled through a string of makeshift courthouses — settlers' homes, a log cabin, a building that burned in 1855, and an ornate 1880 design that was condemned by 1904 for being too small and structurally unsound. The present courthouse, designed by Dallas architect J. E. Flanders and finished in 1905, rose in red Burnet granite and gray brick in the grand Beaux Arts Classical Revival style, crowned by a clock dome and a columned entry. Its history is the story of a frontier county growing into permanence.
Thomas Ingles Smith
Corsicana, TX
Born in Virginia in 1800, Thomas Ingles Smith soldiered in the War of 1812 under his father before coming to Texas in 1836 to join the Republic's army. He was wounded at the Battle of the Salado in 1842 and figured in the "Archive War" when Austin residents blocked his Rangers from removing the Republic's records. A frontier Ranger, Indian scout, and treaty commissioner, he lent his name to Fort Smith and helped found Corsicana before his death in 1848.
Westminster Presbyterian Church
Corsicana, TX
In 1853 the Rev. John Patton and about twenty Cumberland Presbyterians organized Corsicana's first church, in the years when the town was still a young frontier settlement. Over the following decades several distinct Presbyterian bodies took root, split, and realigned, until in 1949 they merged into Westminster Presbyterian Church. The Bethel Mexican congregation joined in 1968, adding another strand to the church's history.
Site of the First Courthouse
Corsicana, TX
When the Texas Legislature designated Corsicana as the seat of Navarro County, the location was secured in 1848 through land donated by David R. Mitchell, James C. Neill, and Thomas Smith. The county's first true courthouse was a modest log cabin built here that year, just fifteen by seventeen feet, with the judge's stand in one corner and the county clerk's table in another. A two-story frame courthouse replaced the humble cabin in 1853.