HistoricSiteMarkers
Early Republic

Joseph C. Robinson

West Point, Fayette County, Texas

Marker Inscription

Captured at the "Dawson Massacre" September 18, 1942. Died in 1861.

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

Joseph C. Robinson was among the Texians captured in the Dawson Massacre of September 18, 1842, when a small volunteer company was surrounded and cut down by Mexican forces during General Adrián Woll's raid on San Antonio. He survived captivity and lived until 1861. His grave marker recalls one of the sharp, often-forgotten clashes of the independent Republic of Texas.

Why it matters

Robinson's marker keeps alive the memory of the Dawson Massacre, a reminder that Texas independence was contested by Mexican incursions for years after San Jacinto.

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Related people

  • · Joseph C. Robinson

Related events

  • · Dawson Massacre

Themes & tags

Nearby & related markers

Woods Prairie Cemetery

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Zadock Woods, a War of 1812 veteran and one of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred colonists, settled here in 1828, built a fortified home, and started this cemetery for family and neighbors. Woods himself died in the 1842 Dawson Massacre and lies elsewhere, but a fellow captive who survived imprisonment in Mexico, Joseph C. Robinson, rests here beneath a 1936 Texas Centennial marker. Pioneers bought and preserved the graveyard in 1875 to protect the resting place of the area's earliest families.

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