Josiah Taylor
Cuero, DeWitt County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Born in Virginia. First came to Texas in 1812, as captain in the Gutierrez - Magee Expedition, an attempt to free Mexico from Spain; fought at La Bahia, Alazan, Rosales; wounded 7 times in the Battle of Medina. Returned to Texas with family, 1824; listed in Atascosita Census, 1826; settled here in Green De Witt Colony, 1829. Five sons fought in Battle of Salado Creek with Capt. Jack Hays' company of Texas Rangers, during Mexican invasion of 1842. Recorded - 1973
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Josiah Taylor's life traces the violent birth of Texas across three decades. He first rode into the province in 1812 with the Gutiérrez-Magee filibuster, an armed bid to pry Mexico from Spanish rule, and was wounded repeatedly at the disastrous Battle of Medina. Returning with his family in the 1820s, he took a headright in Green DeWitt's colony, and by 1842 five of his sons were riding with Jack Hays' Rangers against a Mexican invasion.
Why it matters
Taylor's story compresses the whole arc of Anglo settlement in Mexican Texas—from foreign adventuring to permanent colony to armed defense—into a single frontier family.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When Josiah Taylor first came to Texas in 1812, it was a Spanish province on the edge of revolution. Mexico's struggle for independence from Spain had begun in 1810. Texas, far from the center of power and bordering the young United States, became a battleground for rebels, royalists and American adventurers.
The Gutiérrez-Magee Expedition was one of the boldest of those ventures. It was an armed force of Mexican revolutionaries and American volunteers that marched into Texas in 1812, aiming to break Spanish rule. It won early victories and took San Antonio. Then, in August 1813, royalist forces crushed it at the Battle of Medina, remembered as the bloodiest battle ever fought on Texas soil.
By the time Taylor returned in the 1820s, the landscape had changed completely. Mexico was independent and was inviting settlers through colony grants called empresario contracts. The Green DeWitt Colony, centered around Gonzales, was one of them. Taylor's life spans the whole stormy passage from Spanish Texas to Mexican colony to the embattled Republic of Texas.
People & events
Josiah Taylor was born in Virginia, and he first appears in Texas as a captain in the Gutiérrez-Magee Expedition. The marker lists the fights he was in: La Bahía, Alazán and Rosales. Then came Medina, where he was wounded seven times. Given how many of the expedition's men died there, it is remarkable that he survived at all.
A decade later he came back, and this time he brought his family. He returned in 1824, was listed in the Atascosita Census of 1826 (an early count of settlers in the lower Trinity region) and settled here in the Green DeWitt Colony in 1829. The one-time filibuster had become a colonist, putting down roots on the land he had once fought over.
The next generation carried on the fighting. In 1842, when Mexican forces invaded Texas and occupied San Antonio, five of Taylor's sons rode with Capt. Jack Hays' company of Texas Rangers at the Battle of Salado Creek. Hays became one of the most famous Ranger captains, and the Texans turned back the invaders at Salado Creek. Few families were so tied to every chapter of early Texas conflict.
Its place in the American story
Taylor's life shows how deeply Americans were entangled in Texas long before annexation. Volunteers from the United States joined the Gutiérrez-Magee Expedition decades before the Texas Revolution, which reflects a restless interest in the Spanish borderlands that shaped American expansion for half a century.
His path, from armed adventurer to settled colonist to father of Rangers, mirrors the larger pattern of Anglo-American Texas. First came filibusters and freebooters, then families working the land under Mexican grants, then the armed conflicts that led to independence and, in 1845, statehood. The tensions of that border world helped lead to the Mexican-American War and the vast territorial changes that followed.
The Texas Rangers, in whose ranks his sons fought, became among the most storied and debated institutions in American frontier history. The Taylor family's service at Salado Creek places this DeWitt County family at the center of that tradition, when Texas's independence was still being defended.
If you visit
This marker stands in Cuero, in DeWitt County, in the country once part of the Green DeWitt Colony. It honors a man who survived one of the bloodiest days in Texas history and then chose to make his home here. Take a moment to think about how much changed in his lifetime, from Spanish province to Mexican colony to independent republic.
The gently rolling land of the Guadalupe River region is the same country the DeWitt colonists settled. As you drive, picture it before towns and highways, when families like the Taylors were carving farms out of the frontier and a fighting man's sons might be called away to ride with the Rangers.
Cuero makes a good base for exploring DeWitt County and the history of the DeWitt Colony, and Gonzales, the colony's capital, is not far away. Pair this stop with other Texas Revolution and colonial sites in the region to trace the whole arc of Taylor's story, from filibuster to farmer to founding family.
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
- · Josiah Taylor
- · Jack Hays
Related events
- · Gutierrez-Magee Expedition
- · Battle of Medina
- · Battle of Salado Creek
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Taylor Family Cemetery
Cuero, TX
Also called Taylor-Bennett Cemetery, this DeWitt County burial ground began with Josiah Taylor, whose grave from 1830 is its oldest. Taylor first entered Texas in 1812 with the Gutiérrez-Magee Expedition, fighting at La Bahía and in the battles of Rosillo and Alazán Creek, then settled with his family as part of the DeWitt Colony in 1829. His descendants included Texas Rangers, veterans of the Texas Revolution, and participants in the Runaway Scrape, and among those buried here are men killed in the notorious Sutton-Taylor Feud.
De Witt County
Cuero, TX
This ground lay within Green De Witt's 1825 empresario grant and became DeWitt County in 1846, its seat shifting from Cameron to Clinton and finally to Cuero in 1876. Settled first by Anglo-Americans and, by 1860, half by German immigrants, the county sent its men into nearly every fight of the Texas Revolution — the Alamo, Goliad, Gonzales, and San Jacinto among them. The marker rolls out a long honor list of the pioneers and soldiers who founded and defended it.
Site of Cameron, First County Seat of DeWitt County
Cuero, TX
Chosen in 1846 as DeWitt County's first seat of justice, the town of Cameron honored Captain Ewen Cameron, a prisoner of the ill-fated Mier Expedition who was executed on Santa Anna's order. Though platted on a hundred donated acres, it never grew beyond a log courthouse and clerk's office, and after four elections and four court fights it lost the county seat to Clinton in 1850.
Site of the Home of Robert Justus Kleberg
Meyersville, TX
Robert Justus Kleberg, born in Germany in 1803, came to Texas in 1834 and fought at the Battle of San Jacinto in Captain Moseley Baker's company during the Texas Revolution. He went on to serve in the state legislature as a senator and lived in the Meyersville area until his death at Yorktown, Texas, in 1888. A Texas county was later named in his honor.