Major Robert Simpson Neighbors
Young County, Young County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Major Robert Simpson Neighbors who served in the Army of Texas, 1836 * Captured by General Woll, 1842 * U. S. Indian agent, 1845 * Born in Virginia, November 3, 1815 * Died September 14, 1859 Erected by the State of Texas 1936
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Virginia-born Robert Simpson Neighbors served in the Army of the Republic of Texas in 1836 and was captured during the Mexican general Adrian Woll's 1842 raid before becoming a United States Indian agent in 1845. In that role he worked among the Comanche and other Texas tribes during a turbulent era of frontier contact, and he was killed in 1859. The State of Texas erected this marker to him in 1936, the centennial of Texas independence.
Why it matters
Neighbors was one of the most consequential Indian agents on the Texas frontier, and his life bridges the Republic's founding struggles and the fraught relations between the state and Native peoples.
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