Market Square
Gonzales, Gonzales County, Texas
Marker Inscription
First mapped in 1825 as "Jail Square," but became Market Square prior to 1836, and has served this purpose ever since; while that block, first mapped as "Market Square," became "Jail Square." The squares of Gonzales. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1966
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
First mapped in 1825 as "Jail Square," this block in Gonzales became Market Square sometime before 1836 and has served that purpose ever since — even as the block originally drawn as "Market Square" swapped roles to become "Jail Square." The playful reversal is part of the story of the town's early public squares. Gonzales was among the earliest Anglo settlements of the DeWitt colony.
Why it matters
The public square was the civic and commercial heart of a Texas town, and this one preserves the original 1820s town plan of Gonzales, a community central to the coming of the Texas Revolution.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the 1820s, Texas was the northern edge of newly independent Mexico, and the Mexican government was inviting settlers in through empresarios: contractors who agreed to bring families into a defined grant of land. Green DeWitt's colony was one of these, and Gonzales was laid out as its capital in 1825. It was one of the westernmost Anglo-American settlements in Texas at the time.
A frontier town like this started life as a plan on paper before it held many buildings. Surveyors marked out streets, lots and public squares, setting land aside for the shared needs of a town that barely existed yet: worship, government, law and trade. Gonzales was planned around several such squares, an ambitious layout for a handful of settlers living at the edge of Comanche and Tonkawa country.
Within a decade the little capital was at the centre of a much larger storm. Tension between Texas colonists and the Mexican government grew through the early 1830s, and in 1835 it broke into open conflict, with the first shots fired right here at Gonzales.
People & events
The story of this block is a gentle mix-up written into the town plan. When Gonzales was first mapped in 1825, this square was set aside for the jail, and a different block was marked for the market. At some point before 1836 the two traded places. The jail block became the place to buy and sell, and the block meant for commerce became the jail block. The marker records the swap but not the reason, and no one should pretend to know it. It may simply have been a matter of where people found it easier to gather.
What we do know is the town that grew up around these squares. In October 1835, Mexican soldiers came to take back a small cannon that had been lent to Gonzales for defence. The settlers refused and raised a homemade flag with the defiant words "Come and Take It." That skirmish, the Battle of Gonzales, is widely remembered as the opening clash of the Texas Revolution.
The following spring the town paid heavily. Volunteers from Gonzales rode to reinforce the Alamo and died there when it fell. Soon after, as Sam Houston's army retreated east, Gonzales itself was burned and its people joined the flight known as the Runaway Scrape. That Market Square has kept its purpose "ever since" means the town's civic pattern outlived that destruction and was rebuilt around the same open ground.
Its place in the American story
Public squares are among the oldest tools of American town-building. Spanish colonial towns were organised around plazas, New England villages around commons, and county seats across the South and Midwest around courthouse squares. Gonzales sits where these traditions meet: a Mexican-era colony settled largely by Anglo-Americans, laid out with land reserved for the public.
The town's larger importance is plain. Gonzales was where the Texas Revolution began, and that revolution led to the Republic of Texas, then to annexation by the United States in 1845 and the war with Mexico that followed. Those events reshaped the map of North America. The everyday market square of the town where it started is a modest but real piece of that chain.
This block also shows something easy to forget. A town plan is a living document. Uses shift, names swap, and a place takes its identity from what people actually do there, not only from what a surveyor wrote down.
If you visit
Stand on the square and imagine it as open ground in a raw frontier capital, with wagons, livestock and traders where you now see pavement. Then picture the other block a short walk away, the one first drawn as the market, and enjoy the small joke of the swap. It's a nice puzzle for kids: which square was supposed to be which?
Gonzales is a town that takes its history seriously, and the "Come and Take It" story turns up all over it. Give yourself time to walk the old town plan and look for its other squares and markers. You'll see how much of the 1825 layout still shapes the streets.
For a road trip, Gonzales makes a natural stop on a Texas Revolution itinerary that links the places where independence was fought over. It's an easy detour between San Antonio and Houston, and best taken slowly, on foot, with an eye for the old bones of the town.
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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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Indian Fort, Site of
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An Indian raid on July 2, 1826, left one Gonzales settler dead and another wounded and sent the frightened colonists fleeing to Burnham's Station on the Colorado River or to the Lavaca. In 1827, Green DeWitt's colonists were ordered back to reestablish the settlement, and on this lot they built a fort for protection. It was a small but telling episode in the struggle to hold the Texas frontier.
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At this spot in a peach orchard, the colonists of Gonzales buried their contested cannon to hide it from 150 Mexican dragoons sent to seize it in September 1835. Two days later they dug it up, mounted it on ox-cart wheels, loaded it with chains and scrap iron, and fired what is remembered as the first shot of the Texas Revolution.
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When Gonzales was laid out as a four-league town tract, its inner city held 49 squares, seven of them reserved for public use. This particular square was meant for a municipal building but instead became a public plaza. Today it bears the name Texas Heroes Square, honoring the men of Gonzales who took up arms in the Texas Revolution.
Andrew Ponton
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Andrew Ponton came to Texas in 1829, settled in Green DeWitt's colony, and by 1834 served as alcalde—mayor—of Gonzales. When Mexican forces demanded the town's cannon in 1835, his delay in surrendering it helped spark the "Come and Take It" fight now remembered as the opening battle of the Texas Revolution. He also helped rally the Gonzales men, the "Immortal 32," who answered Travis's call and died at the Alamo, and he later served the Republic of Texas as a legislator and judge.