Moses Austin

San Antonio, TX

Cowboys called it "Devil's Rope," and Texas cattlemen wanted nothing to do with barbed wire until a showman named John Ware Gates staged a dramatic proof on San Antonio's Military Plaza in the late 1870s. He penned frenzied longhorns behind a barbed-wire corral, prodded them with torches, and watched the flimsy-looking fence hold as skeptics lost their bets. Orders soon outran supply, and Gates went on to build wire and steel plants and to invest in the Spindletop oil boom.

San Antonio, TX

Chosen in 1731 by the Canary Islander settlers of San Fernando de Bexar, the Casas Reales served for more than a century as the seat of government on San Antonio's Main Plaza. From its steps, officials proclaimed the news of empires and republics to the roll of drums; Zebulon Pike passed through in 1807, the green flag of Mexican rebellion flew over it in 1813, and Moses Austin filed his colonization petition there in 1820. Santa Anna made it his headquarters during the siege of the Alamo in 1836, and four years later the deadly Council House Fight erupted here between Texan officials and Comanche leaders.

San Antonio, TX

Erasmo Seguin (1782–1857), born in San Antonio, was a Tejano civic leader who helped found the city's first public school and served as its postmaster under Mexican rule. He escorted Stephen F. Austin's colonists to Bexar in 1821 and became a lifelong ally of the Anglo-American settlers. When Santa Anna turned dictator, Seguin joined the protests, aided the patriots in the 1835 siege of Bexar, lodged David Crockett, and provisioned the Alamo—before persecution by newcomers drove him to retire to his ranch, where he died in 1857.

San Antonio, TX

Kentucky-born Benjamin Rush Milam packed a lifetime of frontier daring into his years: a soldier in the War of 1812, a trader among the Comanches, a colonizer, and the first to navigate the upper Red River. When the Texas Revolution erupted, he helped take Goliad and then rallied volunteers with the cry to storm San Antonio, planning the attack that would capture the town. He was killed leading that assault on December 7, 1835. This monument was raised by the State of Texas in 1936 for the independence centennial.