Nathaniel C. Hazen

🏛️The era

Nathaniel C. Hazen arrived in Texas in January 1836, at one of the most dangerous moments in its history. The Texas Revolution against the government of Mexico had broken out the previous autumn. Volunteers were streaming in from the United States, many of them recent arrivals like Hazen, to join the fight.

The weeks that followed were brutal. In early 1836 a Mexican army under General Antonio López de Santa Anna marched north to crush the revolt. The Alamo fell in March. Further south, a Texian force under Colonel James Fannin was caught in the open after leaving Goliad, fought a desperate battle, and surrendered.

Then, on March 27, 1836, Palm Sunday, Fannin's men were marched out of Goliad under Santa Anna's orders and shot. Several hundred prisoners were killed. A small number escaped in the confusion. The massacre, along with the fall of the Alamo, turned into a rallying cry that carried the Texian army toward San Jacinto.

👥People & events

Hazen's story fits into a handful of lines on this marker, and each one carries a lot. He reached Texas in January 1836 and ended up among James Fannin's men. When Fannin's command surrendered, Hazen became a prisoner. On March 27 he was marched out with the others to be shot.

He escaped. The marker doesn't say how, and there's no need to make up details it leaves out. What is clear is how slim his chances were. Most of the men marched out that morning never came back, and those who got away usually ran for cover through brush and along the river while gunfire went on around them.

Hazen didn't take his escape as a reason to quit the fight. Within weeks he was serving in Captain William H. Patton's company at the Battle of San Jacinto. On April 21, 1836, the Texian army overwhelmed Santa Anna's force there in a short, decisive battle. Men shouted "Remember Goliad!" that day, and for Hazen the words were personal.

His story ends quickly and sadly. He died in Columbia on December 27, 1836, nine months to the day after the morning he walked away from the execution. He lived through two of the most important events of the Texas Revolution and saw the republic born, but he didn't live to see a year of it.

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

Goliad and San Jacinto bookend the climax of the Texas Revolution. The first was the revolution's darkest hour, the second its victory, and Hazen took part in both within a span of about four weeks. San Jacinto secured Texas independence. That set in motion the Republic of Texas, its annexation by the United States in 1845, and the war with Mexico that followed, which redrew the map of North America.

Hazen's story also brings to life who fought for Texas. Many of the men in Fannin's command and the army at San Jacinto were newcomers who had arrived only weeks or months earlier. They came from across the United States and beyond, and their stories are often known only from short records like this one.

And it's a reminder that many of the revolution's survivors didn't live long afterward. Frontier disease, hardship, and danger took many of them soon after the fighting stopped. A marker like this one makes sure a short life spent at the center of great events isn't forgotten.

🧭If you visit

This marker is in West Columbia, in the old Columbia area of Brazoria County, where Hazen died at the end of 1836. Columbia matters in Texas history beyond his story: in the months after San Jacinto it served as an early seat of government for the new republic, so Hazen died in a town at the center of the young nation's political life.

Take a moment with the dates. Hazen came to Texas in January, faced a firing squad in March, fought at San Jacinto in April, and was dead by December. Few markers pack so much into so short a span, and it's worth letting that sink in.

For a Texas Revolution road trip, this stop connects naturally with the region's other independence sites. Head south and west to the Goliad area, where Fannin's men were held and executed, or east toward the San Jacinto battleground near Houston. Visiting them in order traces Hazen's own path from capture to victory, and makes this short marker a fitting last stop.