Noted Texas Soldier Col. Edward Miles

San Antonio, TX

Boston-born Samuel S. Smith rode with the Woll and Somervell expeditions of 1842, the volatile border campaigns that followed Mexican incursions into the young Republic of Texas. He lived until 1882 and is remembered here alongside his wife Sarah.

San Antonio, TX

Born in New Hampshire in 1811, Charles Frederick King came to Texas and served in the Texas Army in 1836, the year of the revolution that won independence from Mexico. He later served two terms as mayor of San Antonio, in 1847–1849 and again in 1852–1853, guiding the frontier town through its early years as part of the new state of Texas. He died in San Antonio in 1869.

San Antonio, TX

A North Carolina native who drifted west through Illinois and Missouri, John W. Smith came to Texas with Green DeWitt in 1826 and settled in San Antonio, where he became a leading merchant and political figure. He fought in the opening "affair at Gonzales," the storming of Bexar, and the siege of the Alamo, from which he served as a courier, and later at the Battle of the Salado. Smith became San Antonio's first mayor in 1837, held numerous offices, and served the Republic as a senator until his death in 1845.

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.