Pecan Point Signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence
Hooks, Bowie County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Five of the most prominent delegates to the Constitutional Convention of Texas, held March, 1836, hailed from Pecan Point, in this vicinity. Richard Ellis (an attorney and judge) was chosen president of the meeting and later served four terms in the Senate of the Republic. Collin McKinney (a magistrate) helped draft the declaration and served three terms in the house. A. H. Latimer (an attorney) served two terms. Samuel Price Carson (attorney) became Texas' Secretary of State and with Robert Hamilton (financier) was an agent to the United States. (1969)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In March 1836, as Texas declared its independence from Mexico, an unusually large share of the convention's leading delegates came from Pecan Point, a Red River settlement in this corner of far Northeast Texas. Richard Ellis presided over the gathering that produced the young republic's declaration and constitution, while neighbors like Collin McKinney, A. H. Latimer, Samuel Price Carson, and Robert Hamilton helped draft the document and staff the new government. That a single frontier vicinity supplied five prominent founders speaks to how thinly settled but politically ambitious early Anglo-Texas was.
Why it matters
The men honored here helped turn a rebellion into a functioning republic, making this quiet vicinity a seedbed of the leadership that carried Texas from revolution to eventual statehood.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the spring of 1836, the northeastern corner of what would become Texas was one of the rawest edges of the American frontier. This stretch of the Red River country had drawn settlers from the older states before anyone was entirely sure whose country it was — the boundary between the United States and Spanish, then Mexican, territory had long been vague here, and families put down roots along the river bottoms while the maps caught up with them.
The settlement of Pecan Point took its name from the river landscape itself, and like many frontier communities it gathered an outsized share of educated, ambitious men — lawyers, judges, and men of affairs who had come west looking for land and opportunity. They lived at the far margin of Anglo settlement, days of hard travel from the more populous colonies to the south.
When the Mexican government's growing centralism collided with the expectations of these settlers, the Red River men were as ready as any to press for independence. That a thinly populated vicinity could send so many leaders to the convention says a great deal about how much of early Texas leadership rested on a small, determined, and mobile class of frontier professionals.
People & events
In March 1836 delegates gathered for the convention that would declare Texas independent of Mexico and frame a government for the new republic. An unusually large delegation came from this one Red River vicinity, and they did not sit quietly at the back of the hall.
Richard Ellis, an attorney and judge, was chosen to preside over the gathering itself — placing a Pecan Point man in the chair as the declaration and constitution took shape. Collin McKinney, a magistrate already advanced in years, helped draft the declaration and went on to serve three terms in the house of the new republic's congress. A. H. Latimer, another attorney, served two terms in the legislature.
Samuel Price Carson brought experience of public life to the young government and became its Secretary of State, and together with the financier Robert Hamilton he was sent as an agent to the United States — the delicate work of winning recognition and support from the powerful neighbor to the east. Five men, one small settlement, and a founding generation's worth of offices among them.
Its place in the American story
The story of Pecan Point is a chapter in one of the great American themes: how the frontier repeatedly produced, out of scattered and hard-pressed communities, the leaders who built new governments. The men honored here did not merely sign their names to a grievance; they wrote a constitution, staffed a cabinet, and carried the republic's case abroad.
Texas independence would eventually lead to annexation and statehood, drawing this enormous territory into the United States and reshaping the map of the nation. The convention of 1836 was the hinge on which that turned, and the professionals of the Red River country helped swing it.
There is something quietly telling in the fact that a remote river settlement, closer in spirit to the frontier than to any capital, supplied so much of a new nation's first leadership. It is a reminder that the American story was often written not in established centers but at its restless, expanding edges.
If you visit
This is far Northeast Texas, where the piney woods and river-bottom country feel a world away from the wide-open ranchland most people picture when they think of the state. The land is green and close, laced with creeks that drain toward the Red River, and the pace is small-town and unhurried.
Standing here, let the marker do what it was made to do: turn an ordinary rural vicinity into the seedbed it once was. There is no grand capitol to admire — the point is the contrast between the modesty of the place and the weight of what its neighbors accomplished in a single momentous spring.
If you are threading together a road trip through this corner of Texas, treat this stop as a chance to slow down and imagine the frontier as it actually was: not empty, but full of people with large ambitions living at the ragged margin of two nations. It rewards a few unhurried minutes and a look out over the country that shaped them.
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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Related people
- · Richard Ellis
- · Collin McKinney
- · A. H. Latimer
- · Samuel Price Carson
- · Robert Hamilton
Related events
- · Convention of 1836
- · Texas Declaration of Independence
Themes & tags
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