Peter Teal

Tivoli, TX

Thomas O'Connor came to Texas as an orphaned boy from Wexford, Ireland, with his uncle the empresario James Power. He signed the Goliad Declaration of Independence at seventeen and fought at San Jacinto, later remembered as the youngest Texian in that decisive battle. On this land grant he built a log cabin in 1842; the present ranch house followed in 1874, its bricks fired from clay dug along the San Antonio River, and the T-C ranching operation has passed through five generations of his family.

Victoria, TX

Born in Pennsylvania in 1810, Edward Conrad came to Texas in 1835 on the eve of revolution. On March 2, 1836, he added his name to the Texas Declaration of Independence, casting his lot with the new republic. He died in Victoria that July while serving as an officer in the Army of the Republic of Texas, his life bound up entirely with Texas's fight for nationhood.

Victoria, TX

Peter Underhay Pridham was one of the Atlantic-world adventurers swept into the Texas Revolution: born on Guernsey, schooled in London, and drawn through Montreal to a homestead on the San Jacinto River by 1834. He fought in the decisive Battle of San Jacinto in 1836 that won Texas its independence, later stood against Comanche raiders at Plum Creek in 1840, and settled into civic life in Victoria as its county tax assessor.

Victoria, TX

Laid out in 1824 when Martín de León founded Victoria in the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas, this square was the town's oldest public burial ground. Pioneers, Texas Revolution soldiers of 1836, and later citizens of a cholera epidemic were interred here, along with soldiers under General Zachary Taylor and, during the Civil War, Confederate dead. After the war some occupying Federal troops destroyed headstones, leaving most graves unknown, and since 1899 the ground has been set aside as Memorial Square.