Robert McAlpin Williamson
Anahuac, Chambers County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(1804-1859) Crippled by disease at 15, with a leg permanently bent at the knee, wore a pegleg which like his two natural legs was covered with his trousers. Hence he was nicknamed "Three-Legged Willie." Settled in Texas in 1827 to practice law. Here at Fort Anahuac in 1832, he made an heroic stand against the commandant, Juan Davis Bradburn, who had jailed his client and friend, Patrick C. Jack, and William Barret Travis (later Alamo commander). Bradburn and associates made a false agreement to exchange Jack and Travis for Mexican soldiers captured earlier by Williamson's men. Following a confrontation, Bradburn at last gave up the Texans, resigned his command, and left Fort Anahuac. But after this betrayal, Williamson took up cause of Texas independence, fighting with words and then with arms at Battle of San Jacinto. A district judge and a justice of first supreme court of the Republic (1836-39), he also served as a lawmaker, 5th throug 9th congresses (1840-45). In a noted episode, a ruffian is said to have drawn a Bowie knife, saying, "This is the law," but Judge williamson covered it with his pistol, declaring, "This is the constitution which overrules the law."
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Robert McAlpin Williamson, nicknamed "Three-Legged Willie" for the pegleg he wore after a boyhood illness, settled in Texas in 1827 to practice law. At Fort Anahuac in 1832 he made a bold stand against the Mexican commandant Juan Davis Bradburn, who had jailed his friends Patrick Jack and William Barret Travis — an early flashpoint on the road to revolution. Williamson went on to fight at San Jacinto and serve as a district judge and justice of the Republic's first supreme court.
Why it matters
Williamson stands among the founders of Texas law and independence, and the 1832 Anahuac disturbances he joined were among the sparks that ignited the Texas Revolution.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the early 1830s, Texas was the northern edge of the young Mexican republic. It was a frontier province where Anglo-American settlers had been welcomed by empresario colonization contracts and were now arriving faster than the Mexican government was comfortable with. A law passed in 1830 tried to slow immigration from the United States and tighten control of the province, so customs posts and garrisons appeared along the coast.
Anahuac, at the head of Trinity Bay, was one of those posts. Here the Mexican government's attempt to assert authority collided directly with settlers who were used to running their own affairs. Disputes over customs, land titles, runaway enslaved people and the arrest of colonists all piled up around the fort.
The clashes of 1832, now remembered as the Anahuac Disturbances, did not start a war on their own. They were, however, one of the first times Texans took up arms against a Mexican officer, and many of the men involved would take part in the revolution of 1835–36.
People & events
Robert McAlpin Williamson did not look like a frontier hero. An illness at fifteen left one leg permanently bent at the knee, so he strapped on a wooden peg and wore his trousers over all three limbs. Texans, who never passed up a good nickname, called him "Three-Legged Willie." He arrived in 1827 to practice law, and his quick tongue soon made him known well beyond the courtroom.
In 1832 the commandant at Anahuac, Juan Davis Bradburn, jailed two young lawyers: Williamson's client and friend Patrick C. Jack, and William Barret Travis, who would later command at the Alamo. Williamson joined the armed settlers who came to demand their release. Mexican soldiers were taken prisoner, and an exchange was arranged: the captured soldiers for Jack and Travis. The marker says Bradburn and his associates did not keep that agreement honestly. After more confrontation, Bradburn finally handed over the Texans, resigned his command and left the fort.
Williamson said that betrayal turned him toward Texas independence. He argued for it in print and in speeches, and then fought for it at San Jacinto. After the war he helped build the Republic's legal system as a district judge and a justice of its first supreme court, and he later served in its Congress from 1840 to 1845. The best-known story about him may be embroidered, but it fits the man. A ruffian is said to have pulled a Bowie knife and called it the law. Williamson answered with a pistol, which he called the constitution, the thing that overrules the law.
Its place in the American story
The Anahuac Disturbances belong to a larger American story: settlers moving into land governed by another nation, and the friction that followed. Within a few years that friction produced the Texas Revolution, an independent republic and, in time, annexation to the United States. Those events shaped the Mexican–American War and the country's westward expansion.
Williamson's career also shows something easy to miss. Revolutions need lawyers and judges as well as soldiers. Once the fighting ended, someone had to set up courts and write laws, and the Bowie-knife story sums up that shift from rule by force to rule by constitution.
Texas has remembered him by name. Williamson County, north of Austin, honors him, so Three-Legged Willie is still on the map of the state he helped create.
If you visit
Anahuac is a small, quiet town on Trinity Bay, surrounded by marshland, rice country and wide Gulf Coast sky. In 1832 soldiers and settlers faced off here. Now it's a place of water birds and slow roads, and that contrast is worth noticing as you stand by the marker.
Try to picture the old fort's position above the bay. For a Mexican garrison it was a lonely outpost. For the colonists who marched on it, it was the nearest symbol of a government they increasingly distrusted.
Anahuac fits well into a Texas Revolution road trip. It is part of the same coastal story as the San Jacinto battleground to the west, where Williamson later fought, so visiting both lets you follow the revolution from one of its early sparks to its end.
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
- · Robert McAlpin Williamson
- · Juan Davis Bradburn
- · Patrick C. Jack
- · William Barret Travis
Related events
- · Anahuac Disturbances (1832)
- · Battle of San Jacinto
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Fort Anahuac
Anahuac, TX
In 1830 the Mexican government planted a military post at this bluff above the mouth of the Trinity River to collect customs and enforce the law of April 6, 1830, which choked off further Anglo-American immigration. Commanded by the abrasive Col. Juan Davis Bradburn, Fort Anahuac controlled access to East Texas, but Bradburn's conscription of labor and his 1832 jailing of William B. Travis and others enraged the colonists. The resulting armed clash—linked to the fighting at Velasco and the Turtle Bayou Resolutions—forced Bradburn out and Mexican troops from the post.
Juan Davis Bradburn
Anahuac, TX
Juan Davis Bradburn, a Kentucky adventurer turned officer in the Army of the Republic of Mexico, was sent in 1830 to build a military post at the mouth of the Trinity River. His high-handed rule at Fort Anahuac—seizing supplies, arresting a land commissioner, and jailing colonists including William B. Travis and Patrick C. Jack—provoked the 1832 Anahuac Disturbances. Deposed by his own officers, Bradburn fled that July, and returned in 1836 with Santa Anna's army only to lose again.
On this Site First Known as Perry's Point
Anahuac, TX
On this bluff first called Perry's Point, General Manuel Mier y Terán established a fort in 1830, naming it Anahuac after the Aztec name for Mexico City. The post was meant to halt Anglo-American colonization, but the imprisonment of settlers from Stephen F. Austin's colony provoked the first open rebellion against Mexican rule in 1832.
Chambers County Courthouse
Anahuac, TX
Chambers County, named for Texas pioneer Major General Thomas Jefferson Chambers, was organized in 1858 with its seat at Wallisville. In 1908, after rice canals and wandering hogs helped tip an election, Anahuac won the county seat; its 1912 Renaissance Revival courthouse burned in 1935. The current three-story limestone building, blending Art Deco and Moderne styles, rose in 1937 with funding from the New Deal's Public Works Administration and remains little changed today.