Site of Battle of El Perdido
Fannin, Goliad County, Texas
Marker Inscription
During 1810 - 1819 efforts to expel Spain from Texas, a bloody clash occurred here on June 19, 1817, between the forces of Col. Antonio Martinez, last Spanish governor of Texas, and a Mexican Republican Army of invasion that was on its way to attack and capture La Bahia. Republicans had 42 men under Col. Henry Perry and Maj. James H. Gordon, former U.S. officers, veterans of the 1815 Battle of New Orleans. Outnumbered 3-to-1, Perry and Gordon refused offer of safe surrender, saying they would die first. Along with 24 of their men, both were killed. (1967)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
On June 19, 1817, during the long struggle to expel Spain from Texas, a small Republican force of 42 men under Col. Henry Perry and Maj. James H. Gordon — both veterans of the 1815 Battle of New Orleans — clashed here with the Spanish troops of Gov. Antonio Martinez while marching to attack La Bahia. Outnumbered three to one, Perry and Gordon refused an offer of safe surrender, declaring they would die first, and fell with 24 of their men.
Why it matters
The battle belongs to the little-known filibustering campaigns that stirred Texas toward independence decades before the revolution of 1836.
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Related people
- · Col. Antonio Martinez
- · Col. Henry Perry
- · Maj. James H. Gordon
Related events
- · Battle of El Perdido
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Battle of Coleto and Goliad Massacre
Fannin, TX
After the fall of the Alamo in March 1836, Colonel James Walker Fannin and some 400 men, many of them volunteers from the United States, were ordered to retreat from Goliad toward Victoria. General Urrea's Mexican force surrounded them near Coleto Creek on March 19, and after fierce fighting the outnumbered Texans surrendered, expecting to be treated as prisoners of war. Instead, on Palm Sunday they were marched out and executed at Goliad on Santa Anna's orders—an atrocity that, with the Alamo, gave the victors at San Jacinto their cry, "Remember the Alamo, Remember Goliad."
Grave of Colonel J. W. Fannin and His Men
Goliad, TX
After Col. James Walker Fannin's outnumbered Texas force surrendered following the Battle of Coleto in March 1836, Santa Anna ordered the prisoners held at Presidio La Bahía executed. On Palm Sunday, roughly 400 men were marched out and massacred and the wounded shot within the fort, with Fannin himself the last to die; a handful were spared by their medical skill or saved by the "Angel of Goliad," and about thirty escaped. Weeks later Gen. Thomas J. Rusk's army gathered the scattered remains and gave them a military burial here on June 3, 1836.
Angel of Goliad
Goliad, TX
In the spring of 1836, as the Texas Revolution turned brutal, a woman remembered as Francisca Alavez moved among the Mexican army's prisoners performing quiet acts of mercy. She loosened cruel bindings, brought food and water, hid men, and pleaded for lives at Copano, Goliad and beyond—saving some of the very Texian captives marked for the Goliad Massacre, in which hundreds were shot on Santa Anna's orders. A survivor's memoir immortalized her as the 'Angel of Goliad.'
J. W. Fannin
Goliad, TX
Raised in 1885, this monument honors Col. James W. Fannin and the men who died with him in the Goliad Massacre of March 27, 1836, when hundreds of Texan prisoners were executed on Santa Anna's order weeks after Texas declared independence. Its faces bind together the rallying cries "Remember the Alamo, Remember Goliad" with the dates that independence was declared and, at San Jacinto, finally won.