Site of the Home of Randal Jones
Richmond, Fort Bend County, Texas
Marker Inscription
1786-1873 Member of Long's expedition in 1819 -- Captain of militia under Austin in 1824 - Member of the General Consultation, 1835 - On this land granted him in 1824 he built the house in which "Deaf" Smith died, November 30, 1837 Erected by the State of Texas 1936
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Randal Jones joined James Long's filibustering expedition into Texas in 1819, served as a militia captain under Stephen F. Austin in 1824, and sat in the 1835 Consultation that set the Texas Revolution in motion. On land granted to him in 1824 he built a house where the famed scout Erastus "Deaf" Smith died in 1837. The state marked the site during the 1936 Texas centennial.
Why it matters
Jones's life runs straight through the founding events of Anglo Texas — filibuster, colony, revolution — and his home witnessed the death of one of the republic's most celebrated scouts.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the early 1800s, the land that became Texas was a remote northern edge of the Spanish empire, thinly settled and hard to govern. Americans pushing west eyed it eagerly. Some came as settlers. Others came as filibusters, private adventurers who led armed expeditions into foreign territory hoping to seize land or spark a revolution.
After Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821, it opened Texas to colonists under contracts with empresarios. The best known was Stephen F. Austin, whose colony along the Brazos and Colorado rivers drew hundreds of Anglo-American families in the 1820s. Austin's first settlers were granted generous tracts of land, and they had to defend themselves, so militia companies formed to protect the scattered farms.
By the 1830s, tensions between the colonists and the Mexican government were rising, over immigration, taxes, slavery, and above all who would govern Texas. In 1835 the colonists called a General Consultation to decide how to respond. Within months, Texas was at war, and in 1836 it declared and won its independence.
Richmond, where this marker stands, grew up on the Brazos in the heart of Austin's colony, in a county named for a fort built at a bend in the river. It was right in the middle of these events.
People & events
Randal Jones, born in 1786, lived through nearly every stage of early Texas history. In 1819 he joined the expedition of James Long, one of the filibusters who tried to wrest Texas from Spanish control. Long's ventures ultimately failed, but they show how restless and contested the region was even before Austin's colony began.
Jones stayed connected to Texas, and by 1824 he was a captain of militia under Stephen F. Austin. That was serious work. Militia captains led their neighbors in defending the young colony's farms and settlements in a land where the settlers were few and far from help. In the same year, Jones received the land grant on which this site stands.
When the crisis with Mexico came to a head in 1835, Jones served as a member of the General Consultation, the gathering of colonists that set the course toward revolution. He had gone from filibuster to colonist to lawmaker in the span of about fifteen years.
The house he built here has its own claim to fame. It was in this house, on November 30, 1837, that Erastus Smith died. Better known as Deaf Smith because of his hearing loss, he was one of the most celebrated scouts of the Texas Revolution, a trusted eyes-and-ears for Sam Houston's army, remembered especially for destroying a key bridge before the Battle of San Jacinto. That a legend of the revolution died under Randal Jones's roof says something about how small and interconnected that founding generation was. Jones himself lived until 1873.
Its place in the American story
Randal Jones's life is a compact version of how Texas, and much of the American West, came into the United States: first through freelance adventurers, then through organized settlement, and finally through revolution and annexation. Few individual lives touch all three stages so directly.
The filibuster expeditions of the early 1800s are a lesser-known part of American history, but they reveal how ambitious and unruly the westward push could be. Private citizens organized armies to seize foreign land, often without any official backing. Long's expedition is one of the best-known Texas examples.
Austin's colony, where Jones served, became the foundation of Anglo Texas. Its settlers and their institutions, militias, local government, and land grants, shaped the republic that followed, and that republic joined the United States in 1845, a step that helped lead to war with Mexico and the vast territorial expansion that followed.
The marker itself is part of the story too. It was erected in 1936, during the Texas Centennial, when the state set out to mark the people and places of its founding. Those markers reflect how Texans of the 1930s chose to remember their past, and they still dot the landscape today.
If you visit
This marker records a site rather than a standing house, so come with your imagination ready. Picture a frontier home on the Brazos bottomlands in the 1820s and 1830s, surrounded by fields and woods, with the river not far off. This is where one of the revolution's best-known scouts spent his last days.
Look closely at the marker itself. The 1936 centennial markers have a distinctive look, and spotting them becomes a game on any Texas road trip. This one packs an entire frontier career into a few terse lines.
Richmond and the surrounding Fort Bend County area are rich in Texas founding history, with other markers and historic sites tied to Austin's colony and the revolution. The Brazos River, the lifeline of the early colony, is close by and worth seeing.
For a longer trip, the San Jacinto battlefield east of Houston, where Deaf Smith made his name, is within reach and makes a fitting companion stop. Together they trace the arc from the battle that won Texas independence to the quiet frontier home where one of its heroes died.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Randal Jones
- · Erastus "Deaf" Smith
- · Stephen F. Austin
- · James Long
Related events
- · Texas Revolution
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Thomas Jefferson Smith
Richmond, TX
Born in Virginia in 1808 and raised in Georgia, Thomas Jefferson Smith joined the fight for Texas independence in 1836, serving under James W. Fannin at Refugio. Captured at Goliad, he was spared to repair weapons for the Mexican army and escaped amid the confusion of the Battle of San Jacinto. He settled in Richmond after the war, running a blacksmith shop, hotel, and livery stable, and served as Fort Bend County sheriff in the 1850s.
Paschal Paolo Borden
Stafford, TX
Born in New York in 1806, Paschal Paolo Borden came to Texas in December 1829 and took up arms in the fight for Texas independence. He joined the 1835 campaign that captured Bexar and fought at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836. He lived on in the young republic and state he had helped create until his death in 1864, and the State of Texas raised this marker in his honor in 1963.
Brown-Beard Cemetery
Richmond, TX
Begun as the Pentecost Graveyard in the Big Creek settlement, this cemetery dates to at least 1841 and the burial of George S. Pentecost, one of Stephen F. Austin's "Old 300" colonists. It lies on land granted to another Old 300 colonist, Samuel Pharr, and holds Texas Revolution veterans, Confederate soldiers, and the Pentecost, Beard, and Brown families whose intermarriage gave the ground its name.
Site of the Home of Elizabeth Powell
Beasley, TX
By the time Elizabeth Powell received this land grant in 1831, the Texas frontier was filling with Anglo-American colonists under Mexican rule — settlers whose grievances would soon erupt into revolution. Five years later this spot became a hinge point of that war: it marked the farthest eastern reach of General Urrea's column and the southern turn of Santa Anna's army toward the Brazos and San Jacinto. After Sam Houston's decisive victory at San Jacinto in April 1836, the defeated Mexican forces camped near here as they withdrew.