William E. Collard

Austin, TX

This state marker rests over the graves of Frances Lenoir McCulloch and her son Benjamin, mother and son of a family that gave two brigadier generals to the Confederacy. Benjamin McCulloch first fought as a private at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836, helping win Texas independence, then became a noted Texas Ranger before rising to Confederate brigadier general. He was killed at the Battle of Elk Horn (Pea Ridge), Arkansas, in March 1862.

Austin, TX

Xavier Blanchard Debray emigrated from France to Texas in 1848 and made his living publishing a Spanish-language newspaper before the Civil War. Joining the Confederate army as a lieutenant in 1861, he served as an aide to Governor Francis Lubbock and rose to colonel of the 26th Texas Cavalry—Debray's Regiment—used heavily for frontier scouting and delaying actions. He commanded the defenses of Galveston and eastern Texas and was made brigadier general in 1864 after the Red River campaign.

Austin, TX

Known affectionately as "Old Gotch," William P. Hardeman was a frontiersman and Indian fighter who fought in the Texas Revolution, the Cordova Rebellion, and the Mexican War before joining the Confederate army in 1861. Serving in the New Mexico campaign, he helped lead the celebrated cavalry charge at the Battle of Valverde, which earned him a colonelcy, and later commanded a brigade in the Red River campaign. Promoted brigadier general in 1865, he afterward became the first president of the state Confederate Home.

Austin, TX

Born in Virginia in 1827, Alexander Watkins Terrell came to Texas in 1852 and served as a district judge before the Civil War, then rose to brigadier general in the Confederate army by 1865. In the decades after the war he became one of the state's most influential public men—serving thirty years in the Texas Legislature and, in the 1890s, as U.S. Minister to Turkey. He died at Mineral Wells in 1912.