DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to give it the weight it deserves. March 2, 1836. While delegates were gathering at Washington-on-the-Brazos to sign a declaration of independence, out on the open prairie fifteen miles southwest of San Patricio, another kind of history was being written — the kind written in dust and blood and the sound of cavalry hooves.
At the forks of the Agua Dulce, a small band of Texan volunteers ran into the forces of General Jose Urrea's Mexican Cavalry. And I want you to hear the names, because names matter. Dr.
James Grant. Major Robert C. Morris.
Captain Thomas Lewellen. Dr. Charles P.
Heartt. Stephen Dennison. J.T.
Howard. Joseph Smith Johnston. H.
Obed Marshall. John C. McLanglin.
J.W. Wentworth. Stephen Winship.
And two or three others whose names time did not preserve. What the marker calls a running fight — and that phrase alone tells you something. These men were moving, fighting, trying.
It wasn't a siege or a stand. It was motion and chaos and the terrible arithmetic of being outnumbered by cavalry on open ground. None of them made it.
Every last one of those named men, and the two or three whose names we'll never know, fell at the forks of the Agua Dulce on that same day Texas declared itself a free republic. The state of Texas erected this marker in 1936, a hundred years on, so that the ground itself would have something to say. Some days in history get the speeches and the signatures.
These men got the creek fork and the cavalry. Remember them anyway.
What the marker says
At the forks of the Agua Dulce fifteen miles southwest of San Patricio fell Dr. James Grant, Major Robert C. Morris, Captain Thomas Lewellen, Dr. Charles P. Heartt, Stephen Dennison, J.T. Howard, Joseph Smith Johnston, H. Obed Marshall, John C. McLanglin, J.W. Wentworth, Stephen Winship, and two or three other Texan volunteers who were killed in a running fight with General Jose Urrea's Mexican Cavalry March 2, 1836. Erected by the State of Texas 1936