DUANE
Duane's take
Now, I'm gonna tell you what the official marker says about Colonel James Clinton Neill — and it doesn't waste a single word, so neither will I. This man was born in North Carolina, way back in 1790. Came to Texas in 1831, which means by the time things started getting truly serious in this republic, Neill had already been here long enough to know exactly what the stakes were.
And the stakes got very serious, very fast. December of 1835 — the fifth through the tenth, to be exact. Six days of storming and capture at Bexar.
Neill was there. Right in the thick of it. That's the kind of man we're talkin' about — not the kind who hears about the fight later, but the kind who's already inside it.
Then comes April 20, 1836. One day before San Jacinto. There was a skirmish — a hard, sharp little fight that history sometimes lets slip in the shadow of what followed — and Neill was wounded in it.
Not after. Not during the famous battle itself. The day before, in the skirmish preceding it.
He survived that wound. He survived Bexar. He survived all of it.
And then, quietly, with no dramatic last stand recorded on any marker, Colonel James Clinton Neill died — about 1845. That word "about" does a lot of heavy liftin'. Some men leave a precise date on the calendar.
Others just... recede into the land they fought for. Neill was that second kind.
What the marker says
Born in North Carolina in 1790; came to Texas in 1831; participated in the storming and capture of Bexar; December 5 to 10, 1835; wounded April 20, 1836 in the skirmish preceding the Battle of San Jacinto; died about 1845