DUANE
Duane's take
Now, the marker itself tells this one — and here's my telling of it, straight from the stone. Some men pick a lane and stay in it their whole lives. Thomas Jefferson Gazley was not that kind of man.
He came into the world on January 8, 1801, up in New York — about as far from Texas as a man could be and still be on the same continent. But Texas has a way of calling to people, and Gazley answered. By the time his story was done, he'd worn enough hats to fill a wagon.
Doctor. Lawyer. Soldier.
Legislator. That's not a biography — that's four biographies stitched together and handed to one man. In 1833, he showed up as a delegate to the Second Convention of Texas.
The winds of change were already blowin' across this land, and Gazley was right there in the room where it was happenin'. Then in 1835, when Texas took up arms, he was serving as a physician in the Army of Texas — tending to the wounded, keeping men on their feet through 1836, when everything came to a head. And in that same year, 1836, Thomas Jefferson Gazley put his name on the Declaration of Independence of Texas.
You sign a document like that, and history's got you by the collar for good. But he wasn't finished. In 1837, he rose to Grand Senior Warden of the Grand Masonic Lodge of Texas.
That same year he stepped into the Second Congress, serving through 1838 — making laws for a republic he'd helped breathe into existence. He died on October 31, 1853, in Bastrop County, Texas — the state that the State of Texas itself saw fit to honor in 1936 with a marker bearing his name. New York gave him his birth.
Texas got everything else.
What the marker says
--- front side --- Born in New York, January 8, 1801 * Died in Bastrop County, Texas, October 31, 1853 * Doctor- Lawyer, Soldier, Legislator Erected by the State of Texas 1936 --- back side --- Delegate to the Second Conven- tion of Texas, 1833 * Physician in the Army of Texas, 1835 - 1836 * Signer of the Declaration of Independence, 1836 * Grand Senior Warden of the Grand (Masonic) Lodge of Texas, 1837 * Member of the Second Congress, 1837 - 1838