DUANE
Duane's take
The official marker tells it this way, and I'm just here to make sure you hear it right. Now, most folks know the big dates — March 2, 1836, the Declaration of Independence, the constituting of the Republic of Texas. But every fire worth rememberin' started somewhere smaller, somewhere quieter, somewhere most people drove right past without knowing what happened there.
Near here, at a cotton gin — William Millican's cotton gin, to be precise — something got set in motion on July 17, 1835. Think about that for a second. A cotton gin.
Not a courthouse, not a grand hall with marble columns. A working gin, out near the confluence of two rivers, the Lavaca and the Navidad. That's where the pioneers of those bottomlands gathered for what history would come to call the Famous Lavaca-Navidad Meeting.
They needed a chairman for the proceedings, and the man who stood up was James Kerr — the founder of Gonzales himself. The Rev. S.
C. A. Rogers served as secretary, keeping the record straight while Kerr kept the room in order.
What they did that day was adopt resolutions. Formal, written, public resolutions protesting the mistreatment of Texas colonists by the government of Mexico. No muskets fired, no battle lines drawn — just men putting their names behind words that said: this is not right, and we will say so out loud.
The marker calls it an early formal public protest. A forerunner. And that word forerunner is doing a lot of heavy lifting, because less than seven months later, on March 2, 1836, Texas declared its independence and a Republic was constituted.
Somebody had to go first. Somebody had to stand up in a cotton gin on the Lavaca and say the quiet part loud. William Millican had a cotton gin.
James Kerr had a gavel. The Rev. Rogers had a pen.
And on July 17, 1835, near these two rivers, they had a meeting that the Republic of Texas would not have been the same without.
What the marker says
At the cotton gin of William Millican, near here, on July 17, 1835, occurred the significant Lavaca-Navidad Meeting, held by pioneers living near the two rivers. James Kerr, the founder of Gonzales, was chairman and the Rev. S. C. A. Rogers, secretary. The meeting adopted resolutions protesting mistreatment of Texas colonists by the government of Mexico. This early formal public protest was a forerunner of the Declaration of Independence on March 2, 1836, and the constituting of the Republic of Texas.