DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker at San Patricio sets down for the record — and friend, it is a heavy record. The year is 1836, and Texas is fighting for her life. Two dates on this marker.
Two terrible dates. And the names between them deserve to be spoken aloud. First date: February 27, 1836.
At and near San Patricio, Captain Thomas K. Pearson falls. So does Lieutenant Henry Cooney.
So do Dr. William W. Hoit and Dr.
Gustav Bunsen, Joseph Carpenter, Benjamin Dale, William Williams — and two or three others whose names the marker can only gesture toward, Texan volunteers all, killed in action. The following day, a man named Reverend Father Thomas K. Malloy comes to this ground and buries them here.
That is the kind of sentence that takes a moment to sit with. A priest, the day after a battle, doing what the living owe the dead. Now the second date, and it is worse in its own way: March 27, 1836.
At Goliad. Seven sons of San Patricio perish there — Sergeant John McGloin, Mathew Byrne, John Fadden, Edward Garner, Dennis McGowan, Patrick Niven, Edward Ryan. Men from this very town, this very community.
Gone at Goliad. But the marker holds one more thing, and it cuts a different direction. Two men — Sergeant George Pettuck and Andrew M.
O'Boyle — were spared at Goliad. Not by luck, or at least not luck alone. Through the intervention of Colonel Francisco Garay.
The marker says so plainly. Someone reached in and pulled those two men back from the edge. The State of Texas erected this marker in 1936, a hundred years on, making sure none of these names — not the fallen, not the spared, not the man who buried the dead in the February cold — would quietly disappear into the ground alongside them.
Some markers tell you about progress and prosperity. This one just tells you the names. And sometimes that is exactly enough.
What the marker says
In Memory of Captain Thomas K. Pearson, Lieutenant Henry Cooney, Dr. William W. Hoit, Dr. Gustav Bunsen, Joseph Carpenter, Benjamin Dale, William Williams and two or three other Texan volunteers killed in action at and near San Patricio February 27, 1836 who were buried here next day by Rev. Father Thomas K. Malloy and of Sergeant John McGloin, Mathew Byrne, John Fadden, Edward Garner, Dennis McGowan, Patrick Niven, Edward Ryan, sons of San Patricio who perished at Goliad March 27, 1836 and of Sergeant George Pettuck and Andrew M. O'Boyle who were spared at Goliad through the intervention of Colonel Francisco Garay. Erected by the State of Texas 1936