DUANE
Duane's take
The marker tells it this way, and I'm just the messenger riding shotgun. Now, if you're drivin' through Navarro County and you find yourself wondering how a stretch of Texas earth got its name, the marker standing here has something to say about that. It starts with a man.
And not just any man — the kind the old records describe in two plain lines that hit harder than a paragraph: Lover of liberty. Foe of despotism. That's the whole compass of a life, right there.
His name was Jose Antonio Navarro, and he was born in San Antonio, Texas, on February 27, 1795. What followed was a career that reads like somebody was trying to touch every hinge point in the making of a new country. He served as a member of the Legislature of Coahuila and Texas in 1821 — before Texas was Texas, when it was still a province tied to Mexico.
A decade later, in 1831, he was land commissioner of De Witt's colony. Then land commissioner again for the Bexar District from 1834 to 1835. The man knew the land, and the land knew him.
Then came 1836. You know what happened in 1836. And when it came time to put pen to parchment on the Texas Declaration of Independence, Jose Antonio Navarro was one of the men who signed it.
Think about what that meant — and what it cost to mean it. He wasn't done. Member of the Congress of the Republic of Texas, 1838 to 1839.
Then, in 1841, he rode out as a commissioner of the Santa Fe Expedition. That one didn't go easy, but the marker doesn't flinch from naming him part of it, and neither will we. When Texas moved toward statehood, Navarro was at the Constitutional Convention of 1845.
And then, after statehood came, he served as a senator in the Legislature of Texas from 1846 to 1849. A man threading himself through the full fabric of a changing world. He died January 13, 1871, and was buried in San Antonio — the same city where he had drawn his first breath.
Navarro County bears his name, and the marker says it bears it gratefully. And here's the detail that tends to stop people cold: Corsicana — the county seat right here — was named by Navarro himself, for the isle of his father's birth. Corsica.
The old world folded quietly into the new, in a single name on a Texas map. This marker was erected by the State of Texas in 1936, with funds appropriated by the federal government, to commemorate one hundred years of Texas Independence. A hundred years on, they wanted to make sure you knew whose story helped write those first hundred.
Now you do.
What the marker says
Lover of liberty. Foe of despotism. Born in San Antonio, Texas, February 27, 1795. Died January 13, 1871 and buried there. Member of the Legislature of Coahuila and Texas, 1821; land commissioner of De Witt's colony 1831 and of Bexar District, 1834-1835; signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, 1836; member of the Congress of the Republic of Texas, 1838-1839; a commissioner of the Santa Fe Expedition, 1841; member of the Constitutional Convention of 1845; senator in the Legislature of Texas, 1846-1849. Navarro County gratefully bears his name. Corsicana was named by him for the isle of his father's birth - Corsica. Erected by the State of Texas 1936 with funds appropriated by the federal government to commemorate one hundred years of Texas Independence.