Joseph Baker

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna give it to you straight from the record. Now, some men arrive in Texas and leave only a footnote. Joseph Baker was not that kind of man.

He was born in Maine, in 1804. Maine. About as far from the Texas sun as you can get and still be on the same continent.

But somewhere along the way, Baker made his way south and west, and when he arrived, Texas was not yet Texas. It was still a fight waiting to happen. On October 10, 1835, at San Felipe de Austin, Baker was one of the founders of a newspaper called The Telegraph and Texas Register.

You want to talk about timing. That wasn't a quiet moment in history. Texas was on the edge of something enormous, and here was a man helping to put words to it, helping to get the story out.

And then he didn't just write about the fight. He went and joined it. Baker was a soldier at San Jacinto.

He was there. After that, the Republic had work to do, and Baker kept doing it. In 1836, he served as the first chief justice of Bexar County.

First. Not second, not somewhere in the middle. First.

Then in 1837, he took a seat in the Congress of the Republic of Texas. All of that, and Joseph Baker died in Austin, Texas, on July 11, 1846. Born in Maine in 1804, gone in Austin in 1846.

The State of Texas erected this marker in 1936, making sure nobody forgets the man from Maine who helped found a newspaper, fought at San Jacinto, and built the legal and legislative foundations of a brand new republic. That's a life that earned its marker.

What the marker says

Born in Maine 1804. Died in Austin, Texas, July 11, 1846. One of the founders of "The Telegraph and Texas Register" at San Felipe de Austin, October 10, 1835. A soldier at San Jacinto. First chief justice of Bexar County, 1836. Member of the Congress of the Republic, 1837. Erected by the State of Texas 1936