DUANE
Duane's take
The official marker tells it this way, and I'm gonna give it the room it deserves. Now, some men seem to find trouble the way a lightning rod finds a storm — not looking for it, exactly, but there it is. Major Robert Simpson Neighbors was that kind of man.
He was born in Virginia on November 3, 1815. Whatever Virginia had in mind for him, Texas had other plans. By 1836 he was serving in the Army of Texas — right there in the thick of it, during the fight that would define a republic.
That alone would be enough for most men's stories. But Neighbors kept going. In 1842, he was captured by General Woll.
Let that sit for a second. Captured. Not a footnote — that is a chapter all its own, the kind of thing that either breaks a man or proves something about him.
Apparently it proved something. Because by 1845, Robert Simpson Neighbors was back in the field, this time as a U.S. Indian agent.
A man working the ground between governments and peoples, carrying whatever weight that work demanded. He died on September 14, 1859. The State of Texas erected this marker in 1936 — because some lives, the ones that bend through armies and captivity and the long, complicated work of keeping peace, have a way of outlasting the men who lived them.
What the marker says
Major Robert Simpson Neighbors who served in the Army of Texas, 1836 * Captured by General Woll, 1842 * U. S. Indian agent, 1845 * Born in Virginia, November 3, 1815 * Died September 14, 1859 Erected by the State of Texas 1936