Near This Site Stood a Town Hall

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, somewhere around here — right in this stretch of Austin County — there once stood a building that saw more Texas history walk through its doors than most places ever dream of. A town hall, built about 1830.

Plain as the prairie, maybe. But what happened inside those walls was anything but ordinary. The First Convention of Texas met there.

That was 1832. Then they came back — the Second Convention, 1833. Two gatherings that shook the ground beneath the boots of everyone who attended.

And they weren't done yet. The Consultation of 1835 followed, and after that, the provisional government set up shop right there and functioned in that building until March 2, 1836. You know that date.

Of course you do. That's the day the Republic of Texas declared its independence — but that declaration came at Washington on the Brazos, not here. By then, things had gotten complicated in ways that don't leave room for sentiment.

The Mexican army was advancing. There was no time to debate what to do with the town, with the hall, with everything those walls had witnessed. On March 29, 1836, the building was burned.

The whole town went with it. Burned to keep it from falling into the hands of the advancing Mexican army. That's not a campfire story with a happy ending — that's a people making an impossible choice, torching the very rooms where they had argued and deliberated and dared to imagine a republic, so that no one else could have them.

The State of Texas erected a marker here in 1936 to make sure you wouldn't drive past this spot without knowing what stood here once, and what it cost to make sure it stood for Texas, and nothing else, until the very end.

What the marker says

Built about 1830 in which were held the First and Second Conventions of Texas, 1832 and 1833, and the Consultation of 1835 the provisional government functioned here until March 2, 1836. When the Republic was formed at Washington on the Brazos the building was burned with the town, March 29, 1836, to prevent its falling into the hands of the advancing Mexican army. Erected by the State of Texas 1936