DUANE
Duane's take
The marker's got the story, and here's my telling of it — the life of Nicholas D. Labadie, as the official record lays it out. Now, some lives take a straight road from start to finish.
And then there's the life of Nicholas Descomps Labadie — a man who began in Canada in 1802, trained for the priesthood in Missouri, and then thought better of it and switched to medicine. That right there tells you something about the man. He was not one to drift.
He was one to *decide*. By 1831, he had made his way to Texas — and Texas, as you might imagine, had plenty of use for a trained surgeon. He took a post at Anahuac, serving as post surgeon, which was about as frontier as frontier medicine gets.
But here's where the story picks up speed. When the Texas Revolution came, Labadie didn't just tend the wounded from a safe distance. He served in the Second Regiment of Texas Volunteers — as surgeon *and* infantryman.
The man was carrying a scalpel and a rifle, both. And then came San Jacinto. At San Jacinto, when Santa Anna surrendered to Sam Houston, it was Nicholas Labadie who stood between them and interpreted that surrender.
Think about what that moment was. The battle that turned the tide. The general who had kept a republic from being born, now defeated — and the words that sealed it had to pass through one man's voice.
That man was Labadie. After the revolution, he moved his family to Galveston and became a prominent physician and business leader. He was a strong supporter of the first local Catholic Church and the charity hospital — two institutions that tell you where a man's heart lives.
He served Galveston and Texas for a long, long stretch. And in 1867, after all of it — the priesthood he didn't take, the medicine he chose, the revolution he helped finish, the city he helped build — Nicholas Descomps Labadie died of pneumonia. Not on a battlefield.
Not with any fanfare. Just a man, at the end of a life that was fuller than most people get to imagine.
What the marker says
Nicholas D. Labadie Nicholas Descomps Labadie was born in Canada in 1802. In Missouri, he trained for the priesthood and later changed to the study of medicine. In 1831, he moved to Texas, serving as post surgeon at Anahuac. He served in the Second Regiment of Texas Volunteers as surgeon and infantryman during the Texas Revolution and, at San Jacinto, interpreted Santa Anna's surrender to Sam Houston. He moved his family to Galveston and became a prominent physician and business leader. He was a strong supporter of the first local Catholic Church and the charity hospital. After long service to Galveston and Texas, he died of pneumonia in 1867. Recorded - 2002