DUANE
Duane's take
The marker tells it plain, so let me tell it the way it deserves to be told. We're talking about Colonel Edward Miles — born in Natchez, Mississippi, on February 8, 1816, and the man arrived in Texas in 1829. Now think about that for just a second. 1829.
Texas wasn't even a state yet. It was a frontier, a promise, and a whole lot of trouble depending on which direction you were facing. Edward Miles rode straight into all three.
By the time the Texas War for Independence came calling, he was there — at Anahuac, and then at San Jacinto. San Jacinto. That name alone ought to make you sit up a little straighter in your seat.
He wasn't just watching history happen. He was in it. And when the wars kept coming — the Indian Wars, the Mexican Wars, the Civil War — well, Colonel Miles kept answering.
That is not one chapter of service. That is a man who spent what looks like the better part of his life standing in the gap whenever his times demanded it. In 1850, he married Mary Ann Sawyer, and somewhere in between all of that soldiering, he carved out a place for himself in civic and public affairs too — prominent, the marker says, which in Texas in those years meant something.
Edward Miles died on April 1, 1889. He'd come to Texas as a boy and given it just about everything a man can give. Some lives don't need embellishing.
They just need telling.
What the marker says
(Feb. 8, 1816 - Apr. 1, 1889) Came to Texas 1829. Served in battles of Anahuac and San Jacinto in Texas War for Independence and the Indian, Mexican and Civil Wars. Born Natchez, Miss. Married Mary Ann Sawyer, 1850. Prominent in civic and public affairs. Recorded, 1964.