DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, picture a man born in Kentucky, 1806. You don't know yet what he's going to do with that life, but the frontier has a way of finding certain people — or maybe certain people have a way of finding the frontier.
His name was Robert D. McAnelly, and by 1835 he had made his way to Texas. That right there is a story all on its own — the roads, the rivers, the sheer will it took to get to a place that wasn't even a state yet, wasn't even quite a republic yet.
But McAnelly didn't come to sit still. Somewhere along the way, he fell in with the Texas Army on its march toward San Antonio. Just fell right in step with them.
And what that army was headed toward was no small thing. December 5, 1835. You want to talk about a date that matters — that's one of them.
McAnelly was part of the storming party that entered Bexar that day. Not watching from a distance. Not hearing about it later.
Part of the party that went in. And then — here's what gets me every time — he lived. He made it through that winter, through whatever else Texas threw at him across the decades that followed, and he died in Guadalupe County in 1888.
Same Texas he'd fought for, more than fifty years after he'd first set foot on her soil. Robert D. McAnelly.
Kentucky born, Texas made, Guadalupe County buried. That marker was erected by the State of Texas in 1962, and it's the least they could do.
What the marker says
Star and Wreath Born in Kentucky, 1806; came to Texas in 1835; joined the Texas Army on its way to San Antonio; one of the storming party who entered Bexar, December 5, 1835; died in Guadalupe County, Texas, 1888. Erected by the State of Texas, 1962