DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Robert M. Coleman.
Born in Kentucky in 1799, and if you're keepin' score, he didn't live past 1837 — but friend, what he packed into those years would wear out a lesser man twice over. He came to Texas in 1832, and Texas, being Texas, wasted no time puttin' him to work. By December of 1835, Coleman was commanding a company of volunteers at the Siege of Bexar — that's San Antonio — and the fighting ran from the fifth to the tenth of that month.
Cold work. Hard work. The kind of work that tells you real quick what a man is made of.
Then comes 1836, and Coleman shows up not once but twice in the history books. First, he's a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, and he signs the Texas Declaration of Independence. His name, right there on the document.
But he doesn't stop to admire his own signature, because that same year he's at the Battle of San Jacinto serving as aide-de-camp to General Sam Houston himself. Standing at the right hand of the man commanding the whole fight. After all that — the sieges, the conventions, the declarations, the battle that changed everything — Coleman kept on.
He rode as a Texas Ranger, fighting Indians on the frontier. The man did not know how to sit still. Robert M.
Coleman: Kentucky-born, Texas-made, and by 1837, gone — but the county you're drivin' through right now carries his name, and that's a kind of permanence that doesn't need anybody's help lastin'.
What the marker says
(1799-1837) Born in Kentucky. Came to Texas in 1832. Commanded company of volunteers at Siege of Bexar (San Antonio), Dec. 5-10, 1835. Delegate to Constitutional Convention where he signed Texas Declaration of Independence, 1836. Aide-de-camp to Gen. Sam Houston at Battle of San Jacinto, 1836. Later fought Indians as a Texas Ranger. (1966)