DUANE
Duane's take
The way the marker tells it, here's the story of William Millican's gin house — and what happened inside it. Now, a cotton gin isn't the kind of place you'd expect to change history. It's dusty, it's loud, and it smells like raw fiber and hard work.
But right here in Jackson County, at the site of the first cotton gin in the county, something gathered that was a whole lot bigger than cotton. On July 17, 1835, a meeting was called. They named it the Lavaca-Navidad Meeting, and the people who showed up weren't there to talk about the harvest.
They were Texas colonists, and they were fed up with the way the Mexican government had been treating them. So they did what people with grievances and enough backbone do — they put it in writing. Resolutions were adopted that day.
Formal ones. The kind with weight behind them. James Kerr sat as chairman of the meeting, keeping order while the room sorted out its outrage into something with shape and language.
S.C.A. Rogers served as secretary, setting down the words that would survive. And here's where you feel the ground shift beneath you: that meeting, those resolutions, that first formal public protest — the marker calls it a forerunner of the Declaration of Independence of March 2, 1836.
Think on that a moment. Before the declaration, before the formal break, there was a gin house in Jackson County where colonists stood up and said: enough. The State of Texas remembered.
This marker was erected in 1936 — a hundred and one years after that July afternoon — to make sure you remember too.
What the marker says
First cotton gin in Jackson County. Here was held the memorable "Lavaca-Navidad Meeting" on July 17, 1835. At this meeting resolutions were adopted protesting against the treatment of the Texas colonists by the Mexican government. James Kerr was chairman of the meeting and S.C.A. Rogers, secretary. The first formal public protest was a forerunner of the Declaration of Independence, March 2, 1836. Erected by the State of Texas 1936