DUANE
Duane's take
Now this here comes straight from the official record — let me tell you what the State of Texas itself saw fit to put in stone back in 1936. Thomas Pliney Plaster. Even the name sounds like a man who left a mark on things.
Born in Tennessee, June the sixth, 1804. He came into a world that was still young and loud and unsettled, and by all accounts he found his way to the loudest, most unsettled corner of it he could manage. Because Thomas Pliney Plaster was one of the men who manned the Twin Sisters at the Battle of San Jacinto.
Now if you know anything about Texas history — and if you're riding these roads, I suspect you do — you know the Twin Sisters weren't just any cannons. They were a pair, matched and deadly, and the men who worked them stood at the very center of one of the most consequential fights this land has ever seen. Thomas Pliney Plaster was one of those men.
He was there, hands on iron, when it all came to a head at San Jacinto. And if you thought that was enough adventure for one lifetime, well — Thomas Pliney Plaster was not that kind of man. He came back for more.
He served again as a veteran of the Mexican War, 1847. Two wars. Two separate calls, and he answered both of them.
He died March the twenty-seventh, 1861 — just as another terrible conflict was drawing its shadow across the whole country. He didn't live to see what came next. The State of Texas erected this marker in 1936, making sure nobody forgot the man who stood beside one of the Twin Sisters and held his ground.
Some men pass through history quiet. Thomas Pliney Plaster passed through it with cannon smoke on his hands.
What the marker says
Who manned one of the Twin Sisters cannon at the Battle of San Jacinto and was a veteran of the Mexican War, 1847 Born in Tennessee June 6, 1804 Died March 27, 1861 Erected by the State of Texas 1936