DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to give it the weight it deserves. Now, the marker for William Gorham doesn't waste many words — but then again, neither did the men who built this state. What it tells you is this: William Gorham served in the Texas Army.
Eighteen thirty-five and thirty-six. That puts him right in the thick of it — the very stretch of time when the whole Texas experiment was hanging by a thread. And when the smoke cleared at San Jacinto, William Gorham was there.
A San Jacinto Veteran. That's not just a title — that's a man who stood on that ground, in that fight, on that day that changed everything. The State of Texas thought enough of that to erect a marker in his honor, back in nineteen sixty-two.
Some stories don't need embellishing. William Gorham served. He fought.
He was at San Jacinto. And Fayette County remembers.
What the marker says
Star and Wreath Served in the Texas Army 1835-36. A San Jacinto Veteran. Erected by the State of Texas, 1962