I am just back from a trip to Kentucky for a business conference. While we were there, La Patrona and I stopped in a little town called Bardstown because she thought it was cute and wanted to go shopping. After a bit of wandering around town, we stumbled upon a park that has a bunch of frontier buildings found in Kentucky.
Being a history nut, I made her look around with me and we found this monument to the Kentucky Mustangs, a ‘regiment’ of volunteers for the Texas Revolution who were executed at Goliad.
I thought it was interesting that you can’t get away from Texas even in Kentucky.
The Kentucky Mustangs
A volunteer company, the nucleus of which originated in Bardstown, Nelson County, Kentucky, took a heroic but tragic part in the Texas War of Independence--a part which such Kentucky historians as Richard and Lewis Collins seem to have overlooked completely. The volunteers left Bardstown in the fall of 1835, and by March found themselves at Goliad, on the San Antonio River about eighty-five miles southeast of the city of San Antonio. They could not know that the place name of Goliad would join with two others in Texas history as the great names associated with Texas independence---the Fall of the Alamo, the Battle of San Jacinto, and the Massacre of Goliad.
Shortly after the fall of the Alamo, 6 Mar 1836, Col. Fannin began withdrawing his Texas forces. They left Goliad and retreated about ten miles to the east, where, after some sniper fire, the Texas forces was attacked by a Mexican force with artillery. At a parlay, the Mexicans offered terms of capitulation which the American understood as providing that they were to be treated as prisoners of war according to the usages of civilized nations and eventually paroled and returned to the United States.
Col. Fannin conferred with his officers and decided to accept the terms, over the objections of Capt. Burr Duval, who supposedly cried out, "Sir! you have not only signed your death warrant, but the death warrants of all of us." Nevertheless, Fannin signed the capitulation, the Texans stacked arms, and were marched back to Goliad under guard. During their captivity, John C. Duval and Richard Brashear, the first sergeant of the company, recognized a Mexican lieutenant as A. Martinez, their former classmate from St. Joseph's College in Bardstown. Martinez, who won honors for English rhetoric at St. Joseph's in 1832, had been a roommate and particular friend of Brashear. During the week of their captivity the prisoners had a number of chats and shared reminiscences of old times with Martinez. Duval said that the last time they saw their Mexican friend, on the morning of Palm Sunday, he had 'an apparent affectionate smile on his countenance' and walked off laughing.
Kentuckians in Texas: Captain Burr H. Duval's Company at Goliad by John B. Thomas Jr.
Captain Duval's Company
(Kentucky Mustangs--First Regiment Volunteers from Bardstown)
Captured and Executed 27 March
Captain Burr H. Duval
Lieutenants Samuel Wilson, William Jefferson Merrifield
Sergeants George Washington Daniel, James S. Bagby, Enoch P. Gaines Chisum, William P. Dickerman
Corporals Norborne B. Hawkins, Abner B. Williams, A. H. Lynd, Richard G. Brashear
James Moss Adams, James S. Batts, Fred J. Bellows, William S. Carlson, Thomas T. Churchill, William H. Cole, John Donohoo, H. M. Downman, George Dyer, Charles Ready Haskell, Edward J. Johnson, James P. Kemp, Adams G. Lamond, James A. McDonald, William Mayer, Harvey Martin, Robert Smith Owings, Robert R. Rainey, Samuel Smith Sanders, Lawson S. Simpson, Lewis Tilson, B. W. Tolover, J. Q. Volckner, William Waggoner
Escaped during massacre 27 March
Thomas G. Allen, John Crittenden Duval, John C. Holliday, William Mason, Charles B. Shain, Augustus V. Sharpe
Spared execution by intercession 27 March
John Van Bibber (ill); Sidney Van Bibber, Ulrich Wuthrich
Spared execution for absence or illness 14-27 March
Dr. William H. Magee
(information from http://www.tamu.edu/ccbn/dewitt/goliadmenframe.htm)
Being a history nut, I made her look around with me and we found this monument to the Kentucky Mustangs, a ‘regiment’ of volunteers for the Texas Revolution who were executed at Goliad.
I thought it was interesting that you can’t get away from Texas even in Kentucky.
The Kentucky Mustangs
A volunteer company, the nucleus of which originated in Bardstown, Nelson County, Kentucky, took a heroic but tragic part in the Texas War of Independence--a part which such Kentucky historians as Richard and Lewis Collins seem to have overlooked completely. The volunteers left Bardstown in the fall of 1835, and by March found themselves at Goliad, on the San Antonio River about eighty-five miles southeast of the city of San Antonio. They could not know that the place name of Goliad would join with two others in Texas history as the great names associated with Texas independence---the Fall of the Alamo, the Battle of San Jacinto, and the Massacre of Goliad.
Shortly after the fall of the Alamo, 6 Mar 1836, Col. Fannin began withdrawing his Texas forces. They left Goliad and retreated about ten miles to the east, where, after some sniper fire, the Texas forces was attacked by a Mexican force with artillery. At a parlay, the Mexicans offered terms of capitulation which the American understood as providing that they were to be treated as prisoners of war according to the usages of civilized nations and eventually paroled and returned to the United States.
Col. Fannin conferred with his officers and decided to accept the terms, over the objections of Capt. Burr Duval, who supposedly cried out, "Sir! you have not only signed your death warrant, but the death warrants of all of us." Nevertheless, Fannin signed the capitulation, the Texans stacked arms, and were marched back to Goliad under guard. During their captivity, John C. Duval and Richard Brashear, the first sergeant of the company, recognized a Mexican lieutenant as A. Martinez, their former classmate from St. Joseph's College in Bardstown. Martinez, who won honors for English rhetoric at St. Joseph's in 1832, had been a roommate and particular friend of Brashear. During the week of their captivity the prisoners had a number of chats and shared reminiscences of old times with Martinez. Duval said that the last time they saw their Mexican friend, on the morning of Palm Sunday, he had 'an apparent affectionate smile on his countenance' and walked off laughing.
Kentuckians in Texas: Captain Burr H. Duval's Company at Goliad by John B. Thomas Jr.
Captain Duval's Company
(Kentucky Mustangs--First Regiment Volunteers from Bardstown)
Captured and Executed 27 March
Captain Burr H. Duval
Lieutenants Samuel Wilson, William Jefferson Merrifield
Sergeants George Washington Daniel, James S. Bagby, Enoch P. Gaines Chisum, William P. Dickerman
Corporals Norborne B. Hawkins, Abner B. Williams, A. H. Lynd, Richard G. Brashear
James Moss Adams, James S. Batts, Fred J. Bellows, William S. Carlson, Thomas T. Churchill, William H. Cole, John Donohoo, H. M. Downman, George Dyer, Charles Ready Haskell, Edward J. Johnson, James P. Kemp, Adams G. Lamond, James A. McDonald, William Mayer, Harvey Martin, Robert Smith Owings, Robert R. Rainey, Samuel Smith Sanders, Lawson S. Simpson, Lewis Tilson, B. W. Tolover, J. Q. Volckner, William Waggoner
Escaped during massacre 27 March
Thomas G. Allen, John Crittenden Duval, John C. Holliday, William Mason, Charles B. Shain, Augustus V. Sharpe
Spared execution by intercession 27 March
John Van Bibber (ill); Sidney Van Bibber, Ulrich Wuthrich
Spared execution for absence or illness 14-27 March
Dr. William H. Magee
(information from http://www.tamu.edu/ccbn/dewitt/goliadmenframe.htm)