Archives for November 2014

George Washington Barnet was born 1793 in South Carolina. Barnett’s name appears on the petition of July 2, 1835, requesting permission from the “political chief” of the Mexican government to form the new Municipality of Washington. On July 20, 1835, he was chosen captain of one of four volunteer companies under Col. John Henry Moore, organized to attack the Tawakoni Indians. He joined Capt. James G. Swisher’s Washington Company on October 8, was elected second lieutenant on October 27, and was discharged on December 22, 1835, after participating in the Siege of Béxar. He spent the spring of 1836 at San Augustine transporting supplies for United States troops under Edmund P. Gaines. Between July 3 and October 3, 1836, he was enrolled in William W. Hill’s company of rangers. On October 8, 1848, while hunting deer fifteen miles west of Gonzales, he was killed by marauding Lipan-Apache Indians.

John Rees (Jack the Fifer) was born circa 1801 in Wales. He volunteered for service in Texas with the Second Company of the New Orleans Greys in 1835. He took part in the Siege of Béxar from December 5 through 10, 1835, and remained with his company when camp was established at Goliad the next month. In March 1836 a numerically superior Mexican force under Gen. José de Urrea accepted the surrender of the troops at Goliad from Col. James W. Fannin, Jr. Of approximately 400 prisoners of war, Rees was one of the twenty-eight who escaped the massacre ordered by Mexican president Antonio López de Santa Anna. He was recaptured but was released in April or May 1836, after the Mexican defeat at San Jacinto. He rejoined the army and took an honorable discharge on October 10.

Handbook of Texas Online

Benjamin Franklin Fry was born 1800 in Georgia. Fry joined the Texas army in October 1835 and took part in the Siege of Béxar. He was the second lieutenant of the artillery company garrisoning the Alamo under James C. Niellqv and served as a private in Capt. William S. Fisher’s Company I of Col. Edward Burleson’s First Regiment, Texas Volunteers, at the battle of San Jacinto. After the revolution Fry served as a private in Capt. T. Epperson’s company of the Second Regiment, Second Brigade, Texas Militia. He died on March 10, 1872, at the Bastrop County community of Jeddo, where he is buried.