Archives for November 2014

William S. Brown, Texas Navy officer, a resident of Velasco, joined the revolutionary army in 1835 and took part in the Siege of Béxar. After Martín Perfecto de Cos capitulated, Brown proceeded to Goliad, where he was said to have designed a revolutionary flag displaying a bloody arm, stripes of red and white, and the motto “Independence.” The flag may have been hoisted at Velasco in January 1836. Brown was made captain of the schooner Liberty in January 1836; he was a brother of Jeremiah Brown, captain of the Invincible. On March 3, 1836, William Brown captured the Mexican trading vessel Pelicano near Sisal and got its cargo safely to Matagorda Bay. Because of a quarrel with Charles E. Hawkins, commodore of the Texas Navy, Brown was superseded in command of the Liberty on March 12, 1836. In July he was given another navy commission and was put in charge of the Comanche and the Fanny Butler, two captured Mexican vessels. Later he was commissioned captain of the privateer Benjamin R. Milam, but he died in New Orleans before the ship was ready for service. A eulogy appeared in the Telegraph and Texas Register for August 18, 1838.

Handbook of Texas Online

Darwin Massey Stapp was born 1815 in Kentucky. Stapp joined the Texas army in Jackson County on October 3, 1835, as first lieutenant of John Alley’s company. With this unit he participated in the Siege of Béxar and the Grass Fight. In the summer of 1836 he served in George Sutherland’s company. In 1840 he participated in the battle of Plum Creek. He again enlisted in the Texas army at Texana on March 6, 1842, as a private in Lafayette Ward’s company of Clark L. Owen’s regiment. During the Civil War he was made a brigadier general of the Twenty-fourth Brigade, Texas State Troops, and was charged with the defense of Matagorda Bay and Indianola in late 1861. Stapp died February 28, 1875, and was buried in Evergreen Cemetery, Victoria.

Handbook of Texas Online

Manuel Flores was born circa 1801 in San Antonio. In the fall of 1835 he became a member of the volunteer company organized by his brother-in-law, Juan N. Seguín. This company was composed of San Antonio-area Mexicans who were sympathetic to the Texas colonists’ stand against Antonio López de Santa Anna, president of Mexico. Flores participated in the expulsion of Gen. Martín Perfecto de Cos at the Siege of Béxar in December 1835. The company disbanded but was reorganized in Gonzales during the first week of March 1836, and Flores became Captain Seguin’s first sergeant. He fought in this capacity at the battle of San Jacinto. In the spring of 1842 he again took up arms in defense of Texas; he was a member of the party that pursued the army of Rafael Vásquez after the brief invasion of San Antonio by the Mexicans. He died on December 3, 1868. He has often been confused with the Mexican emissary Manuel Flores, who was killed at the battle of the San Gabriels.

Handbook of Texas Online

Thomas Osborn was born 1812 in Tennessee. His participation in the battles of the Texas revolution began on June 26, 1832, with the battle of Velasco where he served in Capt. Henry Stevenson Brown’s company of eighty men. In October 1835 Osborn was one of 300 volunteers in the Siege of Béxar, and on October 28, 1835, he was with a volunteer detachment of ninety men from Capt. T. F. L. Parrott’s company at the battle of Concepción, where he was badly wounded. In the Goliad campaign of 1836 Osborn and his brother John Lyle Osborn were members of Capt. Albert Clinton Horton’s company in an advance group that was cut off from Col. James W. Fannin’s besieged army. Osborn was not in the battle of San Jacinto, having been detailed to guard Texas families during the Runaway Scrape. Osborn died on May 16, 1883, in Red Rock, Bastrop County, and was buried there.

Handbook of Texas Online