George English was born 1808 in Tennessee. He was appointed a first lieutenant by the General Council of the provisional government of Texas on November 29, 1835. He was subsequently promoted to captain and fought at the Siege of Béxar in December 1835. President Sam Houston appointed him captain of a company of mounted gunmen for duty in Shelby County on May 31, 1837, and he continued to serve in this capacity through 1839. He volunteered for military service in the Mexican War, in which he served as a first lieutenant under Capt. John Hall. Though he was an avid opponent of secession, he organized a cavalry company, enrolled in the Confederate Army after the outbreak of the Civil War, and served until July 4, 1863. He died on October 12, 1876. His grave was marked with a Texas Centennial marker in 1936.

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Joseph L. Bennett volunteered and served as a captain under the command of Stephen F. Austin during October–November 1835. As a participant in the Siege of Béxar, he fought at the battle of Concepción. He received an honorable discharge on November 25, 1835, with the intention of returning to the army with another company. About March 1, 1836, he set out with his company for San Antonio, planning to march to the relief of the beleaguered garrison at the Alamo, but upon reaching the Colorado River, he learned of the fall of the fort. Thereupon Bennett joined Sam Houston’s army at Beeson’s Crossing and was commissioned captain on March 12. With the reorganization of the army on April 8 he was elected lieutenant colonel of Col. Sidney Sherman’s Second Regiment of Texas Volunteers. Bennett fought with distinction at the battle of San Jacinto. According to his account in a letter to Houston he actually led the regiment of which Sherman was the nominal commander, while Sherman skulked in “a small island of timber.” On May 27, 1837, Bennett received Houston’s commission as colonel and appointment as commander of a regiment of “mounted gunmen” for the protection of the frontier. In 1842 Bennett raised a battalion for the Somervell expedition, but when most of his men returned to their homes soon after the expedition reached the Rio Grande, he joined the battalion commanded by Maj. Bartlett Sims. When Alexander Somervell ordered the command back into Central Texas, however, Bennett agreed to return and not take part in what became known as the Mier expedition. Bennett died in the fall of 1848.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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