Patton, William Hester

William Hester Patton was born 1808 in Kentucky. He moved to Brazoria County, Texas, in March 1832. As an early advocate of Texas independence, he served as a sergeant in Capt. John Austin’s company at the battle of Velasco in June 1832. He enlisted in the Texas army on September 28, 1835, at the beginning of the revolution; commanded a company at the Siege of Béxar, December 5 through 10, 1835 and was appointed to receive the weapons surrendered by Gen. Martín Perfecto de Cos’s army. On December 21, 1835, Gen. Sam Houston appointed Patton acting assistant quartermaster with the rank of lieutenant and ordered him to Velasco to supply arriving volunteers and forward them to Houston’s army. Patton was still at San Antonio on February 5, however, when he and the other officers of the Alamo garrison signed a memorial requesting that the soldiers under their command be represented at Washington-on-the-Brazos by Samuel A. Maverick and Jesse B. Badgett. On March 13, 1836, Patton was elected captain of the Fourth Company of Col. Sidney Sherman’s Second Regiment, Texas Volunteers, also known as the Columbia Company. Patton was attached to Houston’s staff as an aide-de-camp with the rank of major, and his company was led at the battle of San Jacinto by Lt. David Murphree. After the battle Patton was given custody of Antonio López de Santa Anna and was one of the commissioners selected to escort him to Washington, D.C. On July 14, 1836, Patton was one of eighteen officers who testified against President David G. Burnet on charges of usurpation and treason. In 1837 Houston appointed him quartermaster general of the Army of the Republic of Texas, and his nomination was confirmed on May 22. On August 26, 1837, Patton resigned from the army and settled in Béxar County. An energetic and aggressive Indian fighter, Patton was severely wounded in an Indian fight on Leon Creek near San Antonio on October 28, 1838. He was murdered at his home on the San Antonio River, some thirty miles below the city of San Antonio, by Mexican bandits on June 12, 1842. Patton’s West Columbia sugar plantation was purchased after his death by James Stephen Hogg and is now maintained by the state of Texas as the Varner-Hogg Plantation State Historical Park.

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