John Jackson Tumlinson, Jr. was born 1804 in North Carolina. When his father was killed by Indians in 1823, John and his brother Joseph Tumlinson, together with other settlers, tracked and killed the guilty parties. John and his brothers Joseph, Andrew, and Peter Tumlinson spent their lives defending Texans from depredations by Indians and Mexicans. John was one of eight Tumlinson men who participated in the Texas Revolution. In 1835 as first lieutenant in Robert M. Coleman’s company he participated in the battle of Gonzales and the Siege of Béxar. Under orders of the provisional government to defend settlers from Indian raids he organized another company of rangers who defended what is now known as Tumlinson Blockhouse. Tumlinson served until August 1836, when he resigned. He died in 1853.

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Carl Ludwig Socrates “Louis” von Roeder was born 1806 in Prussia. He was a junior barrister at Nieheim near Höxter when he and two brothers and a sister were chosen to go to Texas in advance of the family to file a claim in Stephen F. Austin’s colony. He served in the revolutionary army from November 3 to December 13, 1835, and participated in the Siege of Béxar. He rejoined the war effort on March 1, 1836, fought at the battle of San Jacinto, and remained in service until June 1. He died July 19, 1840.

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Silvestre De León was born 1802 in Texas. He served as third alcalde and with his brother-in-law Plácido Benavides was a captain of the militia defense against hostile Karankawas, Tonkawas, and Comanches. Silvestre joined his brother Fernando De León, brothers-in-law Plácido Benavides and José M. J. Carbajal, and John J. Linn in gathering local support for the Texas revolt against Antonio López de Santa Anna. De León contributed provisions, livestock, and military equipment to the Texas army and joined Benavides’s company of thirty Mexican rancheros who participated in the Siege of Béxar in December 1835. Upon the occupation of Guadalupe Victoria by Gen. José de Urrea, De León was arrested by the Mexican army as a traitor; he was released after the Texan victory at San Jacinto but then fell victim to the severe prejudice directed against all Texans of Mexican descent. Forced to flee with the De León, Carbajal, and Benavides families to Louisiana, he lost his land, livestock, and most possessions to fortune hunters, though he later resettled in Victoria County. While returning from selling horses, mules, and cattle in Louisiana he was ambushed, murdered, and robbed in 1842.

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Erastus “Deaf” Smith was born 1787 in New York. Although his loyalties were apparently divided at the outbreak of the Texas Revolution, when a Mexican sentry refused to allow him to enter San Antonio to visit his family, Smith joined Stephen F. Austin’s army, which was then besieging the town. On October 15, Charles Bellinger Stewart wrote to Austin that Smith had learned that the troops of Gen. Martín Perfecto de Cos were “disaffected to the cause which they are serving”. Stewart assured Austin that he knew Smith well and found him to be “perfectly disinterested” and trustworthy “to any extent his abilities and infirmity may warrant”. After reporting to Richard R. Royall, president of the council at San Felipe, who found him to be “very importantly usefull”, Smith returned to Austin’s army and took part in the battle of Concepción on October 28, 1835. He was responsible for the discovery of the Mexican supply train involved in the Grass Fight. During the Siege of Béxar, Smith guided Col. Francis Johnson’s men into the town. On December 8 he was wounded on top of the Veramendi Palace at almost the same moment that Benjamin R. Milam was killed at its door. Smith, whom Governor Henry Smith called “well known to the army for his vigilance and meritorious acts”, remained with the army despite his severe wounds, “as his services as a spy cannot well be dispensed with”.

He served as a messenger for William B. Travis, who considered him “‘the Bravest of the Brave’ in the cause of Texas”. Smith carried Travis’s letter from the Alamo on February 15, 1836. On March 13 Gen. Sam Houston dispatched Smith and Henry Karnes back to San Antonio to learn the status of the Alamo garrison. “If living”, Houston reported to Thomas Jefferson Rusk, Smith would return with “the truth and all important news”. Smith returned with Susanna W. and Angelina E. Dickinson. Houston first assigned Smith to the cavalry but later placed him in charge of recruits with the rank of captain. During the San Jacinto campaign he captured a Mexican courier bearing important dispatches to Antonio López de Santa Anna, and on April 21, 1836, Smith and Houston requisitioned “one or more axes”, with which Houston ordered Smith to destroy Vince’s Bridge, reportedly to prevent the retreat of the Mexican army. Smith accomplished the mission and reported to Houston before the battle of San Jacinto.

It was to Smith that Houston entrusted Santa Anna’s order to Gen. Vicente Filisola to evacuate Texas. After San Jacinto, General Rusk continued to send Smith out as a scout, and after having been absent from the army for the first two weeks of July he was incorrectly reported as captured by the Mexicans. He resigned his commission in the army but raised and commanded a company of Texas Rangers that on February 17, 1837, defeated a band of Mexicans at Laredo. Soon thereafter he resigned from ranger service and moved to Richmond.

He died in Richmond at the home of Randal Jones on November 30, 1837. On hearing of his death, Sam Houston wrote to Anna Raguet, “My Friend Deaf Smith, and my stay in darkest hour, Is no more!!! A man, more brave, and honest never, lived. His soul is with God, but his fame and his family, must command the care of His Country!” A monument in Smith’s honor, paid for by the Forty-first Legislature, was unveiled at his grave in Richmond on January 25, 1931. Smith was the father-in-law of Hendrick Arnold, a free black who served in his spy company. Deaf Smith County is named in his honor.

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Meriwether Woodson “Poker” Smith was born circa 1807. At Harrisburg on June 4, 1835, he and fifty-seven others signed an agreement to assemble in Harrisburg on June 6, elect officers, and proceed to Anahuac to attack the Mexican garrison there. Notations on the document made after the garrison’s capitulation at the end of the month indicate that he decided against participating in the attack. He did, however, carry Travis’s account of the event from San Felipe to Henry Smith in Columbia.

He represented Harrisburg at the Consultation in the fall of 1835, and on his motion on November 12, 1835, Sam Houston was elected major general of the armies of Texas. Two days later he moved that the Consultation adjourn and that all members who were able to do so should repair to San Antonio to assist in the siege. On December 12, 1835, Smith, James W. Fannin, Jr., and other “citizens of Matagorda and its vicinity” addressed a recommendation of port officers for the port of Matagorda to Governor Henry Smith and the General Council. He served in the army during the Texas Revolution from October 1, 1835, to April 5, 1836. He participated in the Siege of Béxar in December 1835 and on December 20 of that year 1835 was elected a first lieutenant of the Legion of Cavalry by the General Council. He was sent to recruit men in Alabama and left there in mid-February 1836. In March sixteen recruits deserted in New Orleans because He had not been allotted sufficient funds for provisions to get them to Texas. Pursuant to Houston’s orders, He positioned his thirty-two-man force on the prairie east of the Brazos opposite Thompson’s Ferry in late March and early April. He was then suffering from a lingering illness that he had contracted while recruiting. He tendered his resignation on April 5, 1836, due to his illness, and sent twenty-six of his men to join Houston’s force. He died in Harrisburg on July 26, 1837.

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