Alfonso Steel

Alfonso Steele is buried in Mexia, though the Handbook of Texas says he died near Kosse in 1911 at a grandson's home. He left Kentucky at seventeen by flatboat, joined volunteers in Louisiana and reached Washington-on-the-Brazos on New Year's Day 1836, where he ground corn for the delegates. At San Jacinto he was wounded in the first volleys and kept fighting, and Sam Houston rode his gray horse until it was shot. He farmed in Montgomery County, then moved in 1844 to land that became Limestone County. The Legislature honored him in 1909.

What the plaque says

Alfonso Steel He was severely wounded in the Battle of San Jacinto and its last survivor. Erected by the State of Texas, 1962

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Confederate Reunion Grounds State Historic Site — 6.2 mi
  Where Limestone County Confederate veterans gathered each summer from 1888, later a water supplier in the Mexia oil boom, now a Texas Historical Commission site on the Navasota River.
• Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery — 7.4 mi
  The Freestone County grave of the Texas blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson, who recorded for Paramount in Chicago from 1926 and died there in December 1929.
• Old Fort Parker — 9.7 mi
  A rebuilt 1830s family stockade near the Navasota River, where a May 1836 attack killed men of the Parker settlement and took five captives, among them nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker.

More markers nearby

• Albert R. Mace — steps away
• First Baptist Church of Mexia — 0.6 mi
• Origin of the Texas State Teachers Association — 0.7 mi
• Town Named for Gen. Jose Antonio Mexia — 0.8 mi