Andrew Jackson Sowell

Sowell's family came to the DeWitt Colony in 1829 and were the first Anglo settlers near Walnut Springs, where they were first to raise corn successfully. He fought at Gonzales in 1835, then at Concepcion and in the Grass Fight. In February 1836 he volunteered for the Alamo and went out with Byrd Lockhart to buy cattle and supplies at Gonzales, and could not return. The 1841 Alamo monument honored him as a defender, and he was believed dead. He later rode as a Ranger at the Council House Fight, Plum Creek and Salado Creek.

What the plaque says

Andrew Jackson Sowell Star and Wreath Born in Tennessee 1815; came to Texas about 1829; served in the Army of Texas; a courier from the Alamo, he left the fortress just before it fell to hurry reinforcements and supplies; died about 1882. His wife Lucinda Turner Sowell, born 1827 - died 1883. Erected by the State of Texas 1956

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — 14 mi
  The hilltop where Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels raised the Adelsverein's headquarters in 1845, now the museum and archive of the German colony that became New Braunfels.
• Gruene Historic District — 15 mi
  A cotton town on the Guadalupe that the boll weevil emptied, rescued in the 1970s by a kayaking architecture student, with a dance hall that says it has never closed.
• Palmetto State Park — 21 mi
  Dwarf palmettos, bogs and a spring-fed oxbow on the San Marcos River, with CCC stonework from the 1930s, a swamp an hour from Austin and San Antonio.
• Spring Lake and the Meadows Center — 22 mi
  The headsprings of the San Marcos River, among the longest-inhabited places in North America, once an amusement park with a swimming pig and now seen from glass-bottom boats.

More markers nearby

• Henry Eustace McCulloch — steps away
• Tiemann School — 1.4 mi
• Juan Seguin — 1.7 mi
• Juan Nepomuceno Seguin — 1.7 mi