Arthur Pendleton Bagby

Arthur Bagby's father was twice governor of Alabama, a U.S. senator who supported the annexation of Texas, and Polk's minister to Russia. The son graduated from West Point at nineteen, the youngest ever commissioned a second lieutenant of infantry, and served at Fort Chadbourne in 1853. He studied law and moved to Gonzales in 1858. He then fought for the Confederacy, which Texas's own declaration of causes tied to slavery. After the war he was briefly assistant editor of the Victoria Advocate. His son W. T. Bagby, called the Lion of Lavaca, led the antiprohibition fight in the legislature.

What the plaque says

Arthur Pendleton Bagby (May 17, 1833 - February 21, 1921) Star and Wreath Native Alabamian, last surviving member of West Point class of 1852, lawyer, colonel in 7th Texas Confederate Cavalry, participant in Sibley's New Mexico campaign, commanded volunteer land troops on board Confederate ship Neptune during Battle of Galveston, wounded and commended for role in engagement near Berwick Bay in Louisiana, led brigade at battles of Mansfield and Pleasant Hill in Louisiana, major-general in Confederate Army. Buried in city cemetery, Hallettsville. 1963

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lavaca County Courthouse — 0.4 mi
  A limestone Romanesque courthouse of 1897-99 on the square of a town founded by a widow trader, in a county seat that once printed the Socialist Party's state paper.
• Spoetzl Brewery — 14 mi
  The brewery a Czech and German railroad town started in a tin shed in 1909, run through Prohibition by a Bavarian who had brewed in Cairo, and then by his daughter.
• St. Mary's Church of the Assumption (Praha) — 18 mi
  The mother parish of the Czech settlements around Flatonia, a stone-fronted church of 1895 whose ceiling Gottfried Flury turned into a turquoise garden, with an August 15 feast since 1855.
• Nativity of Mary, Blessed Virgin Catholic Church (High Hill) — 19 mi
  A red brick Gothic Revival church of 1906 in a German farm settlement, where two San Antonio painters spent 1912 faking marble columns and stone vaults on wood.

More markers nearby

• General John W. Whitfield — steps away
• Sacred Heart Catholic Church — 0.2 mi
• Hallettsville — 0.3 mi
• 50th Anniversary of Battle of Galveston — 0.4 mi