Don Bernardo de Galvez

Bernardo de Gálvez was born in Macharaviaya, Spain, on July 23, 1746. From 1777 he secretly supplied American Patriot forces through the New Orleans merchant Oliver Pollock, and the Continental Congress thanked him on October 31, 1778. He took Baton Rouge on September 21, 1779, retook Mobile in March 1780 and captured Pensacola on May 8, 1781. Spain made him viceroy of New Spain in 1785, and he died of typhus near Mexico City on November 30, 1786. Galveston, Texas, carries his name, and Congress made him an honorary American citizen on December 16, 2014.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Cabildo — steps away
  The Spanish town hall on Jackson Square, finished in 1799, where Louisiana changed flags in 1803 and where the state Supreme Court sat in the same room until 1910, Plessy v. Ferguson among its cases.
• The Historic New Orleans Collection — steps away
  A French Quarter museum and research center founded in 1966, whose 2015 Purchased Lives exhibition took on New Orleans' place as the largest slave market in antebellum America.
• New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park — steps away
  A National Park Service unit created in 1994 to tell where jazz came from, with free programs and a visitor center in the French Quarter and park land inside Louis Armstrong Park.
• Congo Square — 0.4 mi
  The 2.35-acre corner of Louis Armstrong Park where, from 1817, New Orleans confined Sunday dancing by enslaved people to one place, and where crowds of hundreds gathered to drum, dance and trade.

More markers nearby

• The Cabildo — steps away
• Upper Pontalba Building — steps away
• David Bannister Morgan — steps away
• Literary Landmark — steps away