Caldwell County

Caldwell has been called the Paul Revere of the Texas Revolution: before the fight at Gonzales in October 1835 he rode from Gonzales to Bastrop to call men to arms. His nickname came from his spotted whiskers. After the signing on March 2, 1836, the convention sent him with a courier to the army to report on its condition and the enemy's movements. Lamar made him a ranger captain in 1839. Captured with the Santa Fe expedition of 1841 and imprisoned in Mexico, he came home to help defend San Antonio in 1842.

What the plaque says

Caldwell County A part of De Witt's Colony, 1825-1836. A part of Gonzales County to 1848. First settlements were on Plum Creek and the San Marcos River. Created March 6, 1848; organized August 7, 1848. Named in honor of Mathew Caldwell, "Old Paint," 1798-1842, soldier-statesman. Signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, Commander of the Texas Rangers. Lockhart, the county seat.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lockhart Courthouse Square — steps away
  A cotton-era courthouse town named the Barbecue Capital of Texas, built near the 1840 Plum Creek fight that followed the killing of Comanche leaders at peace talks.
• Spring Lake and the Meadows Center — 15 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.
• McKinney Falls State Park — 21 mi
  Limestone falls on Onion Creek inside Austin, where people camped under a rock overhang for thousands of years and a financier of the Texas Revolution built his stone ranch house.
• Gruene Historic District — 28 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.

More markers nearby

• Susanna Dickinson Hannig - Messenger of the Alamo — steps away
• Battle of Plum Creek — 0.2 mi
• Dr. D. Port Smythe — 0.4 mi
• Bethel Primitive Baptist Church — 8.7 mi