Charles Cronea

Cronea's grave is on the one rise that the whole peninsula watches. High Island is a salt dome rising thirty-eight feet above sea level, the highest point on the Gulf between Mobile and the Yucatan. In hurricanes and floods people from miles around have run to it as the only ground above water. Mineral springs drew visitors, and a resort hotel carried guests to the beach on mule-drawn cars until the 1900 storm destroyed the business. Oil came in the 1930s from wells in the marsh, not on the dome. Cronea's cypress house was remodeled in 1972.

What the plaque says

Charles Cronea (January 14, 1805 - March 4, 1893) Born in Marseilles, France, Charles Cronea came to America on a French frigate as a cabin boy in 1818. Soon after, boarding a ship out of Charleston, South Carolina, Cronea and several companions entered the service of Jean Laffite off Galveston engaged in privateering cruises off the coast of Spanish Mexico. After nearly a year under the command of Capt. James Campbell, he left the ship when it was burned at the mouth of the Mermentau River in Louisiana. Cronea married Amanda Richey in 1830. By 1835 he had settled in the Mexican municipality of Jefferson. The Texas revolution broke out that fall. Cronea joined Capt. David Garner's company of frontier farmers and participated in the Siege of Bexar. Some records say Cronea's company joined with the forces of Sam Houston in 1836, and that during the Battle of San Jacinto, Cronea was guarding prisoners nearby. In 1846 he entered the U. S. Army in the war against Mexico under Gen. Zachary Taylor. Later a farmer in Sabine Pass, Cronea married Mary Louisa Elender in 1845. They moved their family to High Island in 1876. Cronea was awarded 1,280 acres as a surviving soldier of the Texas revolution in 1885. Cronea is buried in this cemetery. (1996)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• 1892 Bishop's Palace — 29 mi
  Nicholas Clayton's stone house on Broadway for the railroad lawyer Walter Gresham, later home to Galveston's Catholic bishops and one of the most admired Victorian houses in the country.
• Texas Seaport Museum and the Elissa — 29 mi
  An iron barque launched in Aberdeen in 1877 that called at Galveston twice, ended up smuggling in the Adriatic, and was bought back from a Greek scrapyard to sail again from Pier 22.
• The Strand — 30 mi
  Five blocks of iron-front brick buildings near the harbor that were once called the Wall Street of the Southwest, emptied after 1900 and brought back by preservationists from the 1960s.
• 1859 Ashton Villa — 30 mi
  A brick Italianate house on Broadway, built with enslaved labor in 1859, whose lawn has held Galveston's Juneteenth commemoration of General Orders, No. 3 every year since 1979.

More markers nearby

• St. Paul United Methodist Church — 17 mi
• Winnie-Stowell — 18 mi
• Town of Winnie — 18 mi
• Graydon — 19 mi