Colonel Nathaniel Benton

Benton's wounds came in two wars. He spent two years at West Point before following his mother's family to Texas in 1835, and during the Revolution he accidentally shot himself in the foot and nearly died. After his first wife's death in 1845 he brought their son, Benjamin Eustace, to Guadalupe County, tried the California goldfields in 1849 and came back disappointed. In 1855, rangering under James Hughes Callahan, he saw his son badly wounded in the eye. He lost his right arm as a Confederate cavalry officer and afterward served Seguin as county judge and schoolteacher.

What the plaque says

Colonel Nathaniel Benton Col. Nathaniel Benton, born in Tennessee 1814, came to Texas in 1835, served in the army, 1836, Texas Ranger, 1858, Confederate Officer, 1861, died in 1872. His wife, Jane Harris Benton, born in 1836, died in 1862. 1936

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — 12 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 — 14 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.
• 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.
• Natural Bridge Caverns — 23 mi
  The largest known cavern in Texas, found in 1960 by four college cavers under a ranch family's land, entered beneath a 60-foot limestone bridge and still growing.

More markers nearby

• Texas Lutheran College — 0.4 mi
• Juan Seguin School — 0.5 mi
• Black Education in Seguin — 0.6 mi
• Second Baptist Church of Seguin — 0.8 mi