David Porter Richardson

Sam Houston's letters show what the tablet's single line leaves out. In June 1837 Richardson was attesting the president's paperwork, witnessing Houston's sale of a town lot to Dr. D. C. Ker. On August 2 Houston told Anna Raguet that his secretary had a felon, an infection, on his thumb, which left the president with heavier duties, though he expected Richardson to be well soon. Three weeks later he wrote her of his grief, calling Richardson a noble fellow. "He rests upon my land. It was his last desire." The editors of Houston's writings date the death August 16.

What the plaque says

David Porter Richardson Private secretary of President Sam Houston. Died at Houston, August 12, 1837.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 0.5 mi
  Ten historic buildings gathered in a downtown park below the skyscrapers, among them the 1870 house of the Reverend Jack Yates, built five years after emancipation.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 1.5 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.
• Emancipation Park — 1.7 mi
  The Third Ward park that freedpeople bought for Juneteenth in 1872, rebuilt in 2017 on Emancipation Avenue and still the center of the city's June 19 celebration.
• Rothko Chapel — 1.7 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.

More markers nearby

• Mrs. Rebecca Lamar — steps away
• Amos B. Edson — steps away
• Augustus Chapman Allen — steps away
• Gravesite of John Kirby Allen — steps away