de Zavala Plaza

Zavala's first wife, Teresa Correa y Correa, whom he married in Yucatán in 1807, bore three children, among them Lorenzo Jr., who later translated for Sam Houston in his dealings with Santa Anna. After Teresa died in 1831, Zavala married Emily West in New York on November 12, 1831, at the Church of the Transfiguration. She joined him in Toluca and Paris and reached Morgan's Point in December 1835, where her city ways were reportedly not popular. In the 1836 flight she tried to go back for a chest of silverware but turned around and escaped to Galveston.

What the plaque says

de Zavala Plaza Name honors Lorenzo de Zavala, vice president of the Republic of Texas (ad interim, March 17 - Oct. 17, 1836). Born in Yucatan and educated in the seminary of Ildefonso, de Zavala was an ardent liberal who was jailed 1814-1817 for political activities. In prison he learned English and became a medial doctor. In 1821 he was a member of the Cortes in Madrid, Spain, and later was governor of a province of Mexico. After Mexico win independence from Spain, he kept working for democratic reforms. Loyal to the 1824 Constitution of Mexico, he opposed Dictator Santa Anna, and moved to Texas to seek freedom. On March 2, 1836, he signed Texas' Declaration of Independence. Later he signed the Republic of Texas Constitution. Married twice, he had six children. The family honored his memory by keeping alive his ideals after his early death. The Legislature of Texas in 1858 named Zavala County in his honor. Lorenzo de Zavala, many of his descendants, and some of their neighbors and friends were interred in the de Zavala family cemetery, on the plantation across Buffalo Bayou from this site. This plaza is dedicated to the memory of Vice President de Zavala, his family, and others buried in de Zavala Cemetery. (1970)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• San Jacinto Battleground State Historic Site — 0.6 mi
  The 1,200 acres of coastal prairie and marsh where the Texas Revolution ended in eighteen minutes, and the 567-foot shaft of fossil-studded limestone that has stood over them since 1939.
• Space Center Houston — 14 mi
  The visitor center of NASA's Johnson Space Center at Clear Lake, with flown capsules, a shuttle replica riding a 747, and tram tours to Mission Control and a Saturn V.
• Emancipation Park — 17 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.
• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 17 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.

More markers nearby

• Lorenzo de Zavala — 0.6 mi
• Home of Mrs. Margaret McCormick — 2.4 mi
• Texas Army Attacked in Four Divisions — 2.7 mi
• Battle of San Jacinto — 2.7 mi