Historical Marker
Dr. Benjamin Briggs Goodrich
Anderson, Grimes County · Texas
Erected 1932
The stone gives Goodrich's offices; his road to them ran through four states. He studied medicine in Baltimore, practiced in Vicksburg, Tuscaloosa and Tallahassee, then went back to Alabama and served a term in its legislature. He reached Texas with his brother John Calvin Goodrich on April 30, 1834. At the 1836 convention, one of four delegates from the Municipality of Washington, he took down each member's age, birthplace and the state he had come from, a roll of the men who made the declaration. He later settled near present Anderson, where he and Serena raised nine children.
What the plaque says
Dr. Benjamin Briggs Goodrich [front] Born in Brunswick Co, Va. February 24, 1799, Died at Anderson, Texas, November 16, 1860. His wife Serena Crothers Born in Barren County, Ky. May 11, 1807, Died April 27, 1884. Erected by the State of Texas [back] Dr. Goodrich was a member of the Consultation at San Felipe in 1835 and a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence at Washington March 2, 1836.
Where it stands
30.48763, -96.00493 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Fanthorp Inn State Historic Site — 1.3 miA cedar-log dogtrot cabin of 1834 on the road through Anderson that grew into a seventeen-room inn and post office for travelers of the Republic, kept by one family until 1976.
- Navasota — 8.4 miA railroad and cotton town where the La Bahia Road crossed the Navasota River, scarred by an 1865 explosion and yellow fever, and the home ground of the songster Mance Lipscomb.
- Star of the Republic Museum — 14 miA star-shaped museum of the Republic of Texas years, 1836 to 1846, built at Washington-on-the-Brazos after a Brenham campaign and opened on March 1, 1970.
- Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site — 14 miThe townsite on the Brazos where delegates met in a cold, unfinished hall in March 1836 to declare Texas independent, with Independence Hall rebuilt and Anson Jones's Barrington farm worked as in 1850.