Fiftieth Anniversary Celebration of the American Declaration of Independence

The barbecue at Beason's tested Austin's caution about American loyalties, and the real test came within six months. In November 1826 armed men from Ayish Bayou seized officials at Nacogdoches, and on December 21 Haden Edwards's followers signed a declaration of independence for a republic called Fredonia, flying a red-and-white flag over the Old Stone Fort. Austin sided with the Mexican government. On January 31, 1827, Mexican officers, militia and men from his colony reached Nacogdoches, and the rebels fled across the Sabine. The Cherokee support they had counted on never came.

What the plaque says

Fiftieth Anniversary Celebration of the American Declaration of Independence Most of the "Old Three Hundred" settlers in Stephen F. Austin's first Texas colony in the early 1820s came from the United States and were proud of their Anglo-American heritage. Austin discouraged any display of American loyalties which might anger the Mexican authorities or violate colonization laws. Many customs persisted, however, including observance of July Fourth as American Independence Day. On July 4, 1826, settlers around Beason's Crossing, nucleus of the present town of Columbus, planned a barbecue to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the American Declaration of Independence. No doubt, many colonists traveled long distances for this important gathering. West of the Colorado River in Green DeWitt's Colony, a small group set out from Gonzales on July 2 to attend the barbecue at Beason's. While camped for the night, they were attacked by Indians but managed to escape. Returning to Gonzales, they found their homes plundered and one man killed. The other settlers were visiting at a nearby cabin and escaped the Indian raid. The survivors then proceeded to the safety of older settlements along the the Colorado. (1976)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stafford Opera House — steps away
  A cattleman's bank and theater of 1886 on the Columbus square, in a river town Sam Houston burned in 1836 and a county marked by a long feud and a 1935 lynching.
• Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge — 16 mi
  Ten thousand acres of native coastal prairie northeast of Eagle Lake, kept for a critically endangered grouse, many of whose birds are hatched in captivity and released here.
• Saints Cyril and Methodius Catholic Church (Dubina) — 18 mi
  The church of Texas's first Czech settlement, under a sky-blue painted ceiling that was whitewashed in the 1950s and brought back from faint traces by its own parishioners.
• St. John the Baptist Catholic Church (Ammannsville) — 20 mi
  A wooden Carpenter Gothic church built in 1919 after storm and fire took two before it, its dusty-rose interior painted by an artist whose name was lost for decades.

More markers nearby

• City of Columbus — steps away
• The Colorado County Citizen — steps away
• Dilue Rose Harris — steps away
• Site of Railway Hospital — steps away