Frances & Benjamin McCulloch

On May 11, 1861, Jefferson Davis made McCulloch a brigadier general, the first general-grade officer commissioned from civilian life. Assigned to Indian Territory, he built the Army of the West at Little Rock and, with Albert Pike, made alliances with the Cherokee, Choctaw and Muscogee (Creek) nations. He beat Nathaniel Lyon at Wilson's Creek on August 10, 1861, but feuded with Sterling Price, so Earl Van Dorn was put over both. At Pea Ridge he was shot while scouting the enemy line, and his successor was killed minutes later. He was reburied at Little Rock and then Austin.

What the plaque says

Frances & Benjamin McCulloch Here Rest Frances Lenoir McCulloch and her son Benjamin McCulloch Two of the sons of Alexander and Frances Lenoir McCulloch * Benjamin and Henry Eustace * were Brigadier Generals in the Confederate Army Frances Lenoir McCulloch was born April 11 * 1780 Died in Ellis County * Texas * May 10, 1866 Benjamin McCulloch was born in Tennessee November 11 * 1811 * * Private in the Battle of San Jacinto April 21 * 1836 * * Killed in the Battle of Elk Horn * Arkansas * March 7 * 1862 While a Brigadier General in the Confederate Army Erected by the State of Texas 1936

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Texas State Cemetery — steps away
  A hill east of the Capitol that began with one general's grave in 1851 and now holds Stephen F. Austin, governors, Barbara Jordan and more than 2,000 Confederate veterans and widows.
• French Legation State Historic Site — 0.3 mi
  A raised pine house built in 1840 and 1841 for France's envoy to the Republic of Texas, who left Austin in a rage over a neighbor's pigs before it was finished.
• George Washington Carver Museum — 0.4 mi
  East Austin's museum of Black history and culture, grown from a segregated branch library moved across town in 1933, with a permanent exhibit on Juneteenth at its core.
• Texas State Capitol — 1.0 mi
  Austin's fourth statehouse, a Renaissance Revival capitol of 1888 that stands 311 feet to its Goddess of Liberty and was restored after the 1983 fire.

More markers nearby

• Hardin R. Runnels — steps away
• William Tom — steps away
• Robert Rankin — steps away
• Bailey Hardeman — steps away