General Alison Nelson

Before Meridian, Alison Nelson had been a politician in Georgia. Born in Fulton County in 1822, he served one term in the state legislature and was mayor of Atlanta in 1855. The Handbook of Texas says he served as a brigadier general under Narciso Lopez in Cuba and was in Kansas during the border troubles before moving to Meridian in 1856. The Confederacy promoted him to brigadier general to rank from September 12, 1862. He caught typhoid on September 27, died near Austin, Arkansas, on October 7, and was buried in Little Rock.

What the plaque says

General Alison Nelson (1822-1862) Soldier, statesman and Indian fighter. In his native Georgia, a legislator and mayor of city of Atlanta. General in Cuban liberation forces, 1850. On reaching Texas 1856, joined state troops fighting Indians. Elected 1859 to State Legislature; served as delegate to 1861 Texas Secession Convention. In the Civil War raised, trained and led 10th Regiment Texas Infantry. Sent into defense of Arkansas, repulsed Federal assault on Devall's Bluff, June 1862. Died of illness in camp near Austin, Ark., October 7, 1862. (1964)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Meridian State Park — 3.2 mi
  A 505-acre park in Bosque County where World War I veterans of a Civilian Conservation Corps company dammed Bee Creek in 1933-34 for a 72-acre lake and cut stone buildings around it.
• Bosque Museum — 11 mi
  A Clifton museum holding what it calls the largest repository of Norwegian artifacts in the South and Southwest, with Bosque County finds some 10,000 years old and a log cabin built by the Olson family.
• Cleburne State Park — 24 mi
  A 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps park on the old Chisholm Trail crossing country, with a spring-fed lake, a hand-carved three-tiered spillway and a CCC bridge in Johnson County.
• Dinosaur Valley State Park — 24 mi
  Theropod and sauropod trackways of about 113 million years ago in the bed of the Paluxy River, a National Natural Landmark where R. T. Bird found the first distinct sauropod tracks in 1937.

More markers nearby

• Bosque County — 0.6 mi
• Boyhood Home of John A. Lomax — 1.9 mi
• Site of Clifton Mill — 10 mi
• Captain J. J. Cureton, C.S.A. — 11 mi