Historical Marker

Grave of Colonel J. W. Fannin and His Men

Goliad, Goliad County · Texas
Erected 1964

Fannin came to Goliad by a crooked road. Probably born in Georgia in 1804 and raised by his maternal grandfather on a plantation near Marion, he entered West Point in 1819 under the name James F. Walker and left in 1821. He married Minerva Fort, and in 1834 the family moved to Velasco, where his own letters show he traded in enslaved people. In August 1835 he wrote to an army officer in Georgia asking for money and West Point officers for the Texas cause. The burial is marked today by the Fannin Memorial Monument.

What the plaque says

Grave of Colonel J. W. Fannin and His Men After battle of Coleto (March 19 - 20, 1836), where a Texas Army under Col. James Walker Fannin met defeat by Mexicans in superior numbers, the Texas soldiers were held in Presidio La Bahia, supposedly as war prisoners. However, by order of Mexican Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, approximately 400 of Fannin's men were marched out and massacred on Palm Sunday, March 27, 1836. The wounded were shot one by one in the fort compound. Col. Fannin was the last to die. Because of their profession, Drs. J. H. Barnard, J. E. Field and Jack Shackelford were spared; about 25 men were saved by a Mexican woman, "The Angel of Goliad". Approximately 30 escaped by feigning death or by swimming the San Antonio River. The Texans' corpses were stripped and partly burned, but left unburied. This atrocity three weeks after the fall of the Alamo gave Texans part of the battle cry--"Remember the Alamo! Remember La Bahia!"--under which decisive victory was won at San Jacinto on April 21, 1836. Gen. Thomas J. Rusk and the Texan Army afterwards marched here and gathered the bones of Fannin's men from the terrain. From Presidio La Bahia the remains were carried in procession to the grave, and there given a military funeral and burial on June 3, 1836. (1968)

Where it stands

28.64607, -97.38034 · Directions

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