James Clinton Neill

The Handbook of Texas traces Neill's war back to Gonzales, where a Texas settler later wrote that he "fired the first gun for Texas" in October 1835. At Bexar he earned Edward Burleson's praise, and in January 1836 James Bowie wrote that no other man could have held men at the Alamo under such neglect. Neill spent ninety dollars of his own money on medicine at Gonzales on March 6. After San Jacinto the republic granted him a league of land, and in 1845 Congress gave him a $200 yearly pension for his wound.

What the plaque says

James Clinton Neill Born in 1790 in North Carolina, James Clinton Neill came to Texas in 1831 with Stephen F. Austin's third colony. He settled in Milam County, and represented his neighbors at the Convention of 1833. On September 28, 1835, Neill entered the Texas Army as Captain of artillery, and was promoted to Lt. Colonel in December. He was in charge of artillery at the Siege of Bexar, and soon thereafter was appointed by Sam Houston to the commandancy of San Antonio and the Bexar District, including the fortifications at the Alamo. When he received word in February of illness in his family, Neill left the Alamo in the command of William B. Travis, and so was not among the defenders who lost their lives on March 6. In charge of an artillery unit with Sam Houston's army in April, Neill was wounded in a skirmish on April 20, one day before the Battle of San Jacinto. He was appointed Indian Commissioner in 1844. Neill was living in present Navarro County when it was created from Robertson County in 1846. He and two partners donated land for the county seat. James Clinton Neill and his wife, Margaret Harriet, were the parents of three children. Neill died in March 1848, and is buried in Grimes County. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Petroleum Industry Park — 1.0 mi
  The pipes and drilling tower mark where a city water well struck oil on June 9, 1894, the start of the first Texas field to produce oil and gas in important quantities.
• Blind Lemon Memorial Cemetery — 20 mi
  The Freestone County grave of the Texas blues singer Blind Lemon Jefferson, who recorded for Paramount in Chicago from 1926 and died there in December 1929.
• Ellis County Courthouse — 30 mi
  J. Riely Gordon's courthouse of 1897 in Pecos red sandstone and pink granite, with twenty-one carved stone faces and two cornerstones left by a quarrel over its building.

More markers nearby

• Judge John S. Callicutt — 0.2 mi
• Rosenberg Family — 0.3 mi
• Joseph S. Cullinan, Pioneer in Texas Oil — 0.3 mi
• Fire Station No. 2 — 0.5 mi