James Love

Before Galveston, James Love spent twenty years in Kentucky politics: orphaned young, a volunteer in the War of 1812, a lawyer at Barbourville, speaker of the state House and a member of the Twenty-third Congress from 1833 to 1835. In Texas he stood with Mirabeau Lamar against Sam Houston. In 1842 Houston told militia volunteers such men should be executed as traitors, and Love answered that he would put Houston on a ship to the United States. He argued against secession and then rode with Terry's Rangers. After the war the army removed him from his criminal court bench.

What the plaque says

James Love (1795-1874) A veteran of the War of 1812, James Love, a lawyer, came to Texas in 1837 with his wife Lucy (Ballinger). He helped found Galveston, and was a political ally of Mirabeau b. Lamar. Love served as a delegate to the 1845 Annexation Convention, judge of the district court, and clerk of the United States District Court. During the Civil War (1861-1865) he enlisted in Terry's Texas Rangers. Afterward he served as the first judge of the Harris and Galveston County Criminal Court. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836 - 1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Moody Mansion — 1.0 mi
  A four-story, 28,000-square-foot house on Broadway, finished in 1895, that W. L. Moody Jr. bought just after the 1900 storm and his family kept until Hurricane Alicia in 1983.
• 1859 Ashton Villa — 1.2 mi
  A brick Italianate house on Broadway, built with enslaved labor in 1859, whose lawn has held Galveston's Juneteenth commemoration of General Orders, No. 3 every year since 1979.
• The Strand — 1.4 mi
  Five blocks of iron-front brick buildings near the harbor that were once called the Wall Street of the Southwest, emptied after 1900 and brought back by preservationists from the 1960s.
• Galveston Seawall and the 1900 Storm — 1.5 mi
  The concrete wall along the Gulf that Galveston built after the hurricane of September 8, 1900, which killed between 6,000 and 8,000 people in a city of 38,000.

More markers nearby

• John Bankhead Magruder — steps away
• Major John M. Allen — steps away
• Captain William S. Fisher — steps away
• Warren D. C. Hall — steps away