John Crittenden Duval

Duval grew up in Tallahassee and was studying at St. Joseph College in Bardstown when he left late in 1835 to join his brother Burr's company; Burr was killed at Goliad. Afterward John studied engineering at the University of Virginia, returned to Texas by 1840 as a surveyor and rode with Bigfoot Wallace in Jack Hays's rangers in 1845. He opposed secession yet served as a Confederate private, declining a commission. J. Frank Dobie called him the first Texas man of letters, for Early Times in Texas and The Adventures of Bigfoot Wallace.

What the plaque says

John Crittenden Duval, escaped the massacre March 27, 1836 and was the last survivor of Fannin's army to die. Born in Kentucky in 1816. Died in Fort Worth, Texas, January 15, 1897

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• 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 Cemetery — 0.6 mi
  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 — 0.6 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.
• LBJ Presidential Library — 0.7 mi
  A ten-story travertine archive on the University of Texas campus holding 45 million pages from a presidency of civil rights laws, the War on Poverty and Vietnam.

More markers nearby

• Swante Palm — steps away
• Susanna W. Dickinson — steps away
• Andrew Jackson Hamilton — steps away
• Texas Land Commissioner, Johann Jacob Groos — steps away