John Fagan

A headstone recorded at this grave names a fight the state plaque leaves out. Carved with the dates 1820 to May 1860, it lists Lipantitlán with Goliad, which would put John Fagan there at about fifteen. On November 4, 1835, some seventy Texans under Ira Westover, Refugio settlers among them, took the fort on the Nueces above San Patricio on parole terms. Recrossing the river, they met the main Mexican force and held a line of trees for thirty-two minutes. Twenty-eight Mexicans were killed; one Texan lost three fingers.

What the plaque says

John Fagan Soldier in the Texas War for Independence at Goliad, 1835-1836. Erected by the State of Texas, 1962.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Goose Island State Park — 0.7 mi
  A bayside park between St. Charles and Aransas bays, home of the Big Tree, the state champion coastal live oak, thought to be more than a thousand years old.
• Fulton Mansion State Historic Site — 6.6 mi
  A French Second Empire house of 1874-77 on Aransas Bay, paid for with hides and tallow, with gas lights, central heat and hot running water no other house nearby had.
• Aransas National Wildlife Refuge — 16 mi
  Blackjack Peninsula's refuge on San Antonio Bay, winter home of the only wild migrating flock of whooping cranes, which fell to about fifty birds and now numbers over five hundred.
• Port Aransas — 22 mi
  The fishing town at the north end of Mustang Island, reached by a free state ferry that crosses the ship channel day and night, with a university marine lab begun in a one-room shack.

More markers nearby

• Stella Maris Chapel — steps away
• Site of the Town of Lamar — 0.5 mi
• Mills Wharf — 1.2 mi
• Site of One of the Homes of James Power — 3.4 mi