John Howland Wood

Wood's way into Texas was an ordeal. He sailed from New York with other volunteers on November 21, 1835, and the British held the ship's company as pirates for fifty days before they landed at Velasco about March 1, 1836. After San Jacinto he rode with Rusk's army and helped bury Fannin's men. As quartermaster at Victoria he had to take cattle as part pay, and the herd made him a rancher. He married Nancy Clark at Victoria in 1842 and in 1875 built the Bayside house that went on the National Register in 1983.

What the plaque says

John Howland Wood Born in New York, John Howland Wood came to Texas in 1836 and fought in the Texas Revolution. After serving as quartermaster with the Texas Army in Victoria, he settled on a ranch at Black Point (now Bayside) in the 1840s. Wood supplied beef to the U.S. Army stationed at Corpus Christi under Gen. Zachary Taylor. He served as patrol captain in coastal defense during the Civil War and was active in developing the City of Rockport. (1985)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• De León Plaza — 0.9 mi
  The central plaza of Guadalupe Victoria, the only predominantly Mexican colony in Texas, founded by Martín De León in 1824 and taken from his family after 1836.
• Museum of the Coastal Bend — 1.5 mi
  Victoria College's museum of thirteen thousand years on the middle Texas coast, from Clovis hunters and Karankawa potters to La Salle's lost Fort St. Louis and the first ranches.
• Fannin Battleground State Historic Site — 16 mi
  The open prairie east of Goliad where Fannin's retreating column formed a square short of the Coleto Creek timber on March 19, 1836, and surrendered the next day.
• Fannin Memorial Monument — 25 mi
  The 1938 pink granite memorial over the common grave of Fannin's men, shot on the roads out of Goliad on Palm Sunday 1836, the grave itself found again only in the 1930s.

More markers nearby

• Evergreen Cemetery of Victoria — steps away
• Darwin M. Stapp — steps away
• Victor Marion Rose — steps away
• Silvestre De Leon — steps away