John M. Wade

Wade was a printer first. He set type for Gail Borden's Telegraph and Texas Register, then in 1845 began the Montgomery Patriot, the first newspaper in the town and the county. Its issue of July 2, 1845 advertised a tailor, a cabinet maker and upholsterer, several merchants, including P. J. Willis and Brother, and three doctors, a snapshot of a county seat in its first decade. Wade also worked as deputy surveyor and left that office after 1870, during the administration of Governor Edmund J. Davis.

What the plaque says

John M. Wade (1815-1879) Born in New York City, John Marshall Wade left his home as a youth. On the advice of Sam Houston, he came to Texas in 1835 from the Western Creek Nation in present-day Oklahoma. He joined the Texas army during the War for Independence. At the Battle of San Jacinto, April 21, 1836, he was among the men detailed to fire the "Twin Sisters," a pair of cannons given to the Texas forces by citizens of Cincinnati, Ohio. After the war, he served briefly as assistant secretary to the Senate of the Republic of Texas. A printer by profession, Wade became a typesetter for Gail Borden's newspaper, the "Telegraph and Texas Register." In 1838 he moved to the community of Montgomery and was appointed deputy surveyor for Montgomery county. He participated in the Somervell Expedition against Mexico in 1842. In 1845 he founded a weekly paper, the "Montgomery Patriot," which he later transferred to Huntsville. Returning to Montgomery in 1854, he again became deputy surveyor. He served in the Confederate army during the Civil War (1861-65). From his marriage to Ruth Boston and his later marriage to Virginia Tinsley, Wade had five children. He spent his last years at the home of a daughter in Austin, where he died and was buried in 1879. (1977)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fanthorp Inn State Historic Site — 18 mi
  A cedar-log dogtrot cabin of 1834 on the road through Anderson that grew into a seventeen-room inn and post office for travelers of the Republic, kept by one family until 1976.
• Navasota — 23 mi
  A railroad and cotton town where the La Bahia Road crossed the Navasota River, scarred by an 1865 explosion and yellow fever, and the home ground of the songster Mance Lipscomb.
• Star of the Republic Museum — 28 mi
  A star-shaped museum of the Republic of Texas years, 1836 to 1846, built at Washington-on-the-Brazos after a Brenham campaign and opened on March 1, 1970.
• Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site — 28 mi
  The townsite on the Brazos where delegates met in a cold, unfinished hall in March 1836 to declare Texas independent, with Independence Hall rebuilt and Anson Jones's Barrington farm worked as in 1850.

More markers nearby

• The Old Methodist Churchyard — steps away
• Lake Creek Settlement — steps away
• Charles Bellinger Stewart — steps away
• Town of Montgomery — 0.2 mi