John Wheeler Bunton

After serving in the First Congress, Bunton went home to Tennessee to marry Mary Howell. Sailing back with about 140 friends and enslaved people on the Julius Caesar, they were captured off the Texas coast by Mexican forces and held at Matamoros for three months. In the Third Congress he is credited with the bills that established the Texas Rangers, a postal service and the judiciary. In Hays County he ran cattle under the Turkey Foot brand. He was so tall, his family said, that Walnut Creek had to be dammed deep enough to baptize him.

What the plaque says

John Wheeler Bunton Born in Sumner County, Tenn., John Wheeler Bunton migrated to Texas in 1833. To secure freedom for his new homeland, he signed the Texas Declaration of Independence, helped draft a constitution, and fought in the Siege of Bexar and the Battle of San Jacinto. A lawyer, rancher, and owner of extensive lands, Bunton served in the 1st and 3rd congresses of the Republic of Texas. He lived in Austin and Bastrop counties before settling in Hays County near Mountain City. Originally buried in this county, Bunton was reinterred in the state cemetery in Austin in 1932. (1985)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Spring Lake and the Meadows Center — 7.3 mi
  The headsprings of the San Marcos River, among the longest-inhabited places in North America, once an amusement park with a swimming pig and now seen from glass-bottom boats.
• Lockhart Courthouse Square — 14 mi
  A cotton-era courthouse town named the Barbecue Capital of Texas, built near the 1840 Plum Creek fight that followed the killing of Comanche leaders at peace talks.
• McKinney Falls State Park — 16 mi
  Limestone falls on Onion Creek inside Austin, where people camped under a rock overhang for thousands of years and a financier of the Texas Revolution built his stone ranch house.
• Barton Springs Pool — 20 mi
  A three-acre pool in the bed of Barton Creek, fed by the fourth-largest spring in Texas at 68 to 70 degrees, and shared with an endangered salamander found almost nowhere else.

More markers nearby

• Kyle — steps away
• Kyle Auction Oak — steps away
• Kyle Cemetery — 2.1 mi
• Beef for the Confederacy — 2.5 mi