Joseph Baker

Baker reached San Felipe de Austin on December 7, 1831, taught school there for three years and in 1835 was secretary of the ayuntamiento, known as Don José. That October he received a quarter league on Fish Pond Creek; a ten-league grant made to him in December was later cancelled by the Republic. He left the newspaper on April 5, 1836, to join the army. He was a charter member of the Texas Philosophical Society and translator to the state, published the Houstonian in 1841-1842, and was Spanish translator in the General Land Office in 1845.

What the plaque says

Joseph Baker Born in Maine 1804. Died in Austin, Texas, July 11, 1846. One of the founders of "The Telegraph and Texas Register" at San Felipe de Austin, October 10, 1835. A soldier at San Jacinto. First chief justice of Bexar County, 1836. Member of the Congress of the Republic, 1837. Erected by the State of Texas 1936

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.
• Texas State Capitol — 0.7 mi
  Austin's fourth statehouse, a Renaissance Revival capitol of 1888 that stands 311 feet to its Goddess of Liberty and was restored after the 1983 fire.

More markers nearby

• Major William Martin "Buck" Walton — steps away
• Texas Land Commissioner, Johann Jacob Groos — steps away
• John Crittenden Duval — steps away
• Swante Palm — steps away