Robert Potter

Potter served in the United States Navy as a midshipman from 1815 to 1821 before studying law. In Texas he enrolled in Thomas J. Rusk's Nacogdoches volunteers in October 1835 but resigned that November to offer his services to the new Texas Navy. At the Convention of 1836 he helped President Richard Ellis with questions of parliamentary procedure and sat on the committee that drafted the Republic's constitution. President Burnet made him commander of the port of Galveston on April 20, 1836. Afterward he refused to sign the treaty with Santa Anna and joined those urging his execution.

What the plaque says

Robert Potter A Signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence First Secretary of the Navy of the Republic of Texas. Born in Granville N. C. in 1800. Died at what is now known as Potter's Point, Marion Co, Texas. March 3, 1842 Erected by the State of Texas [Back of headstone] A Representative in the Legislature of the State of North Carolina Member of the House from North Carolina in the United States Congress Senator in the Congress of the Republic of Texas

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Texas State Cemetery — steps away
  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 — 0.3 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.
• 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 Capitol — 1.0 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

• Thomas Pliney Plaster — steps away
• Capt. John R. Hughes — steps away
• Robert Crudup — steps away
• Dr. Gideon Lincecum — steps away