San Antonio Mutual Aid Association

San Antonio fought its war in workshops. The city's women formed the Southern Defense Aid Society, which employed nearly 850 people, hundreds of them seamstresses, to sew uniforms, the Handbook of Texas says. Maj. Thornton A. Washington set up a government tannery, shoe shop and clothing factory in the city, and he could seize private goods at below-market prices, a threat to local merchants and makers. Quartermasters at San Antonio and Galveston each requisitioned 100,000 yards of cloth for 20,000 uniforms, while the blockade left Texans short of coffee, medicine, clothing and shoes.

What the plaque says

San Antonio Mutual Aid Association Organized Nov. 1862. By Act of Texas Legislature, incorporated 1863. Had store at his site. Its $44,000 capital included $8,000 subscribed by the city for its needy and for families of confederates away in the Civil War. Aim of group was to keep down costs on necessities; Candles, flour, cloth, shoes, coffee. Help was given to 10,000 people. To obtain goods, cotton had to be sold in Mexico. This traffic was so vital that confederate army detailed soldiers to drive association wagons and teams. Other towns had like projects. (1965)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• San Fernando Cathedral — steps away
  The Canary Islanders' parish church on Main Plaza, where Bowie married and Santa Anna raised a red flag, rebuilt in Gothic Revival around the walls of the 1750s church.
• Spanish Governor's Palace — steps away
  The last visible piece of the Presidio San Antonio de Béxar: a presidio captain's house with a 1749 keystone, a century as shops and saloons, and a romantic 1930 restoration.
• Casa Navarro State Historic Site — 0.3 mi
  The adobe and caliche-block home of José Antonio Navarro, a native-born signer of the 1836 declaration, and the last remnant of the Tejano neighborhood called Laredito.
• San Antonio River Walk — 0.3 mi
  A Depression-era park one level below downtown, built because San Antonio refused to pave its river after the 1921 flood, and designed by an architect the project later fired.

More markers nearby

• Vicinity of the Storming of Bexar — steps away
• The Canary Islanders — steps away
• The Casas Reales — steps away
• T. C. Frost and the Frost Bank — steps away