Taylor, Edward, James, & George

The Handbook of Texas gives the brothers a plain beginning to their war. Sons of Anson and Elizabeth Taylor, they were picking cotton for a Captain Dorsett on a farm near Liberty when the Texas Revolution began, and when the job was done they left to join the army. Edward, the eldest, was born in Tennessee about 1812. The Handbook adds a caution: some evidence suggests the three died in the Goliad massacre rather than at the Alamo, but their names appeared on a list of Alamo casualties a week before the Goliad executions took place.

What the plaque says

Inscriptions on the monument are: across top - "I shall never surrender or retreat." Travis, Edward, James, George sons of Anson Taylor, died at the Alamo March 6, 1836. Taylor County was named for these gallant men. Erected by John Hudnall Chapter of the U.S. Daughters of 1812, with the cooperation of the Taylor County Commissioners Court. (1955)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Frontier Texas! — 0.3 mi
  Abilene's multimedia museum of the frontier as the settlers told it, beside the Texas and Pacific tracks the town was built on, and the official visitor center for the Texas Forts Trail.
• Buffalo Gap Historic Village — 12 mi
  The 1880 stone courthouse and jail of the county seat Abilene took away, with about twenty old buildings from around West Texas gathered around it since 1956.
• Fort Phantom Hill — 14 mi
  A field of lone stone chimneys north of Abilene, left by the fire after the Army left in 1854, later a stage stop and a buffalo-hide town of more than 500 people.
• Abilene State Park — 17 mi
  A pecan-shaded park on Elm Creek in the Callahan Divide south of Abilene, with red sandstone CCC buildings, a summer pool, a bird blind and yurts under the trees.

More markers nearby

• 45th Infantry Division at Camp Barkeley — steps away
• The Texas & Pacific Railway: First Railroad Across West Texas — 0.2 mi
• Abilene Reporter-News — 0.3 mi
• James Harrison Parramore — 0.8 mi