Texan Capture of Mexican Dispatches (San Jacinto)

The plaque names the courier's capture but not what the Texans found on him. Ellis Benson, an artillery private, told an interviewer in 1893 that the courier carried the saddlebags of Colonel Travis, killed at the Alamo six weeks earlier, and that papers inside showed Santa Anna meant to cross Buffalo Bayou. Columnist Mike Cox adds that Deaf Smith took the captain's fine clothes and left him his own threadbare coat and holed shoes, and that bilingual soldiers read every letter, love letters included. What became of the saddlebags is not known.

What the plaque says

Texan Capture of Mexican Dispatches (San Jacinto) The San Jacinto campaign in southwest Harris County. After the fall of the Alamo on March 6, 1836, Gen. Sam Houston led the Texan army in retreat from Gonzales. The Mexican army under Gen. Santa Anna followed eastward from San Antonio. On April 14, while Houston's army was north of him, Santa Anna led a division of his army from the Brazos River near present Richmond to Harrisburg. He crossed present southwest Harris County, then an uninhabited prairie, and reached Harrisburg (12 miles east of this site) on April 15. The Mexicans burned Harrisburg on April 17 and continued marching east. Houston's army, arriving at Buffalo Bayou opposite Harrisburg on April 18, found the town in ruins, but did not know the whereabouts of the Mexican army. That day, Texan scouts led by Erastus "Deaf" Smith captured thee Mexicans, including Capt. Miguel Bachiller, a courier, and a guide in this vicinity. The prisoners and their dispatches revealed the location, size, and plans of the Mexican army. With this vital intelligence, Houston intercepted Santa Anna's March on april 20 and defeated his division with a surprise attack on April 21 at the San Jacinto River. The Battle of San Jacinto ended the Texas Revolution and secured the independent Republic of Texas. (1989) Sponsored by the Bellaire Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Menil Collection — 4.5 mi
  John and Dominique de Menil's free museum in Montrose: a grey-sided Renzo Piano building among bungalows, holding antiquities, Surrealism and art of Oceania under natural light.
• Rothko Chapel — 4.7 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — 4.7 mi
  The oldest art museum in Texas, grown from a 1900 schoolroom art league into a campus of Watkin, Mies van der Rohe and later buildings, with Ima Hogg's Bayou Bend up the bayou.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 5.6 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.

More markers nearby

• Bellaire Streetcar Line — steps away
• Bellaire — 0.3 mi
• Teas Nursery Company — 0.8 mi
• Harris County Poor Farm — 1.6 mi