William Dunbar

The Mier expedition grew out of a mutiny. In December 1842, when Alexander Somervell ordered his men home from the Rio Grande, five captains and most of the force refused and chose William S. Fisher to lead them. On December 25 some 261 Texans crossed the river and fought in the streets of Mier until the next afternoon, against forces nearly ten times their size. Short of food, water and powder, they surrendered to Gen. Pedro de Ampudia after a white-flag ruse. Sam Houston then said they had acted without government authority.

What the plaque says

William Dunbar A member of the Mier Expedition, 1842-43. Born in Tennessee, January 1, 1819; died December 20, 1855.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bastrop State Park — 1.2 mi
  The westernmost loblolly pines in the United States, cut off from the East Texas forest by a hundred miles of post oak, burned almost entirely in 2011 and growing back.
• Texas Wendish Heritage Museum — 19 mi
  A museum at Serbin of the Wends, a Slavic people from Lusatia whose congregation of nearly 600 crossed on the Ben Nevis in 1854, losing seventy-three to cholera on the way.
• McKinney Falls State Park — 25 mi
  Limestone falls on Onion Creek inside Austin, where people camped under a rock overhang for thousands of years and a financier of the Texas Revolution built his stone ranch house.
• Lockhart Courthouse Square — 27 mi
  A cotton-era courthouse town named the Barbecue Capital of Texas, built near the 1840 Plum Creek fight that followed the killing of Comanche leaders at peace talks.

More markers nearby

• John Holland Jenkins — steps away
• Robert Love Reding — steps away
• Governor J. D. Sayers — steps away
• Bastrop County — 0.8 mi