William Robert Smith

The plaque credits Smith with protecting a prisoner from a lynch mob at Sherman. That prisoner was George Hughes, a Black farmhand accused of assaulting a white woman. On May 9, 1930, thousands gathered at the Grayson County courthouse, set it on fire, and broke open the vault where Hughes had been held. His body was dragged to the Black business district, hanged and burned, and most of the district's businesses were destroyed. Rangers under Captain Frank Hamer used tear gas but did not save him. The Handbook does not name Smith.

What the plaque says

William Robert Smith (July 20, 1888- July 20, 1952) Served in Co. D, Texas Rangers (1927-1933), under Captains W. W. Sterling, Will Wright, and Albert Mace. Hazardous duties included patrolling the Rio Grande for smugglers, protecting a prisoner from a Sherman lynch mob, dipping cattle for tick fever under death threat in Brazoria County, and investigating "hot oil" scandals at Kilgore. Deputy Sheriff of Cameron County (1933-1940), police lieutenant in Brownsville (1940-1946). An effective lawman. (1972)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• De León Plaza — 1.0 mi
  The central plaza of Guadalupe Victoria, the only predominantly Mexican colony in Texas, founded by Martín De León in 1824 and taken from his family after 1836.
• Museum of the Coastal Bend — 1.4 mi
  Victoria College's museum of thirteen thousand years on the middle Texas coast, from Clovis hunters and Karankawa potters to La Salle's lost Fort St. Louis and the first ranches.
• Fannin Battleground State Historic Site — 16 mi
  The open prairie east of Goliad where Fannin's retreating column formed a square short of the Coleto Creek timber on March 19, 1836, and surrendered the next day.
• Fannin Memorial Monument — 25 mi
  The 1938 pink granite memorial over the common grave of Fannin's men, shot on the roads out of Goliad on Palm Sunday 1836, the grave itself found again only in the 1930s.

More markers nearby

• John Howland Wood — steps away
• Evergreen Cemetery of Victoria — 0.3 mi
• Victor Marion Rose — 0.3 mi
• Darwin M. Stapp — 0.3 mi