William S. Stilwell

The newspaper notice on this tablet leaves out most of Stilwell's short Texas record. Louis Kemp's sketch says he came to Texas in 1836 and drew bounty land for army service from February 1, 1836, to March 20, 1837, so he seems to have enlisted before he arrived. A service record shows him made captain of artillery on December 27, 1836, while stationed on Galveston Island. The Telegraph gave his age as 28. John Belden became administrator of his estate on September 21, 1837, and his heirs received his San Jacinto donation certificate only in 1850.

What the plaque says

William S. Stilwell A private in Captain Isaac N. Moreland's company of Artillery at San Jacinto. Appointed captain, December 26, 1836. Born in New York 1809; died in Houston September 12, 1837 "Died in this city, on the 12th inst., suddenly, Captain William S. Stilwell, late of the Texian army. The New Orleans and New York papers are requested to notice this." Texas Telegraph

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 0.5 mi
  Ten historic buildings gathered in a downtown park below the skyscrapers, among them the 1870 house of the Reverend Jack Yates, built five years after emancipation.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 1.5 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.
• Emancipation Park — 1.7 mi
  The Third Ward park that freedpeople bought for Juneteenth in 1872, rebuilt in 2017 on Emancipation Avenue and still the center of the city's June 19 celebration.
• Rothko Chapel — 1.7 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.

More markers nearby

• Moses W. Brigham — steps away
• Harvey Homan — steps away
• John Cheevers — steps away
• William Daniel Durham — steps away