Wyly Martin

Martin belonged to the Peace party and disavowed Travis's actions at Anahuac, but he signed the declaration against Santa Anna's Centralist regime in November 1835. At Bexar that December he drew a pen-and-ink sketch of Travis, the only known portrait of him made from life. In April 1836 he was given forty-six men to watch four Brazos crossings, and he was angry at the size of the command; after he gave it up he became an outspoken opponent of Houston. At sixty-five he was the oldest senator in the republic's Sixth Congress.

What the plaque says

Wyly Martin Scout under Gen. Wm. Henry Harrison, 1813; served under Gen. Andrew Jackson, War of 1812; alcalde, San Felipe de Austin; delegate to the conventions of texas, 1832-33; member of the Consultation, 1835; captain of a company in the Army of Texas, March 7 to May 15, 1836; chief justice of Fort Bend County, 1838-41; born in Georgia, 1776; died April 2, 1842. Erected by the State of Texas 1936

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Brazos Bend State Park — 17 mi
  Oak and pecan bottomland, lakes and alligators on the Brazos River 45 miles from downtown Houston, with the museum's George Observatory in the woods.
• The Menil Collection — 24 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.
• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — 24 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.
• Rothko Chapel — 24 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

• Fort Bend — 0.3 mi
• Erastus ("Deaf") Smith — 0.4 mi
• Site of the Home of Mirabeau B. Lamar — 0.4 mi
• Constantine W. Buckley — 0.4 mi