Name: Seguin, Texas
Address: Seguin, TX

Seguin, TX RoadyGoat

Seguin's story is tied to the land and the river. That gentle rise in elevation, those rolling hills, they might not seem like much, but they were enough to make this a key spot on the old El Camino Real. Being on that trail, that ancient road, meant trade. It meant Seguin, even back in 1838 when it was founded and named for the Tejano revolutionary Juan Seguín, was always a place where things came together. Agriculture took root in the fertile soil near the Guadalupe, and later, manufacturing followed. The river, of course, is central to it all – some even whisper about lost Confederate gold buried somewhere along its banks, a legend that adds a little shimmer to the water. Today, you'll find people drawn to Seguin for different reasons. Maybe they're looking for a taste of that Texas small-town life, the kind where Friday night lights mean something, where the Seguin Matadors face off against the New Braunfels Unicorns in a rivalry that runs deep. But if you ask a local why people stay, why Seguin is what it is, they'll tell you it's about the community. It's about that sense of connection that's been here since the first traders set up shop along the El Camino Real, a resilience that saw them through even the hard times of the Depression. It's a place where the past is always present, flowing just like the Guadalupe.

Seguin, TX RoadyGoat

Seguin sits right on the old El Camino Real, and that history as a crossroads has shaped us.

Seguin, TX RoadyGoat

Seguin sits right on the old El Camino Real, and that's really the key to understanding its story. Even before it was officially Seguin, that trail made it a crossroads. When the town was formally established in 1838 and named for Juan Seguín, the Tejano revolutionary, it wasn't starting from scratch. It was building on something already there. That river, the Guadalupe, was a lifeline and a boundary, and those gentle rolling hills, sitting at 525 feet, have seen a lot of history pass over them. Of course, not all the history was easy. The Great Depression hit the farmers around Seguin hard – agriculture is such a huge part of the local economy, and when that suffers, the whole town feels it. There are stories passed down, too, whispers of buried Confederate gold somewhere near the Guadalupe River, a reminder of the Civil War's long shadow. But Seguin has always found a way to keep going, to adapt. From its early days as a trade hub to its modern mix of manufacturing and agriculture, Seguin has always been a place where things are made and traded, a place with its own identity. And you know, even something like the Seguin High School Matadors and their rivalry with the New Braunfels Unicorns — that’s part of the story too, a sense of place and belonging that runs deep.

Claiborne West

1832

Star and Wreath Born in Tennessee 1803; delegate to the Convention 1832 and the Consultation, 1835. Member of the Council, Provisional. Government of Texas. Delegate to the Convention, March 2, 1836 and signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence; soldier and Congressman Republic of Texas. Died September 10, 1866. Erected by the State of Texas 1962

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Rogers, John Harris

1887

John Harris Rogers, captain in the Texas Rangers , was born outside of Kingsbury in Guadalupe County, Texas, on October 19, 1863, to Pleasant William Miles Rogers and Mary Amanda (Harris) Rogers. He served in a number of positions in law enforcement during four decades of service, including as a U. S. marshal, chief of police in Austin, and a Texas Ranger. Because Rogers served at the same time as captains James A. Brooks , William McDonald , and John R. Hughes , he is considered one of the four "Great Captains" in Texas Ranger history. The 1870 census listed the family in Guadalupe County, where Rogers's father was a stock raiser. Young Rogers initially planned to go into farming but found a different calling in law enforcement. He headed to West Texas and in 1882 joined the Rangers as a private, serving in Company B. He later reenlisted in Company F under Capt. Joe Shely. He was promoted to sergeant in 1889 and to captain on January 1, 1893. Rogers lived through several important moments in Ranger history. For example, he took part in the manhunt for fugitive Fred Conner and other members of the Conner family who had broken Fred out of jail in March 1887. As the Rangers neared the Conner hideout, shots rang out and Rogers was hit twice; both were flesh wounds and he recovered. Rogers also participated in ending the "Fence Cutting Wars" in Brown County ( see FENCE CUTTING ). He was again involved in a shootout with suspected fence cutters. He was also wounded while enforcing a quarantine during a smallpox epidemic in Laredo in 1898-99 ( see LAREDO SMALLPOX RIOT ). The quarantine mainly affected Laredo's Mexican-origin population, as racist assumptions of the time erroneously equated Mexican-origin people with poor hygiene. Sheriff L. R. Ortiz assisted the Rangers in a search for smallpox patients, while former Laredo police officer Agapito Herrera, who in part led the quarantine resistance, opposed the search. After a tense confrontation between these men, shots rang out. Herrera died in this shootout. Rogers was wounded in the shoulder, which left him with a lifelong injury. As a result of his wound in Laredo his arm was shortened, after which he used a specially constructed Winchester rifle. Perhaps Rogers's greatest claim to fame was in the search and ultimate apprehension of Gregorio Cortéz in 1901. He led Texas law enforcement and a posse of about 300 men on a lengthy manhunt after Cortez killed three law officers in two different shootouts. Rogers was sent in to take charge of the posse. Cortéz eluded the posse for ten days and rode hundreds of miles. Rogers doggedly and carefully tracked Cortéz to a ranch near the border. He and Customs Inspector Bill Merriman found Cortéz asleep and took him into custody on June 22, 1901, without incident. Ranger Rogers, described as a "man of principle" whose demeanor was modest and understated, was heralded as an effective law officer. The Gregorio Cortéz example exemplifies his commitment to law enforcement and restraint from extralegal activities that happened with regularity in the Southwest. A large number of Texans, including some in the posse, wanted to lynch Cortéz. The fact that Rogers took Cortéz into custody remains noteworthy. Capt. John H. Rogers resigned his commission from the Rangers on January 31, 1911, in protest to Governor Oscar Colquitt 's opposition to prohibition . After his resignation he was appointed as a deputy U. S. marshal in El Paso. On April 1, 1913, President Woodrow Wilson appointed him United States marshal for the Western District of Texas. He held this position for eight years. He served as Austin's chief of police in 1923-24. On May 15, 1927, he returned to the Texas Rangers and was commissioned captain of Company C. He served in this position until his death. Deeply religious, Rogers joined the Presbyterian Church , was a church elder, and contributed 10 percent of his income to the church organization. About 1892 he married Harriett Burwell Roge

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Wilson Potteries

1857

The vessels made at the Wilson potteries of Guadalupe County represent both the westward extension of Old South cotton culture and the interaction of different cultural groups in mid-nineteenth-century Texas. During the last half of the nineteenth century the three potteries in the community of Capote, near Seguin, supplied a wide area of Central Texas with locally made stoneware necessary for both food storage and preparation. In 1857 John McKamey Wilson , a Presbyterian minister and educator, established the first Wilson pottery, which produced utilitarian alkaline-glazed and salt-glazed stoneware through the Civil War years. Rev. Wilson was not a potter, so the initial pottery operations were probably conducted by his slave potters, Hiram, James, George, and Andrew Wilson. Between 1860 and 1866 a White potter, Marion J. Durham, from Edgefield, South Carolina, and a Black potter named John Chandler came to work at the site. Chandler might have been a free man of color or may have belonged to Durham. Durham and Chandler may have influenced the other potters, because most of the pottery found at the earliest Wilson pottery resembles that of the celebrated Edgefield District of South Carolina. The Edgefield District was a center of pottery-making in the South in the early nineteenth century. Many scholars attribute the creation of the southern alkaline-glazed pottery tradition to this period and place. This complex of technologies included the use of an alkaline-based slip glaze, long-tunnel kilns known as "groundhog kilns," and ovoid utilitarian forms sometimes decorated with slip trailing. This southern pottery tradition spread westward with migrating potters, both free and slave, who were largely trained in Edgefield. The pottery contrasted sharply with the salt-glazed stoneware tradition that dominated the border South states northward into the Ohio valley. The site of the first Wilson pottery near Seguin has most of the characteristics of this southern pottery complex, including green, alkaline-glazed potsherds in a large waste pile and the long, narrow surface indications of a groundhog kiln. However, salt-glazed potsherds also littered the site. The presence of the salt glaze, which was the preferred stoneware glaze from the Mid-Atlantic southern states and states farther north, suggests the presence of a potter from that area. This potter could have been one of the slaves or perhaps Isaac Suttles, an Ohioan who worked with M. J. Durham and Thomas Chandler in 1870, and who could have been present at the first pottery. The wide variety of vessel forms made at this first Wilson site attests to the isolated frontier conditions in Central Texas. Forms such as chamber pots, churns, bowls, pitchers and storage jars were made to satisfy local needs. The Civil War disrupted the lives of all the potters in Capote. After the troops went home and the slaves were freed, the potters at the Wilson potteries relocated to two separate shops in 1869. One was run by M. J. Durham, with John Chandler and Isaac Suttles, and the other was run by the former slaves, Hiram, James, and Andrew Wilson. H. Wilson and Company was one of the rare examples of a pottery owned and operated by a Black man in the nineteenth-century South. Its product combined attributes that can be traced to the earlier Wilson pottery, such as vessel shape and the use of a groundhog kiln, along with some idiosyncratic additions, such as a new type of rim and handle. Hiram and Company only made salt-glazed ware and always marked the vessels with the company's name, a practice not followed by most contemporaries. Hiram Wilson assumed a role in Capote similar to that of his former master in Seguin. He started a church and a school, as well as a pottery. The separation of the Black Wilsons into a freedman's community may have been a response to postwar violence and general hard feelings evident in reports of Freedmen's Bureau officers in Seguin. Two instances of violence again

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Benton, Nathaniel

1835

Nathaniel Benton, Texas Ranger, Confederate cavalry officer, county judge, and teacher, was born in 1811 in Tennessee, son of Nathaniel and Dorothy M. (Branch) Benton. He attended two years of training at West Point, but after his father's death, he joined his mother and her family en route to Texas in October 1835. They settled near Waco on the Brazos River. During the Texas Revolution , Benton and his brother Alfred fought in Sam Houston 's army. Benton's career with Houston's army was cut short when he accidentally shot himself in the foot and almost died. His brother Alfred went on to fight at San Jacinto . In 1837 Benton traveled back to Tennessee to marry Harriet McCulloch, the sister of Texas revolutionary Ben McCulloch . They settled in Dyersburg, Tennessee. They had one son, Benjamin Eustace. His wife died in 1845, and he and his son moved to Guadalupe County, Texas. In 1849 he moved to California seeking fortune in gold but was disappointed by that state's prospects and returned to Texas. In 1855, while Benton and his son were Texas Rangers under the command of Capt. James Hughes Callahan , they engaged in a battle with Lipan Apaches and Kickapoos . Benjamin was severely wounded in the eye but later recovered. Sometime in the 1850s Benton married for a second time to Jane Harris, a native of Tennessee, and they lived near Seguin in Guadalupe County. She died in 1861. Once the Civil War erupted, Benton raised a company of Texas mounted riflemen. Two days later, this company was mustered into service in the Confederate Army as Company B of the Thirty-Sixth Texas Cavalry . Shortly after being mustered, Benton was promoted to lieutenant colonel of the regiment on June 1, 1862. His company was assigned to the Trans-Mississippi Department. He was severely wounded at the April 12–13, 1864, battle of Blair's Landing and as a result lost his right arm. Other sources claim that his wound was a result of the siege of Port Hudson, Louisiana, during the summer of 1863. Despite the discrepancy, Benton's military career ended when he surrendered along with his unit in June 1865. He was subsequently paroled on August 13, 1865. He returned to Seguin where he was elected county judge and taught school. He was a Methodist and a Democrat. He died April 13, 1872, at the home of his brother-in-law General Henry McCulloch in Seguin and is buried in Vaughan Cemetery, Seguin.

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Sowell, Andrew Jackson

1829

Star and Wreath Born in Tennessee 1815; came to Texas about 1829; served in the Army of Texas; a courier from the Alamo, he left the fortress just before it fell to hurry reinforcements and supplies; died about 1882. His wife Lucinda Turner Sowell, born 1827 - died 1883. Erected by the State of Texas 1956

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McCulloch, Henry Eustace

1839

In this lot lie Henry Eustace McCulloch; Texas Ranging Service 1839-42; Texas Ranger Captain, Mexican War, 1847-48; State Legislator, 1853-59; U.S. Marshal, 1859-61; Colonel, 1st Texas Regiment Mounted Rifles, C.S.A.; Brigadier General, C.S.A. District Commander, Texas Brigade Commander, Vicksburg Campaign. His wife, Jane Isabella Ashby McCulloch Erected by the State of Texas 1962

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Seguin, Texas

Music in Seguin

Songs About Seguin

Artists From Seguin

Rivers & Roads in Song near Seguin

History of Seguin

Seguin, TX RoadyGoat

Seguin, TX RoadyGoat

Seguin, TX RoadyGoat

Claiborne West

Rogers, John Harris

Wilson Potteries

Benton, Nathaniel

Sowell, Andrew Jackson

McCulloch, Henry Eustace

Things to Do in Seguin

Everything Near Seguin