The first flag known to be exclusive to what would become the State of Texas was a plain green banner used by members of the 1812-1813 Gutiérrez-Magee expedition, a filibustering expedition against the then-Spanish territory. The expedition began with the efforts of a Spanish Texan anti-royalist rebel named José Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara, who traveled to Washington, D.C. to raise support for the anti-Spanish rebellion for independence of which he was a member. After receiving some vague promises of support, Gutiérrez then sailed to New Orleans, where he enlisted the help of Augustus W. Magee. Magee recruited more than one hundred Americans to serve in the expedition, which then moved into Texas in the summer of 1812, picking up Tejano recruits.
The expedition actively challenged Spain for control of Texas for almost a year thereafter before ultimately being put down by Spanish forces at the Battle of Medina, just to the south of San Antonio. Among the Spanish troops at the Battle of Medina was a young officer named Lt. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, who would later become an infamous figure in the Texan struggle for independence.
This next flag was used by Dr. James Long of Natchez, Mississippi. In 1819, Long led a filibustering expedition into Texas to claim the territory for the United States, angered that America’s claim on the territory had been declared legally invalid by the recently signed Adams-Onís treaty. The expedition failed, and by 1822 Long found himself imprisoned in Mexico City, where he hoped to plead his case for release to then-Mexican leader Agustín de Iturbide. Long never had the opportunity to do so, for he was shot and killed by a prison guard on April 8 of that year.
This two-starred flag was the official banner of the Mexican state of Coahuila y Texas, created in 1824 following the adoption of the Mexican Constitution earlier that year. This remained the official flag of Texas until November of 1835, when a group of Texas revolutionaries called the Consultation declared Texas to be a separate state from Coahuila.
Prior to the outbreak of the Texas Revolution in 1835, there had been a revolt in 1826-1827 known as the Fredonian Rebellion, led by an empresario named Haden Edwards. Edwards. Edward had come to Texas legally, receiving a land grant of indeterminate size around Nacogdoches from the Mexican government with permission to settle up to 800 American families. Almost immediately after arriving, a dispute erupted between Edwards and a group of older settlers living on land that Edwards claimed was part of his grant.
Because of his unwillingness to negotiate peacefully with the older settlers, Edwards’ grant was rescinded by Mexican authorities in mid-1826, after which Edwards then took up arms against the Mexican government, proclaiming himself and his settlers to be the founders of a new independent Republic they called Fredonia. The Fredonian Rebellion was subsequently put down by a combined force of Mexican officers and militia and members of Stephen F. Austin’s colony on January 31, 1827.
The flag above was flown at the first battle of the Texas Revolution – at the Battle of Gonzales on October 2, 1835. The battle started when a group of one hundred Mexican dragoons were dispatched to the town of Gonzales (east of San Antonio) to recover a cannon that had been lent by the government to the settlers of that town for the purpose of fighting off Indian raids. The settlers refused to hand over the cannon and instead flew the above-pictured flag of defiance. On October 2, the Texan settlers fired on the Mexican dragoons, who subsequently withdrew. The Texas Revolution was underway.
In the months following the outbreak of the Revolution, Texans seized military garrisons at Goliad (La Bahía) and San Antonio (the Alamo). Both garrisons were then reinforced for the purposes of defending against the coming Mexican counterattack – expected sometime during the spring of 1836.
This flag was designed by men at Goliad under the command of Capt. Philip Dimmit to proclaim the independence of Texas. It was unfurled on January 8, 1836 and flew until Goliad fell to the invading Mexican Army on March 27, 1836.
This banner, the “1824 Flag,” was flown by Texan revolutionaries under the command of Col. William Barrett Travis, Col. James Bowie, and David Crockett during the siege of the Alamo (February 23-March 6, 1836). The intent of the revolutionaries in flying this flag was to remind the troops of the Mexican Army – under the command of Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna – of the fact that Santa Anna had disposed of Mexico’s first democratic constitution (the Constitution of 1824) just three years earlier, proclaiming himself dictator and suspending civil liberties throughout the country.
This banner, which bears a striking resemblance to the official flag of Liberia, was designed and adopted by Commodore Edwin Moore, Commander in Chief of the 1st & 2nd Texas Navies. This remained the official naval flag of Texas for the duration of the Republic’s existence.
The first tri-color flag of Texas was this, designed by Sarah Dodson in 1835. This flag is alleged to have flown at the Convention of 1836 in Washington-on-the-Brazos, where the independence of the Republic of Texas was formally declared on March 2, 1836.
After independence was declared, a number of designs for a new flag of the Republic of Texas were submitted, the above being submitted in the name of Texan Vice President Lorenzo de Zavala. It is not known whether this flag was actually designed by De Zavala. This flag is the default Gravatar for the comments section of this blog.
The flag that was adopted to become the original, official banner of the Republic of Texas was this one, submitted by Texan President David G. Burnet. This flag, featuring a gold star on a blue background, remained the official flag of Texas until 1839.
The Lone Star Flag was adopted in 1839 by the Congress of Texas and President Mirabeau B. Lamar – the same year the capital of Texas was relocated permanently to the city of Austin. This has remained the official flag of Texas ever since.
As I explained in the opening paragraph, my avatar is based on the old 1932 San Antonio flag, shown above.
This is the flag that the City of San Antonio has used since 1992 – the Alamo in the middle of the star no longer being gold-colored.
This final banner was the flag of an independent country called the Republic of the Rio Grande – which existed for 283 days in 1840. The establishment of this short-lived nation came about as an effort by Federalist political leaders of the Mexican states of Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas to break away from the Centralist-dominated government in Mexico City. The capital of the new republic was initially located in what today is the city of Laredo, Texas. The Secretary of the Treasury for the Republic of the Rio Grande was a man named Juan Francisco Farias, who would later go on to serve as mayor of Laredo during the American Civil War. Farias was my maternal great-great-great grandfather.
God bless Texas.
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