09/18/2026
Happy Texas Heroes Day!
The Daughters of the Republic of Texas recognize Texas military heroes on September 18th. DRT has designated this day to honor and preserve the memory of the volunteer soldiers who died defending the Republic and to pay tribute to the men and women of the military, both past and present, who serve Texas. Special emphasis is placed on honoring those who died in the Mier Expedition and the Dawson Massacre.
Both conflicts were part of continuing efforts by each side to control the land between the Rio Grande and Nueces River. The Republic of Texas believed that this territory had been ceded to it in the Treaties of Velasco, by which they gained independence; but Mexico did not agree.
The Dawson Massacre occurred on September 18, 1842 when 36 volunteer Texan soldiers were killed on the field of battle which took place near Salado Creek, a few miles northeast of San Antonio. The battle was fought during a second invasion of the Mexican army. Three survivors escaped to tell the story, and 15 others were taken prisoner by Mexican soldiers and marched to Perote Prison in Veracruz, Mexico.
The Mier expedition, the last of the raiding expeditions from Texas into the area south of the Nueces River during the days of the Republic of Texas, was the most disastrous of the expeditions from Texas into Mexico. The expedition was an unsuccessful military operation launched in November 1842 by a Texian militia against Mexican border settlements. It included a major battle at Ciudad Mier (located south of the Rio Grande in modern day Mexico) on December 26 and 27, 1842, which the Mexicans won. The Texian attack was launched partly in hopes of financial gain and partly in retaliation for the Dawson Massacre earlier that year.
Texans captured during the Mier expedition were marched from Mier to Mexico City. After an escape at Salado, Tamaulipas, on February 11, 1843, some 176 of the men were recaptured within about a week. A decree that all who participated in the break were to be executed was modified to an order to kill every tenth man.
The victims were chosen by lottery, each man drawing a bean from an earthen jar containing 176 beans, seventeen black beans being the tokens signifying death. Commissioned officers were ordered to draw first; then the enlisted men were called as their names appeared on the muster rolls.
The doomed men were unshackled from their companions, placed in a separate courtyard, and shot at dusk on March 25, 1843. The seventeen victims of the lottery were James Decatur Cocke, William Mosby Eastland, Patrick Mahan, James M. Ogden, James N. Torrey, Martin Carroll Wing, John L. Cash, Robert Holmes Dunham, Edward E. Este, Robert Harris, Thomas L. Jones, Christopher Roberts, William N. Rowan, James L. Shepherd, J. N. M. Thompson, James Turnbull, and Henry Walling. Shepherd survived the firing squad by pretending to be dead. The guards left him for dead in the courtyard, and he escaped in the night but was recaptured and shot. In 1848, the bodies were returned from Mexico to be buried at Monument Hill, near La Grange, Texas in Fayette County.
