Juan Seguin took shelter in the Alamo in February of 1836, along with Bowie, Crockett, Travis, and the other Texians, when General Santa Anna was advancing on San Antonio.

Seguin had been elected alcalde (mayor) of Bexar just two years before. Now bravely opposing the brutal Mexican dictator, he was the leader of a group of Tejanos who joined with the Anglos to fight for freedom.

After the Alamo was surrounded and came under bombardment, Colonel Travis sent messengers seeking help. The last to leave the besieged old mission was Juan Seguin. Accompanied by his orderly, another Tejano, he rode through the enemy lines carrying a final call from Travis for help. Eight patriotic Tejanos stayed behind among the Alamo's doomed defenders.

At Goliad, Fannin dithered, despite the appeals to go to the aid of the Texians trapped in the Alamo. So Juan Seguin recruited more Tejanos from among the rancheros and vaqueros of the ranches along the lower Guadalupe and San Antonio Rivers.

At Gonzales they met with General Sam Houston, recently named to lead the Texian forces. Then word came: The Alamo had fallen. Santa Anna was heading east, vowing to drive all the Anglos out of Texas. The town of Gonzales was burned, to deny its shelter to Santa Anna.

At Peach Creek cabin of Sarah and Bartlett McClure, a few miles east,Houston began his strategic retreat. He was not ready to fight, because his tiny force was not ready to fight. He needed to put miles between himself and the invaders, while raising a new army from among the settlers in Austin's colony along the Brazos.

The Paul Revere of Texas

At Peach Creek, Houston gave Seguin's company the task of riding along the Anglo frontier to remote farms mostly to the north and east of Gonzales. The Tejanos set out to warn the pioneers of their peril. For this service to the cause of the Texas Revolution, Juan Seguin has been called "The Paul Revere of Texas."

Most of the men alerted by the Tejano horsemen rode off to join Houston. The women began what came to be known as the Runaway Scrape. Taking their children and the dependent men -- those unable to fight -- along with their slaves, and whatever animals and valuables they could, the womenfolk headed east toward the safety of the U.S. border. (The Runaway Scrape is the background for the opening scenes in the historical novel, True Women, by my sister, Janice Woods Windle.)

For two months, the two Texian armies -- the swelling mass of refugees and Houston's smaller but ever-growing force of armed men -- and Santa Anna's Mexican army all tumbled after each other across the muddy and flooded countryside.

They all came to rest near where Buffalo Bayou met the San Jacinto River. There Santa Anna made camp, awaiting reinforcements, but on April 21, 1836, he was surprised, defeated, and captured. Captain Juan Seguin led a charge by his company of Tejanos -- on foot like the other Texians in that battle.

According to his memoirs, Seguin accepted the surrender of "quite a number of Mexican officers" who begged him to spare their lives, which he did. Note that no Texians at San Jacinto wore uniforms on that battlefield. There were none in Texas, nor time or money to fetch any from New Orleans. Those heroes are always portrayed in buckskin and broadcloth. Only the Mexican army officers had uniforms.

After the battle, a grateful Sam Houston appointed Juan Seguin to take charge in San Antonio, a Mexican garrison left stranded when the defeated Santa Anna sailed back to Mexico. And Captain Seguin (who had been given that rank by Stephen F. Austin) was promoted by David G. Burnet, President of the Republic of Texas, to the rank of Lt. Colonel.

Then, some time after returning to his hometown, in February, 1837, the anniversary of the siege, Seguin supervised the ceremonial burial of the remains of the defenders of the Alamo.

Taking a Proud Name

Barely two years after San Jacinto, a group of Rangers out of Gonzales founded a new town beside the Walnut Springs on the Guadalupe. At first they called the settlement by the name of the springs. Then in February of 1839, after a proposal by John R. King, my great-great-grandfather's brother, to change the name of the town, the citizens voted in favor of the name of a hero of the Texas Revolution who had strong roots in the area -- Juan Seguin.

His wife, Maria Gertrudes Eusevia Flores, had grown up on her family's ranch just south of the Guadalupe River, and he had courted her there. Four of her brothers was a members in his Company, Salvador Flores as one of his lieutenants. (Old timers recalled that the Flores ranch house near town stood well into the 20th century.)

Later in 1839, Colonel Juan N. Seguin proudly wore his uniform when he visited the frontier village now named for him. According to an early account, he paraded from the town's square to a house on the southwest corner of Court Street and Bowie, where a party was given in his honor.

Stephen F. Austin's Friend

Seguin's story goes back to his distinguished father, Erasmo Seguin, and indeed for generations before that. An ancestor named Guillermo Seguin left Paris in 1654, and at the age of 13 sailed to the New World. He settled in Aguascalientes, New Spain. Jose Santiago de Seguin, a descendant of Guillermo, was born in the mission village on the frontier of New Spain that came to be called San Antonio. His third son, known as Erasmo Seguin, became the first alcalde of the Department of Bexar, and served for most of three decades as the postmaster as well.

Erasmo Seguin traveled in the U.S. and came to admire the freedom and growing prosperity of the young democracy. As a result, he befriended Stephen F. Austin at a crucial moment. Moses Austin had first gained permission from Spain to bring Anglo settlers to colonize the almost empty lands along the lower Brazos. When he died, the project was left with his son.

Meanwhile Mexico became independent, and Austin's deal had to be renegotiated. Erasmo Seguin helped the young Stephen F. Austin through political and bureaucratic barriers to gain permission anew. Austin's Colony could not have happened without Erasmo Seguin.

Born October 27, 1806, Juan Nepomuceno Seguin was coming of age during the years of Anglo settlement in the colonies of Stephen F. Austin and Green DeWitt. The Seguin family purchased ranchland near present-day Floresville, where Erasmo Seguin built a house he called Casa Blanca. Juan Seguin himself started running herds along the Cibolo, on the western border of the present Guadalupe County.

Juan Seguin entered politics as a young man, at the age of 22 he was elected a council member and then at the age of 30 he was elected alcalde, the highest elected position in the community.Almost immediately, he was asked to fill a vacancy and acted for some time as the jefe politico, the highest civilian representative of the Mexican Governor in Saltillo.

After the Revolution, Juan Seguin resumed his political career with distinction. He was elected a senator from the Bexar District in the Second, Third, and Fourth Congresses of the Republic of Texas. Serving from 1837 until 1940, he urged that the laws of the Republic be published in both Spanish and English, so all could read them.

An Obstacle to Vile Designs

In 1841, Juan Seguin became Mayor of San Antonio, capping a career of public service that was soon to veer into tragedy and humiliation. After independence, tens of thousands of Americans poured into Texas. Most were honest, looking for farmlands, hoping to build better lives. Others, hoping to get rich quick, greedily eyed the sprawling ranchlands of the Tejanos. These characters foreshadowed the carpetbaggers that would come after the Civil War. In his memoirs, Juan Seguin wrote that he was "an obstacle to the execution of their vile designs" -- a huge land grab.

Felix Huston came as head of hundreds of volunteers from the U.S. When Mexican forces appeared to threaten San Antonio once again, Huston ordered Juan Seguin to burn the old town and remove the residents. That order was a set-up. Seguin's political base would have been destroyed and the land grab a done deal if the Tejanos had abandoned their land and homes. But to disobey an order . . .

Seguin spared San Antonio, and appealed to his old friend Sam Houston, by then President of the Republic and Commander- in-Chief. President Houston sustained Seguin's decision, and he undermined Huston by offering his men immediate land grants elsewhere if they disbanded.

Between a Rock and Santa Anna

Seguin's troubles had only begun. After a real estate deal turned sour (Aguablanca?), he went to Saltillo, Mexico, where he had relatives, taking several wagonloads of goods. Apparently he thought he had a deal with ranking Mexican officials who in the past had been his friends,so that he could sell the imported goods and raise the cash he desperately needed, but not have to pay any duty on the merchandise.

The Mexican officials seem to have broken whatever deal Seguin thought that he had. Instead, they seized his goods and threw him in jail. On Santa Anna's orders he was given a choice: Remain in prison, with his family in distress, or join the next effort to retake Texas.

Distraught, Seguin became part of a Mexican force that briefly reoccupied San Antonio before being repelled at the Battle of Salado. Texans, including Ranger Captain Jack Hays of the town of Seguin, recognized Juan Seguin and proclaimed him a traitor. He joined the retreat to Mexico.

Seguin came home eventually, after the Mexican-American War ended with the Treaty of Hidalgo, Years later he was elected to head the newly formed Wilson County. Finally, the Legislature declared him entitled to a pension as a hero of the Texas Revolution.

In the meantime, a son became Mayor of Nuevo Laredo, where Juan N. Seguin died and was buried in 1890. Through the efforts of the Bicentennial Committee, led by John Taylor, Mayor Al Koebig, and others, working with the Texas and Mexican governments, Seguin's remains were removed from Nuevo Laredo.

Home at Long Last

In a ceremony on July 4, 1976, Col. Juan N. Seguin was buried beneath a motte of live oak trees in the city that so proudly bears his name.

-- W.E.W.