Benjamin Fuqua (1793 - 1836)

Born 23 Dec 1793 in Bedford County, Virginia

Ancestors

Died Jan 1836 at age 42 in Texas

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Biography

Benjamin Fuqua is the descendant of a Huguenot emigrant.

Benjamin Fuqua was born in Virginia to a well known family. Both his father and grandfather were Revolutionary War veterans. Benjamin followed his brother Silas to Alabama some years later and in 1825, they patented land together on the south side of the Tennessee River in what is now Colbert County. In 1828, the joined the Tennessee-Texas Land Company and made the journey to what was then a Spanish colony.^[1]

Benjamin Fuqua and Silas first joined the Austin Colony in 1828, but moved to the DeWitt Colony in 1830 where Benjamin received a quarter league (about 1,000 acres) as a single man. His property was on the San Marcos River north of Gonzales. The following letter from Richard Ellis in Alabama recommended the Fuquas to Stephen F. Austin:

State of Alabama, Town of Tuscumbia 3rd Jany. 1828 D COLO I beg leave to introduce to your aquantence and notice Mr Silus, Ephram and Benjmn Fuqua and Mr Job Ingram and Kye Ingram, these Gentlemen have emigrated to your Coloney to become permanent settlers---The Mr Fuquas are Mechanics. two of them of the best kind; they are honest and respectable men and are determined to suport the Government to which they go, ............. RICHARD ELLIS.^[2]

BENJAMIN was a mechanic (artisan) and mercantile businessman said to have owned the structure in inner Gonzales town called Luna which has been suggested as possibly one of the Grog Shops alluded to in David Edwards' History of Texas. It may simply have been Benjamin Fuqua's general business establishment. Luna was on property deeded to Benjamin's brother Silas Fuqua who was a neighbor of John King.^[3]

Benjamin was also involved in the first battle of the Texas War of Independence known officially as the Battle of Gonzales and unofficially as the Battle of Old Come and Take It. When a contingent of Mexican dragoons came to retrieve the tiny Gonzales cannon which had been loaned for protection against Indian depredations, Fuqua was one of the "Old Eighteen" who resisted. There were only minor squirmishes as the Texans came to outnumber the Mexican force of a hundred or so. After the cannon labeled Old Come and Take It fired shrapnel at the Mexicans and the Texans mounted a cavalry charge, the Mexicans retreated.^[4]

In October 1835, Benjamin also represented Gonzales as a member of the Consultation being a representative from the Austin Municipality and a signer of the Declaration of the People of Texas declaring the intention of Texans to fight for the restoration of the Constitution of 1824 and support of a separate state of Texas within the Republic of Mexico. This is often referred to as the TEXAS DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.^[5]

Benjamin Fuqua married Nancy Gladden King and they had one daughter, Mary, born in 1835. Benjamin Fuqua's nephew, Galba Fuqua and brother-in-law, William King (Nancy King Fuqua's brother), were teenage members of the Gonzales Relief Force to the Alamo and both died there on March 6, 1836. Benjamin himself had died of natural causes two months before.^[6]

Sources

1. ↑ Find a Grave: Benjamin Fuqua
2. ↑ Find a Grave: Benjamin Fuqua
3. ↑ Find a Grave: Benjamin Fuqua
4. ↑ Find a Grave: Benjamin Fuqua
5. ↑ Find a Grave: Benjamin Fuqua
6. ↑ Find a Grave: Benjamin Fuqua