Zadock Woods

Zadock Woods was sixty nine years old the day he died in the Dawson Massacre, the oldest man killed there, and by the account the Texas State Historical Association follows it was his birthday. He had been born in Massachusetts in 1773, fought in the War of 1812 at another Woods' Fort in Missouri under Zachary Taylor, rode with Andrew Jackson at New Orleans, and come to Austin's colony in 1824 as one of the Old Three Hundred. His fortified house on the prairie south of the Colorado gave neighbours somewhere to shelter from raids for fourteen years, and the prairie itself took his name. In September 1842 Nicholas Dawson raised fifty three men, most of them from Fayette County, and marched from La Grange toward San Antonio against a Mexican force under Adrian Woll. They were caught in a thicket of mesquite and elm, and Woll brought up artillery, which made the cover worthless. Thirty six were killed, fifteen captured, and only nine of the prisoners ever came home. Both of Woods' sons rode with him. Norman Woods was wounded and taken, and died at Perote Prison in December 1843. Henry Gonzalvo Woods got clear by catching the lance of a cavalryman who rushed him, jerking the man off his horse by the strap around his wrist, mounting the horse himself and riding along with the enemy column, yelling as loudly as they did under a Spanish sombrero until he was past them. Noah Smithwick wrote that down, and it is the earliest version there is. The dead were left in a shallow grave in the thicket where they fell. In 1848 they were brought back to Fayette County and reburied in the tomb on the bluff above La Grange, alongside the men who drew black beans in Mexico. The date of the fight is given as 17 September by some accounts and 18 September by others, which is the difference between an old man dying on his birthday and dying the day before.