Capt. Benjamin Franklin Bryant
Benjamin Franklin Bryant was born in Georgia on 15 March 1800. His father was Nathan Bryan of Lick Creek in Wilkes County. On 20 December 1820 he married Roxana Price in South Carolina. Their eldest son, Jesse, was born in Georgia the next September.
In 1834 he brought his family to Texas and settled on Palo Gaucho Bayou in Sabine County, in the far east of the province near the Sabine River. Texas was still part of Mexico. Within two years it was at war.
In March 1836, while the Alamo fell and the Texian army retreated east, Bryant recruited a company of volunteers and was elected its captain. The company joined the main army under Sam Houston at Bernardo, on the Brazos, on 29 March 1836. Three weeks later, on 21 April, Bryant led his men at the battle of San Jacinto, where Houston's army routed Santa Anna's in about eighteen minutes and won Texas its independence.
After the war he went west to the Little River, then the edge of Anglo settlement and open to Comanche raids. In 1838 he built a fort there called Bryant Station, and he spent the rest of his life defending that frontier. His memorial stone lists the posts he held: Indian agent on the Little River in 1840, Texas Ranger from 1841 to 1845, and Milam County commissioner in 1848. In 1845 he built a house near the fort, and he and Roxana lived in it for the rest of their lives. The town that grew up there kept the name Bryant Station.
The census taker reached the house on 1 November 1850. Benjamin was 50, a farmer with land worth $10,000. Roxana was 48. Napoleon, 19, and five children under thirteen lived with them. His sons Jesse and Barney and his daughter Jane, wife of Daniel McKay, had houses a few doors away.
His children with Roxana included Jesse, Mary Frances (Raney), Barnett Strickland, called Bud, Jane Elizabeth (McKay), Susan Evelyn (Blankenship), Louisa Melvina, Eliza, Amanda, Napoleon Lafayette and Samuel Houston Bryant, named for his old commander.
He died on 4 March 1857 and was buried with Roxana in the rose garden by their home. In 1931 the State of Texas moved them both to the State Cemetery at Austin, the burial ground for the founders and heroes of the Republic.
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Cite: Heirology, "Capt. Benjamin Franklin Bryant (1800-1857)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/capt-benjamin-franklin-bryant-1800-1857-771a15.