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The
'Come and Take It' History
 The
Come & Take It Festival celebrates the
firing of the first shot of the Texas
revolution on Oct. 2, 1835, which took place
near Gonzales.
The
town of Gonzales was established by
Empresario Green DeWitt in 1825, two and
one-half miles east of the confluence of the
San Marcos and Guadalupe Rivers.
It was the westernmost Anglo settlement
until the close of the Texas Revolution and
was named in honor of Don Rafael Gonzales,
provisional governor of Coahuila, Mexico and
Texas. The town was laid out in the shape of
a cross, with seven squares. During the
colonial period of 1825 to 1835, there were
many problems with Comanche and Tonkawa
Indians, but Gonzales flourished. It was a
thriving capital of the De Witt colony by
1833.
In 1831
the Mexican government loaned the citizens
of Gonzales a six-pound cannon as protection
against the Indians. In September of 1835,
as political unrest grew, Mexican officials
at San Antonio de Bexar demanded the cannon
be returned.
A
corporal with five soldiers and an oxcart
were first sent by Col. Ugartechea, Bexar
military commander, to Gonzales. The
corporal carried a request that the small
reinforced cannon, a bronze six-pounder, be
returned to the Mexican Army. Andrew Ponton
refused to relinquish it, stalling for time,
and the little cannon was buried in George
W. Davis' peach orchard, near the Guadalupe
River.
Next
came Lieutenant Castaneda and 150 mounted
soldiers to "take" the cannon. When the
soldiers appeared on the west bank of the
Guadalupe River, there were only 18 men in
Gonzales, but these 'Old Eighteen' stood at
the river in defiance, denied the Mexicans a
crossing by hiding the ferry and sent out a
call for volunteers to assist them.
As the
soldiers scouted the river for a place to
cross, they moved upriver a short distance,
near the present-day community of Cost and
camped for the night. There, in the
early-morning hours of Oct. 2, 1835, the
colonists crossed the river with their
cannon, surprising the troops and waving
their hastily fashioned flag, which
proclaimed "Come and Take It." Almost
immediately the cannon fired, killing one of
Castenada's men and scattering the rest,
forcing them to retreat to San Antonio de
Bexar. Thus was fired the shot that set off
the
struggle for Texas independence from Mexico.
When the smoke cleared, the Mexican troops
had taken off. The Texas Revolution had
begun.
Gonzales became known as "The Lexington of
Texas", where the first shot was fired, and
where the first Texas Army of Volunteers
gathered. A few months after the first shot,
men and boys from the region would gather in
Gonzales, sending the only reinforcements
ever received at the Alamo.
Each
October, on the first full weekend of
October, the citizens of Gonzales gather to
celebrate their Texas heritage in a
three-day festival called "Come & Take It."
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