The casualties from the Battle of San Jacinto were famously lopsided. Approximately 630 Mexican soldiers died during or after the battle, while only twelve Texians died during fighting or as a result of their injuries. Eight of these men were buried in the Texian camp at the battlefield, their graves marked with only plain wooden headstones.
The town of San Jacinto was founded shortly after the battle, and residents chose to bury their own dead near the Texian graves. By the 1870s, while the original headstones were mostly gone, the eight Texian soldiers’ final resting spot was surrounded by a small cemetery.
The Texas Veteran Association championed the cause of building a memorial for the fallen Texians, and in 1879, after the TVA held their annual meeting in Galveston, the city’s residents decided to raise the money for a permanent marker. In 1881, the city unveiled this fifteen-foot-tall stone obelisk, Texas’s first monument to the men who died during the Texas Revolution.
When it was placed at the battlefield on April 21, 1882, it was called the San Jacinto Monument, but is now known as Brigham Monument after Benjamin Rice Brigham, the only soldier whose gravestone was still standing.