File:The "Come and Take It" Cannon, housed at the Gonzales Memorial Museum in Gonzales, Texas LCCN2014633596.tif

English: Title: The "Come and Take It" Cannon, housed at the Gonzales Memorial Museum in Gonzales, Texas

Physical description: 1 photograph : digital, tiff file, color.

Notes: Title, date, and keywords based on information provided by the photographer.; The Spanish-made, bronze artillery piece was the object of contention in late September and early October 1835 between a Mexican military detachment from Bexar and Anglo-Celtic colonists. The disagreement produced the Battle of Gonzales, considered to be the first battle of the Texas Revolution. On January 1, 1831, Green DeWitt initiated the new year by writing Ramon Mṡquiz, the political chief of Bexar, asking him to make arrangements for a cannon to be furnished to the Gonzales colonists for protection against hostile Indians. On March 10, 1831, after some delay, James Tumlinson, Jr., a DeWitt colonist at Bexar, received one bronze cannon to be turned over to Green DeWitt at Gonzales. The cannon is lost to history until September 1835, when Col. Domingo de Ugartechea, the military commander at Bexar, sent Corporal Casimiro De Leon and five soldiers of the Second Flying Company of San Carlos de Parras to retrieve the cannon. The Gonzales colonists notified Ugartechea they were keeping the gun and took the soldiers prisoner. The cannon was then buried in George W. Davis's peach orchard and couriers sent to the Anglo-Celtic settlements on the Colorado River to obtain armed assistance. Ugartechea responded by sending 100 troops under Lt. Francisco de Casta±eda to make a more serious request for the return of the gun. On September 29, Capt. Robert M. Coleman arrived at Gonzales with a militia company of thirty mounted Indian fighters. The gun was retrieved from its shallow grave, taken to John Sowell's blacksmith shop, and mounted on a pair of cart wheels. After organization of the Texian "Army of the People" under Gen. Stephen F. Austin, the cannon was assigned to Capt. James C. Neill's artillery company and hauled to San Antonio. After the capture of Bexar in December 1835, the cannon remained at the Alamo, where it was one of twenty-one artillery pieces commandeered by the Mexican army upon the recapture of Bexar on March 6, 1836. The name "Come and Take It" refers to the motto adopted by the Texian rebels.; Forms part of: Lyda Hill Texas Collection of Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith's America Project in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive.; Gift; The Lyda Hill Foundation; 2014; (DLC/PP-2014:054).; Credit line: The Lyda Hill Texas Collection of Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith's America Project, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.