Joanna Troutman is known as the Betsy Ross of Texas. She sewed the first Lone Star banner that was raised over the fortress at Goliad, which, three weeks later, would fall to the Mexican army. All Texan defenders inside would be massacred.
Although she never lived in or traveled to Texas in her lifetime, the flag she sewed had such deep and resonating importance that in 1913, Texas Gov. Cole quit requested and received permission from her family to exhume her body and bury it beneath this dignified memorial in the state cemetery at Austin, Texas. Pompeo Cioppini, the sculptor of the Alamo Cenotaph in San Antonio, created a near life-size bronze of Joanna Troutman sewing the flag that would fly to inspire men who would soon give their lives to the Texas revolution.
The memorial plaque on her memorial reads as follows:
"[E side]
This monument is erected to honor
Joanna Troutman
for the service she rendered to the cause of Texas independence.
----------------
Born in Crawford County, Georgia, February 19, 1818.
She lived to see Texas free and one of the mightiest states in the American union, and died August 1880. When Texas was struggling to establish her rights as a state in the Mexican Republic, she sent forth an appeal for help. Georgia responded by raising a battalion of volunteers, and Ms. Joanna Troutman then 18 years of age, fired with her love of liberty and the zeal of the volunteer, with her own hands made a beautiful lone Star flag and presented it to the Georgia Battalion and they landed in Texas with it in December 1835. The flag was symbolic of the loan struggle Texas was making. The flag was unfurled at Velasco and later carried to Goliad where it proudly waved over the walls of that fortress. This flag was raised as national flag on the walls of Goliad by Fannin when he heard of the declaration of Texas independence on March 8, 1836. It was constructed of white silk with and as your star of five points, on one side was the motto: “liberty or death,” and on the reverse side in Latin, “where liberty dwells there is my country.” The tattered shreds of this flag silently witnessed the murder of Fannin and his men at Goliad Sunday, March 27, 1836. Gentle, pure, patriotic, the hands of Joanna Troutman brought her love of liberty and the beautiful Lone Star flag, which witnessed the sacrifice of the men who brought it to Texas as the emblem of independence.
[N, W, and S sides]
[list of names of the 300 Texians, Col. James Fannin's men, who were murdered at Goliad by Mexican Army troops on orders of Mexican Army General Santa Anna]"
From the Handbook of Texas online, a brief biography of Joanna Troutman reads as follows: (
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"TROUTMAN, JOANNA (1818–1879). Joanna Troutman, designer of an early Texas Lone Star flag, was born on February 19, 1818, in Baldwin County, Georgia, the daughter of Hiram Bainbridge Troutman. In 1835, in response to an appeal for aid to the Texas cause, the Georgia Battalion, commanded by Col. William Ward, traveled to Texas. Joanna Troutman designed and made a flag of white silk, bearing a blue, five-pointed star and two inscriptions: "Liberty or Death" on the obverse and, in Latin, "UBI LIBERTAS HABITAT, IBI NOSTRA PATRIA EST" (Where Liberty dwells, there is our fatherland)" on the reverse. She presented the flag to the battalion, and it was unfurled at Velasco on January 8, 1836, above the American Hotel. It was carried to Goliad, where James W. Fannin, Jr., raised it as the national flag when he heard of the Texas Declaration of Independence. The flag was accidentally torn to shreds, however, and only its remnants flew above the battle. Joanna Troutman married Solomon L. Pope in 1839, and the couple moved to Elmwood, their prosperous plantation near Knoxville, Georgia, in 1840. They had four sons. Her husband died in 1872, and Joanna married W. G. Vinson, a Georgia state legislator, in 1875. She died on July 23, 1879, at Elmwood and was buried next to her first husband. In 1913 Texas governor Oscar B. Colquitt secured permission to have her remains taken to Texas for interment in the State Cemetery in Austin. A bronze statue by Pompeo L. Coppini was erected there as a monument to her memory; her portrait hangs in the state Capitol.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
George Pierce Garrison, "Another Texas Flag," Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association 3 (January 1900). Annie Doom Pickrell, Pioneer Women in Texas (Austin: Steck, 1929). Henry David Pope, A Lady and a Lone Star Flag: The Story of Joanna Troutman (San Antonio: Naylor, 1936). Vertical Files, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin."