Benjamin Franklin Cage
Benjamin Franklin Cage was born in Tennessee on June 8, 1814, and arrived in Texas in 1832. Benjamin Franklin Cage was a cousin to Colonel John Coffee “Jack” Hays. At the Battle of San Jacinto, he was a member of Captain William H. Patton's Columbia Company. After the Texas Revolution, he was issued a headright certificate #923 on July 20, 1839, for 640 acres of land because he participated in the Battle of San Jacinto; this land was surveyed out in what would later become Kerr County. Benjamin Franklin Cage died on October 20, 1883, killed by Comanches at the Battle of Leon. The details are as follows: Moses Lapham, another veteran of San Jacinto, was employed as a deputy surveyor by Samuel Maverick of San Antonio to survey land for him. The party of five (Mr. Maverick, the sixth member had returned home) was on October 20, 1838, when they were attacked by Comanches on October 18, 1838. Five of these men were killed, including Cornelius Skinner, Mr. Jones of Bastrop, Moses Lapham (San Jacinto veteran), and Mr. Earnest; the others escaped on foot into town. The scalped and mutilated bodies of the dead, some with arrows protruding, were found the next day. Two Mexicans, Francisco Antonio Ruiz and Nicholas Flores Ruiz, one was never heard from again, but the other escaped and returned to San Antonio. The surviving members returned to town and spread the news. Thirteen prominent men, headed by Benjamin Franklin Cage, a San Jacinto veteran, hurriedly left San Antonio and went to the place where the massacre had occurred. En route, they encountered a large party of Comanches, said to be over 100 in number. Dunlap proposed that they retreat to the nearby stand of timber to fight from cover, but Cage would have none of it; he decided to attack the Comanches at once. The Comanches quickly surrounded them. Cage and O'Boyle dismounted at a tree to fight while the others remained on horseback. Hood and Bailey attempted to make a mounted charge through the Comanches, which resulted in Hood being wounded by an arrow. Meanwhile, Captain Cage and O'Boyle had both been killed on the ground. Robert Lee from Houston was killed on horseback, and Robert Patton was wounded in his arm. At this point, the survivors fled on horseback back to San Antonio. During their retreat, General Dunlap was lanced in the back as the Comanches pursued them all the way back to town. Eight of the thirteen men had been killed outright. Those killed included Captain Cage, Lee, Dr. McClung, Conrad, O'Boyle, Pickering, King, and Green. On October 20, 1838, a party of Tejanos and Texas Settlers under Captain Mauricio Carrasco went to the scene of the battle and recovered the bodies of the surveyors and Cage's men and returned them to town. Major Bennett improvised coffins for them because lumber was in short supply, and they were all buried in a single grave in the American cemetery just outside the Catholic cemetery near present Milam Square in San Antonio. Judge James W. Robinson delivered the funeral oration on October 21, 1838, during a cold, drizzling rain.
See Also
Sources
Savage Frontier Volume 2: Rangers, Rifleman, and Indian Wars in Texas 1838-1839, Stephen L. Moore, University of North Texas Press, Feb. 14 2006, ISBN-13 : 978-1574412062
Eighteen Minutes: The Battle of San Jacinto and Texas, Stephen L. Moore, Taylor Trade Publishing; 0500th edition, Nov. 10, 2003, ISBN-13 : 978-1589070097
Sam Houston Dixon and Louis Wiltz Kemp, The Heroes of San Jacinto (Houston: Anson Jones, 1932)
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