The bright little “Lone Star” gun was…
source date: 1891
availability: public-domain

anced south- ward to Chihuahua and in one of his light batteries was the “lone Star of Texas.” At Santa Cruz de Rosales, the last battle fought in the Mexican war, it did some sharp work as an attachment to Lieut. John Lore’s battery against the forces of General Trias. This deci- sive little battle was in March 1848 and closed the last of a series of brilliant engagements against very superior forces on Mexican soil. But what become of the memorable little gun? Far back in the ’50s there stood on the south side of the plaza of Santa Fe, an old adobe church whose ancient walls indicated the days of Friar Ruiz and Governor Peralta. It was known as the government church where the high, civil and military officials and the army worshiped and after the extinction of the Mexi- can regime it was abandoned and the late Capt. W. R. Shoemaker, U. S. ordinance officer, con- verted it into a store house for old captured cannons. There, in 1851 the writer saw a pyra- mid of dismantled guns — from an 18-pounder carronade to a mountain howitzer and in mem- ory of its heroic service, Capt. Shoemaker placed as a cap stone, the spiteful, little gun from Massachusetts — the “Lone Star of Texas.