The Gonzales Ranging Company was being called up.

"On Feb. 26," according to a manuscript prepared for a State Historical Marker by sixth-generation Kent descendant Brenda Lord of Cuero, "neighbors Isaac Millsaps and William Summers rode up the road and stopped to get Andrew. As they rode off daughter Mary Ann heard her father exclaim, 'This time we may see blood.'"

And, indeed they did, with Kent, Summers and Millsaps being among the 189 defenders known to have died during the siege of the Alamo. The three Lavaca County men had been part of the "Immortal 32" that rode to the Alamo from Gonzales in answer to an urgent call for help from Col. William B. Travis.

"The men stole their way through the Mexican guard and entered the walls of the Alamo at 3 a.m. on March 1st," Lord notes. "The siege and bombardment continued and at dawn on March 6 the Alamo was attacked and all were put to the sword."

On Saturday, for the 11th time in 20 years, descendants met for the Andrew Kent Family Muster, gathering during the morning at the First Presbyterian Church Fellowship Hall in Gonzales for a family meeting and a program on the "Beginning of Gonzales" by Bob Burchard, chairman of the Gonzales County Historical Commission. This was followed by a "Kent Family Skit."

After lunch, the gathering of some 85 people drove to the Mossy Grove Methodist Church 11 miles south of Hallettsville for a dedication ceremony, which was followed by an unveiling of the marker between there and Ezzell, where Andrew Kent's original league of land was located.

"This is a big day for Lavaca County," Doug Kubicek, chairman of the Lavaca County Historical Committee, noted in his dedicatory address titled "Andrew Kent: A Willing Participant of the Alamo."

"He was truly one of Lavaca County's own," Kubicek said. "When people young and old hear of the Alamo they think of well-known historical people: David Crockett, William Travis and James Bowie, but the men that fought and died in the Alamo were men like Andrew Kent, they are the Alamo heroes."

"This marker," he further noted, "will always be a reminder for generations to come of the sacrifices and courage that our forefathers gave us and we should all tip our hats to them for our life today and never forget those willing participants and heroes of the Alamo."

Kubicek, in his comments, and Lord in her manuscript described Kent as being a common man from the state of Kentucky who had left his home state, first traveling to Missouri and finally to Texas with the desire to better the life of his family. He and his wife, Elizabeth Zumwalt Kent, had 10 children - the last two born in Texas after they arrived in June 1830.

"He was a carpenter," Kubicek noted, "not a warrior; a man who created with his hands, whose knowledge of weapons and his marksmanship with a rifle was used as tools of hunting and survival in the frontiers of Texas."

Andrew had ridden horseback 35 miles to attend the Millican Gin meeting on July 17, 1835, in present Jackson County, where a resolution was passed opposing Mexican General Santa Anna and the abolition of the 1824 Constitution. On October 2, 1835, he and a son, David, participated in the "Battle of Gonzales" and the subsequent "Siege of Bexar."

David Kent had also been at the Alamo, but was away rounding up cattle when the siege began.

"Family members," according to Brenda Lord, "talked about how the Kent family was worried about son David possibly being trapped in the Alamo."

In her manuscript, she further notes that David later told a family member that he was rounding up cattle and, being cut off by the surrounding Mexican Army, had returned to Gonzales. Andrew had run into his son in Gonzales when on the way to the Alamo and they got into an argument about who would go on from there.

"David was instructed to scatter the livestock, bury the valuables, and bring the family to the Zumwalt's house in Gonzales, where they would be safer," Lord states. "In later years, David remarked that it would have been better if he had been the one to go to the Alamo instead of his father."

David Kent would later state that he was carrying an "express to Texana" when the Alamo fell.

Pioneer men and women of families such as that of Andrew Kent, Lord says, made it possible for many more to come and live a better life in Texas.

"The Texas spirit was forged in history by brave men and women such as these who, through their sheer determination, grit and raw courage, conquered the Texas frontier and held it against all odds and at great cost," she concluded in her manuscript.

At the dedication, she thanked all the family members who had donated time, effort and money for the marker.

"This is our collective history here," she commented.

The family had fled during the Runaway Scrape following the fall of the Alamo, returning a year later to find their home burned to the ground. They would rebuild their home and their lives and it was there beside present Lavaca County Road 1 on Andrew Kent's original land grant that his descendants gathered Saturday afternoon to unveil the marker in his memory.

It was Andrew Kent and others like him and his family that gave us Texas.