December 16, 1826
In a move eerily prescient of the Marx Brothers in their film “Duck Soup,” Benjamin Edwards and about 30 men rode into Nacogdoches and declared the republic of Fredonia, a minor revolution known as the Fredonian Rebellion. Benjamin and his brothers had received a land grant there and settled about fifty families. Afraid they were about to lose their land because of charges of corruption in an election for alcalde (a mayor with judicial powers) in the new territory, they declared independence from Mexico. The rebellion was easily crushed.
