Last surviving signer of Texas Declaration of Independence dies

On this day in 1895, William Carrol Crawford, the last surviving signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, died while visiting his son in Erath County. Crawford, a native of North Carolina, moved to Texas in 1835 and settled near Shelbyville. He and Sydney O. Penington represented Shelby County at the Convention of 1836, which wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the Republic of Texas and established the ad interim government. Crawford, who later lived in Camp, Hill, and Johnson counties, died ten days before his ninety-first birthday.