Bay City Monument

Picture courtesy of Matagorda County Museum
 

Unveiling Confederate Monument

A MONUMENT TO COMPANY D

There should be erected in Matagorda a monument forty or fifty feet high to the memory of the E. S. Rugeley Company, which, daring the terrors of a storm-blizzard at sea, set sail in an overcrowded boat, on the night of December 31, 1863, to meet and repel an attack from the federal forces. The storm growing fiercer, the boat was wrecked and the gallant band nearly all lost in the storm-blizzard. There was no more heroic defense of home and the constitution and few instances of greater fatality than the brave company which went down with the "Geo. Burkhart" in that fearful storm of New Year's Eve, 1964. The names of the members of Co. D should be chiseled in Texas granite with a description of the holocaust, to stand for the centuries to come in commemoration of the heroism of those men for the cause they held so dear. If the ladies of Matagorda will organize a monument association the men of Matagorda will help them, and there are many other partsof the state who would gladly contribute to such a monument.

The Matagorda News, Friday, May 9, 1913 

Picture of monument that was later erected in Matagorda Cemetery in memory of Rugeley's men.
 

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