General Braxton Bragg was born in North Carolina and graduated from West Point in 1833. In 1845 he came to Texas with the army of General Zachary Taylor to fight in the Mexican War. In the 1850s he retired from the army to become a planter and also served as Commissioner of Public Works for the state of Louisiana. In 1861 he was appointed a brigadier general of the Confederacy. At the Battle of Shiloh in 1862, he made great captures of guns and prisoners, and at Chickamauga in 1863 he was victorious. He was regarded as a strong disciplinarian, a devoted patriot, and a man with a stern sense of duty. From 1863 to 1865 he became military advisor to President Jefferson Davis. After the surrender of General Lee, he traveled with President Davis toward Florida and a suggested escape route, was captured by Federals, and was paroled in Georgia in May 1865. From 1866 to 1870 he served as Alabama Commissioner of Public Works. He then served in Texas as chief engineer of the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway and later as state inspector of railroads built under Texas land grants. He lived several years in Galveston, where he died. The old town at this site on the G.C. and S.F. from 1901 to 1934 was named in his honor, one of many towns and counties in Texas named for military leaders, statesmen, public officials, and soldiers.