Efforts to preserve the San Jacinto Battleground as a patriotic shrine began in 1856, when Texas veterans who assembled there started a fund for a monument to the nine men who fell in the battle, and in 1883 the State purchased the first ten acres. After its organization in 1891, the Daughters of the Republic of Texas led this work by helping establish the battlefield's boundaries, placing granite boulders on significant sites, and securing legislative appropriations to buy and improve the land. In 1936 the State and Nation began erecting the memorial shaft to honor all Texas heroes, and in 1939 the San Jacinto Chapter Daughters of the Republic of Texas, acting as trustees for the veterans, erected the sundial, completing work begun eighty-six years earlier.