Jose Antonio Mexia was a military officer and promoter of Texas colonization who served as Secretary of Mexican Legation to the United States from 1829 to 1831. He led the victorious Mexia Expedition to expel Centralists in Matamoros in 1832 and served as a Mexican senator from 1833 to 1834. He first supported President Santa Anna but fought him after he became a dictator, then fled to Texas in 1834. Mexia attacked Tampico in 1835, took Tampico in Jan. 1839, and was shot on Santa Anna's order after a defeat near Puebla on May 3. About 1870, his son and daughter settled on family land in Limestone County, and in 1871 they donated the site for the town of Mexia.