John York and Charles Eckhardt were soldiers and builders of Texas. York, born in Kentucky, came to Texas in 1821, was a captain in the siege that expelled the Mexican Army from Bexar in 1835, gave the site for Yorktown in 1847, and died in an Indian fight won by his men. Eckhardt came from Germany, fought in the War for Independence and the Mexican War, and through his mercantile and freighting interests helped lead to the founding of Yorktown on the trail he had surveyed from Indianola to New Braunfels. He built the first house in Yorktown in 1848.