| |
Ranger
Cemeteriesby
Mike Cox | |
Except
for the occasional thunder-like sound of a jet taking off or landing at Austin’s
Bergstrom International Airport, the small cemetery could be out in the middle
of nowhere.
But while the family-owned burial ground appears isolated
– the only way in is a narrow, one-lane road bordered with barbed wire fences
– the Hornsby Bend Cemetery is entrapped by the modern urban sprawl of
Travis County. It’s still out in the country in comparison with other parts of
metropolitan Austin, but less and less
so every year.
The oldest cemetery in the county, laid out so long ago
its size is recorded in land records by the antiquated Mexican measurement of
varas (200 by 300), the grave yard is the final resting place for many members
of one Texas’ pioneer families, the Hornsbys. Among the graves are those of 15
former Texas Rangers. The cemetery also has monuments honoring four other rangers
who while not buried there are part of the Hornsby clan.
In a way, all
the graves trace to Reuben Hornsby Sr. and his wife Sarah Morrison Hornsby, who
on Oct. 16, 1832 received the first Mexican land grant approved for Travis County.
(Texas did not have counties back then, but eventually the area became part of
Bastrop County, and later Travis.)
Originally from Mississippi, the couple
came to Texas in 1830. They lived briefly at Matagorda
and then in Bastrop, with Hornsby helping
empresario Stephen F. Austin survey the land in the upper portion of his colony.
That’s when Hornsby first saw a piece of land along the Colorado River he reckoned
would suit him “just fine.”
In July 1832, the Hornsby family settled in
a bend of the river nine miles downstream from future Austin.
Three months later they received a grant of a league and a labor of land, totaling
4,604.1 acres. While the area became known as Hornsby’s Bend, the well-fortified
Hornsby cabin was called Hornsby Station.
The elder Hornsby not
only served as a ranger and later as a volunteer soldier in the Texas Revolution,
he planted the first corn ever sown in Travis County, sat on the county’s first
jury, helped lay out the county’s earliest roads, assisted in the surveying of
Austin when it became capital of the
Texas republic in 1839 and fathered the first Anglo child born in the county.
Ranger
graves in the cemetery include:
1. The family patriarch, Reuben Hornsby Sr.
2.
Malcolm McLaurin Hornsby
3. William Watts Hornsby
4. Reuben Hornsby, Jr.
5.
Josephus Hornsby
6. Emory Hornsby
7. Malcolm Morrison Hornsby
8. Daniel
Hornsby
9. Tom Platt
10. Jacob “Jake” Platt
11. Samuel Malcolm Platt
12. Walter Mikle Robertson
Three
rangers not a part of the Hornsby family also are buried there:
13. Howell
Hargett
14. John Williams
15. William Atkinson
The Hornsby rangers
not buried in the cemetery, but with commemorative markers in the cemetery, include:
16. John William Hornsby (Oakwood Cemetery, Austin)
17. Moses Smith Hornsby
(killed in action in Williamson County and buried at the scene)
18. Radcliff
Platt, Jr. (Oakwood Cemetery, Austin)
19. John Radcliff Platt (Gila, AZ)
In ceremonies on October 25, the Former Texas Ranger Association placed sturdy
metal Ranger markers (crosses bearing a symbolic Ranger badge) on the 19 graves
or monuments.
“When you put on the Ranger badge, you remember those who
came before you,” FTRA President Joe Davis said at the dedication. “And when somebody
dies, after the last song is sung and prayer is said, the only thing left you
can do for them is keep their memory alive.”
With its 15 rangers, the
Hornsby Bend Cemetery has the third most ranger burials of any cemetery in Texas.
The largest number of ranger graves is in the Center Point Cemetery in Kerr County.
Thirty-two men who served as rangers lie in that cemetery.
Coming
in second is the Texas
State Cemetery in Austin, which
has 19 ranger graves.
So far, the FTRA has placed ranger crosses on more
than 400 graves. Most of the markers are on graves in Texas, but some have been
put up in other states.
How many men have been in the rangers? No one
has ever done a precise count, but in 1982, genealogist Frances Ingmire compiled
the names of more than 10,000 men who served from the 1820s to 1900. Another 1,500
to 2,000 men (and now women) have worn Ranger badges in the 20th and 21st centuries,
including 134 current rangers.
The Hornsby family-maintained Web site
www.hornsbybend.com features an excerpt from a 1921 Dallas Morning News article
about the Hornsby Bend written by Edward Dealey, son of the newspaper’s founder:
"There
is a peculiar fitness that here in a lonely spot among the mesquite trees, within
calling distance of the spot where once stood the first house in Travis county,
are buried together all the dead members of the Hornsby family. In their lives,
amid these very scenes, they did much to make Texas history and pave the way for
those who followed in the more secure paths of civilization. It is meant that
they should lie here in perpetuity, the little forest of their headstone serving
as a lasting memorial, not only to their own bones, but to the vivid scenes and
stirring times in which they took so large a part."
Hard to come up with
a better joint epitaph for a cemetery than that.
© Mike Cox
"Texas Tales"
October 30, 2008 column
Related Topics: Texas
Cemeteries
More Texas | TE
Online Magazine | Features | Columns
| |
|
|
The
Texas Rangers
A definitive history | |
| More
Books by Mike Cox - Order Here |
|
|
|
|
| | |
| |
