DUANE
Duane's take
The marker's the one tellin' this tale, and I'm just the voice carryin' it down the road. Now settle in, because this one doesn't let go easy. Her name was Elizabeth Ann Whitney — most folks called her Ann — and she came out of Missouri with a teacher's heart and, as it turned out, a courage that would outlast her.
In 1867 she accepted a teaching position at a newly erected rural school, about seven miles north of what is now Hamilton, Texas. The school went by the name of the Leon River School, and it sat up on a rise overlooking the Warlene Valley. You can almost picture it — a little building perched up there, wind moving through the valley below, children at their lessons.
It must've felt like the edge of the world and the start of something all at once. Then came a hot summer afternoon in 1867, and everything changed. Ann and her students were suddenly attacked by Comanche Indians.
According to local tradition, Ann was struck repeatedly by arrows fired through cracks in the schoolhouse walls. Fatally injured — and there's no softening that — she nevertheless kept herself together long enough to aid the escape of her students. All but one of those young children got out.
She saw to that. Ann Whitney came from Missouri to teach on a rise above the Warlene Valley, and when the worst afternoon of her life arrived, she spent what was left of it on her students. That's the whole of it, and it's more than enough.
What the marker says
Elizabeth (Ann) Whitney, a native of Missouri, accepted a teaching position at a newly erected rural school located about seven miles north of present day Hamilton in 1867. This school, called the Leon River School, was situated on a rise overlooking the Warlene Valley. On a hot summer afternoon in 1867 Ann and her students were suddenly attacked by Comanche Indians. According to local tradition Ann was repeatedly struck by arrows fired through cracks in the schoolhouse walls. Although fatally injured she nevertheless bravely aided the escape of all but one of her young students.