Colonel Lewis Given Harman

Duane's take

The marker out here in Brewster County tells it this way, and I'm just the one passin' it along. Colonel Lewis Given Harman. Born 1818 in Tennessee, died 1902; that's eighty-four years on this earth, and he didn't waste a one of them.

The marker sums him up in about five words, and every one of them carries weight: surveyor, Indian agent, soldier, legislator, Justice of the Peace. That's not a résumé, that's a life stacked like cordwood. He moved to Texas in 1838, when Texas was still the kind of place that required a certain disposition just to show up.

He fought in the Mexican War. And then, when the Civil War came callin', Harman was forty-three years old. Now, forty-three is the age most men start thinkin' about their knees.

Not Harman. He joined the 11th Texas Cavalry; immediately, the marker says, which tells you something about the man's particular relationship with hesitation. In that swift 1861 campaign to place Confederate forts in Indian Territory, he was right in the thick of it.

And come June of 1861, he was named Post Commander of Fort Arbuckle in Indian Territory, a post he held through August of that year. After the war, Harman was exactly the kind of man that a raw, unsettled corner of Texas needed. When Marathon was founded in 1882, he was there; a civic leader, helping a new town find its footing in the wide-open expanse of West Texas.

The marker calls him typical of those who served the South and then moved into the new counties of Western Texas. Typical. There's some wry understatement for you.

And in the end, Marathon gave him one last distinction: Colonel Lewis Given Harman had the town's first Masonic funeral. The first. In a life full of firsts and fights and fresh starts, even his farewell broke new ground.

What the marker says

(1818-1902) Typical of those who served the South and then moved into new counties of Western Texas. Surveyor, Indian agent, soldier, legislator, Justice of the Peace. Born in Tennessee. Moved to Texas 1838. Fought in Mexican War. Though 43 when Civil War began, immediately joined 11th Texas Cavalry, in swift 1861 campaign to place Confederate forts in Indian Territory. Was Post Commander, Fort Arbuckle, I.T., June to August 1861. Civic leader in Marathon after its founding in 1882. Had town's first Masonic funeral.