DUANE
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Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. D. R.
Thornton came up from Mississippi, and the first smart thing he ever did was marry Mary Anna Garland in Anderson County, Texas, in 1853. Her father was Peter Garland, a frontier fighter, which tells you something right there about the family Mary Anna came from. A man courting that daughter had better be ready for a hard life, and D.
R. Thornton was. By 1857, the Thorntons had settled out here in Erath County as cattleraisers, planting themselves on a frontier that was not exactly rolling out the welcome mat for newcomers.
The marker says they helped make this frontier safe for less hardy citizens. Less hardy. That's the marker's way of being polite about the rest of us.
While D. R. was out doing whatever it took to hold that land, Mary Anna was doing something just as indispensable. She was the midwife and the doctor to her fellow settlers.
Out on a frontier where the nearest real physician might as well have been on the moon, she was it. Every child born healthy in that community, every neighbor who made it through a fever, owed something to Mary Anna Thornton. The two of them raised eight children of their own along the way.
Then the Civil War came in the 1860s, and D. R. went off as a Confederate soldier. He came back.
And he kept building. He served as county commissioner from 1876 to 1878. And then in 1882, he gave something that outlasted him entirely.
He donated land for a local school. Hannibal Cemetery stands on that donated land today. A man gives ground for a school, and it becomes the place where his neighbors are laid to rest.
The land he gave kept on giving, one way and another, long after D. R. and Mary Anna were gone.
What the marker says
D. R. Thornton from Mississippi married Mary Anna, daughter of frontier fighter Peter Garland in Anderson County, Texas, in 1853. The Thorntons settled here in 1857 as cattleraisers, and helped make this frontier safe for less hardy citizens. Mrs. Thornton was midwife and doctor to fellow settlers. The couple reared eight children. Thornton, a Confederate soldier in the Civil War (1860s), served as county commissioner (1876-78), and gave land for local school (1882). Hannibal Cemetery stands on the donated land. (1976)