Huff Family Massacre

Duane's take

Here's what the official marker has to say, and I'll do my best to do it justice. There are stories the Texas land holds quietly, and then there are stories it seems to press up through the soil whether you want them or not. This is one of the second kind.

Wise County, 1874. The Huff family had only recently settled this stretch of land; remote country, the kind where a man and his son could ride out to work and find themselves genuinely alone for the better part of a day. That's exactly where C.

W. Huff and his son were when it happened. Out in that remote part of the property, working, the way settlers did, from first light on.

Back at the home, in one of the last Indian raids Wise County would ever see, Mrs. Huff was killed. So were her daughters: Palestine and Molly.

Three members of one family, gone. The neighbors came. And what they found, I won't dress up or look away from: the victims had been scalped and mutilated.

That's what the marker says, and it says it plainly, because some things deserve to be said plainly. Those neighbors did what neighbors do when there's nothing else left to do. They buried Mrs.

Huff and Palestine and Molly the best way they could manage in that moment; in a wagon bed, right there in the grave. No coffins. No lumber to be had.

Just a wagon bed and the grief of people who had to act fast and had very little to act with. The story doesn't end there, though. It is said (and the marker is careful to say it that way, it is said) that lumber was later obtained, and the three victims were reburied in proper coffins.

A small mercy, arriving late, the way small mercies sometimes do. C. W.

Huff stayed. That's the part that settles on you when you sit with this story. The man who lost his wife and his daughters on land he'd only recently brought his family to; he stayed.

And in 1879, five years after the worst day of his life, he gave the land surrounding that burial plot so that a cemetery could grow up around them. He couldn't undo what the year 1874 had taken. But he could make sure the ground that held them was tended, and shared, and kept.

That's the Huff family marker, standing in Wise County; a hard story, told straight.

What the marker says

An atrocity of 1874, in one of last Wise County Indian raids. While C. W. Huff and son worked in remote part of land recently settled by the family, Indians killed Mrs. Huff and daughters, Palestine and Molly. Neighbors buried the scalped and mutilated victims in a wagon bed, in the grave. It is said that lumber was later obtained for coffins and the victims were reburied. In 1879 land around plot was given for cemetery by C. W. Huff.