DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker records about Mary Theresa Juergens. Now, some stories you come across out here on the Texas road are the kind that settle into your chest and stay there. This is one of those.
Conrad and Mary Theresa Hennecke Juergens were German natives, and they came to Texas in 1833 — the same year they were married — and built a cabin near this very site. A new country, a new marriage, a cabin going up out of raw Texas land. They couldn't have known what was coming.
March of 1836. The Texas Revolution was raging, and the Mexican army was advancing. Across the territory, settler families were abandoning their homes in a desperate, panicked flight that history would come to call the Runaway Scrape.
The Juergens family made a different choice. They stayed. That decision, and what followed from it, is the whole weight of this story.
A raid came. Indians, thought to be members of the coastal Karankawa tribe, struck the Juergens homestead. Conrad was wounded.
And Mary — along with two of Conrad's young sons from a previous marriage — was taken captive. What the marker makes sure you understand is that Mary was pregnant at the time of her kidnapping. She gave birth in captivity.
A girl. They named her Jane Margret. Months passed.
Then, mother and daughter were ransomed — ransomed at Coffee's Trading Post on the Red River. The fact that they ended up that far north, at the Red River, suggests they had been traded by the Karankawas to a nomadic tribe somewhere along the way. The marker doesn't fill in every mile of that journey, and maybe that's fitting.
Some stretches of suffering don't need narrating. Conrad's two young sons were not rescued. Mary and Jane Margret returned to Conrad.
But within two years, Conrad died. Mary then entered a brief second marriage, to a man named George Grimes, and after that she married Samuel Redgate in 1843. Together, Mary and Redgate moved to Dayton, Ohio — a long way from that cabin on the Texas frontier.
Mary Theresa Juergens died there in 1891, on October the thirty-first. But here's where the story doubles back on itself. Samuel Redgate and Jane Margret — that daughter born in captivity on the Texas plains — they returned to Texas.
They settled in Parker County. And in 1936, the State of Texas erected a monument at their graves, honoring them, and honoring Mary. A woman who survived capture, gave birth in captivity, lost two stepsons she never got back, buried a husband, outlived a second marriage, and still managed to leave someone behind who came home to Texas.
The marker was placed in 1992. The story it tells is a whole lot older than that.
What the marker says
(1809-October 31, 1891) German natives Conrad and Mary Theresa Hennecke Juergens came to Texas in 1833, the year of their marriage, and built a cabin near this site. In March 1836 as the Texas Revolution was raging, many Texas settlers, in fear of the advancing Mexican army, fled their homes in what became known as the Runaway Scrape. The Juergens family chose to remain, but soon were victims of a raid by Indians, thought to be members of the coastal Karankawa tribe. Conrad Juergens was wounded, and Mary and two of Conrad Juergens' young sons from a previous marriage were captured. Pregnant at the time of her kidnapping, Mary gave birth to a girl, Jane Margret, while in captivity. Months later, mother and daughter were ransomed at Coffee's Trading Post on the Red River, suggesting they were traded by the Karankawas to a nomadic tribe. The Juergens' sons were not rescued. Mary and Jane returned to Conrad, but he died within two years. After a brief second marriage to George Grimes, Mary married Samuel Redgate in 1843. They moved to Dayton, Ohio, where Mary died in 1891. Redgate and Jane Margret returned to Texas and settled in Parker county, where in 1936 the State of Texas erected a monument at their graves to honor them and Mary. (1992)