Samuel P. Newcomb

Duane's take

The official marker tells this one, and I'm just gonna do it justice. Now, picture a seventeen-year-old boy, born up in Connecticut in 1839, making his way alone — alone — to Texas in 1857. No family alongside him, no hand to steady the wagon.

Just Samuel P. Newcomb and whatever it was that pulled him southwest. He settled at Fort Davis on the Clear Fork of the Brazos River in Buchanan County, and he came as a schoolteacher.

But Texas, as Texas tends to do, had other plans for how a man would spend his days. By 1860, the county had voted Samuel Newcomb in as county clerk of Buchanan County. One year later, Buchanan County got itself renamed Stephens County — 1861, same year the whole nation started coming apart at the seams.

That same year, Newcomb was functionin as Justice of the Peace, and if that weren't enough hats for one man, he was appointed collector of the Confederate war tax for eleven counties. Eleven. You think about the ground that man had to cover.

The commissioners court also handed him the task of surveying the boundaries of Stephens County — and so a schoolteacher became a surveyor, drawing the lines of the land he'd chosen to call home. He served in a Texas state troops ranger unit during the Civil War, adding soldier to that long list of things Samuel Newcomb was called upon to be. But here is where the story takes a turn toward something quieter and maybe more lasting.

Samuel Newcomb kept a diary. He wrote down the daily life of the pioneers out at Fort Davis. He described the physical appearance of the fort carefully enough that historians and archeologists have leaned on his words ever since.

He wrote about the droves of buffalo nearby — droves of them, rolling across that country. He wrote about what young people did for entertainment, and about the treatment for the sick and dying. A man with a surveyor's eye and a schoolteacher's hand, recording a world that was already beginning to change.

He married Susan Reynolds, and she became a diarist too. Her writings carry their own weight — reflecting the conditions of the county, and the isolation that settled over the pioneers like dust after a long dry spell. Two people, keeping two sets of records, in one hard place.

Samuel P. Newcomb died in 1870, at age thirty-one. He is buried here, beside his first child — an infant son.

A man who came to Texas alone at seventeen, filled every office a frontier county could offer, fought in a war, surveyed the land, and left behind words that still matter to the people who study that time and that place. And in the end, he rests in the soil of the county whose lines he drew himself.

What the marker says

Born in Connecticut in 1839, Samuel P. Newcomb made his way alone to Texas at age 17, arriving in 1857. A schoolteacher, he settled at Fort Davis on the Clear Fork of the Brazos River in Buchanan county. Newcomb held several public offices. In 1860 he was elected county clerk of Buchanan county (renamed Stephens county in 1861.) He became a surveyor when the commissioners court assigned him the task of surveying the boundaries of Stephens county. In 1861 Newcomb functioned as Justice of the Peace, and was appointed collector of the confederate war tax for eleven counties. He served in a Texas state troops ranger unit during the Civil War. His writings have proved an important primary source for historians and archeologists. As a diarist, Newcomb chronicled the daily life of the pioneers, and carefully described the physical appearance of Fort Davis. He also told of droves of buffalo nearby, what young people did for entertainment, and the treatment for the sick and dying. He married Susan Reynolds, who also became a diarist. Her writings reflect the conditions of the county, and the isolation of the settlers. Newcomb died at age 31 in 1870, and is buried here beside his first child, an infant son. (1996)