DUANE
Duane's take
The way the official marker tells it, this is the story of that ground in Lamar County — and it is not a gentle one. Legend tells of French and Spanish forts standing here before the families ever arrived — old shadows on older soil. But it was in 1820 that the families of J.
W. G. Pierson, Luke and John Roberts, and the Mason brothers settled here, and that is where the marker plants its flag.
First Anglo-American settlement in what would become Lamar County. That means something. It also means they were a long way from help.
Within a year of their arriving — within a year — the men were away from the settlement when an Indian raid came down on what remained: women, children, and slaves, left behind and unprotected. They were victims of that raid. And then five of the men pursued.
Five of them went after. They were outnumbered. They too were killed.
That's the whole of it, laid out plain and without ornament, because some stories don't need dressing up — they need witnesses. The marker itself speaks the epitaph, and you'd do well to hear it slow: Be silent, friend. Here heroes died to blaze a trail for other men.
The State of Texas erected those words in 1936, and the ground underneath them has been holding that story since 1820. You drive past a lot of markers on a Texas road that tell you about firsts and foundings and the grand sweep of settlement. Every now and then one of them makes you pull over and just be quiet for a minute.
This is one of those.
What the marker says
Legend tells of French and Spanish forts before the families of J. W. G. Pierson, Luke and John Roberts, and the Mason brothers settled here in 1820. Within a year, in the absence of the men, women, children and slaves were victims of an Indian raid. Five of the men pursued, but outnumbered, they too were killed. Be silent, friend! Here heroes died to blaze a trail for other men. Erected by the State of Texas 1936