DUANE
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Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say, right here along Kelly Creek. Now, picture Kerr County in the 1870s. The Guadalupe River rolling along, Kelly Creek feeding into it, and a man named John Sherman standing at that confluence thinking: water.
Moving water. That is power just waiting to be put to work. So Sherman built a mill.
Right there where those two waters come together. And this was no single-trick operation, friend. That mill ground corn.
It sawed lumber. It ginned cotton. One water-powered workhorse doing three jobs at once, out on the Texas Hill Country frontier.
You had to admire the ambition. Sherman didn't just build a mill, either. He built a life around it.
He and his wife and their eight children lived in a house nearby, a house that was still standing when this marker was put together. Eight children, one mill, one family holding a corner of Kerr County together. The mill ran.
It kept running. Decade after decade, it served the community, grinding and sawing and ginning its way through the seasons. And then came 1932.
The flood didn't negotiate. It didn't give notice. What John Sherman had raised up in the 1870s, the floodwaters took down in 1932.
The mill was destroyed. Gone. But here's the thing about a story like that.
It doesn't end with the flood. A Sherman descendant, Dovie Turk Talley, made sure of that, sponsoring this very marker so the site wouldn't just quietly disappear into the riverbank. The mill is gone.
The water still moves. And the story, well, it's still standing.
What the marker says
A pioneer Kerr County water-powered mill located near Kelly Creek-Guadalupe River confluence. It ground corn, sawed lumber, ginned cotton. Built in 1870s by John Sherman, it was in use until destroyed by flood in 1932. Sherman, his wife, and 8 children lived in house still standing nearby. (1972) Incise on base of marker: Marker Sponsor: A Sherman descendant, Dovie Turk Talley