DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it — Thomas C. and Eliza V. Felps, out of Blanco County. Thomas C.
Felps came into this world in Tennessee in 1836, and by 1850 he was already a Texan. Six years after that, he found his way to this particular stretch of country — Blanco County territory, wild and wide open. A man had to earn his keep out here, and Thomas did it by freighting, hauling goods across a land that didn't ask any favors.
When the Civil War came, he joined the Blanco County Rangers. That's the kind of man he was — show up, do the work, defend what needed defendin'. In 1863, Thomas married Eliza V.
White. She'd been born in Ohio in 1846, and somehow this Ohio girl had landed in the Texas Hill Country. The two of them built a life together, and it was the kind of life that looked, for a while, like it might hold.
Then the summer of 1869 arrived. Thomas had been fighting a fever — the kind that keeps a man flat on his back and in no condition for much of anything. So the couple had moved in with Eliza's parents while he mended.
Her father was S. T. White, a newly-appointed County Judge, and on July 21, 1869, Judge White rode out to Blanco on business.
Routine enough. He couldn't have known what he was leaving behind. That same day, a band of Indians came down on the place along Cypress Creek.
Thomas and Eliza were killed. Thomas was ill and had no fair chance at it. And Eliza — only Eliza was scalped.
The couple left behind two children. Thomas and Caroline, orphaned in a single afternoon. Eliza's parents — the same family that had taken the couple in during hard times — took in the children and raised them.
Judge White had ridden out to Blanco on the morning of July 21st not knowing he'd come home to a grief that would reorder everything. Some days write themselves in ways no man sees coming. This one did.
What the marker says
Born in Tennessee in 1836, Thomas C. Felps came to Texas in 1850 and to this area in 1856. He earned a living by freighting and joined the Blanco County Rangers during the Civil War. In 1863 he married Eliza V. White (b. 1846), a native of Ohio. In the summer of 1869, the couple lived with Eliza's parents while Thomas recovered from a fever. Her father, newly-appointed County Judge S. T. White, had gone to Blanco on July 21, 1869, when Thomas and Eliza were killed by a band of Indians on Cypress Creek. Only Eliza was scalped. The couple's orphaned children, Thomas and Caroline, were cared for by Eliza's parents. (1975)