DUANE
Duane's take
The State of Texas put this one into words back in 1936, and I'm here to carry it down the road for you. Now, 1836 was not a gentle year in Texas. You had families in a dead run — what history calls the Run Away Scrape — people grabbing children and kettles and whatever they could carry, fleeing ahead of danger, trying to find someplace that felt like safe ground.
The Hornsby's settlement, out here in Travis County, was one of those places folks were scrambling back to when the worst of it passed. Captain John J. Tumlinson had a company of rangers in the field, and from that company he detailed two men — John Williams and Howell Haggett — to help protect the families of that settlement.
Those families were returning from the Run Away Scrape, tired and vulnerable, and somebody had to stand between them and whatever was still out there in the brush and the river bottoms. Williams and Haggett stood there. And in May of 1836, they were killed by Indians.
Just like that, two names that might have faded entirely are the whole point of a stone marker. Detailed to protect others. That's the job they drew.
That's how they ended. But this marker carries a third name, and his story stretches nearly a decade further down the calendar. William Atkinson — pioneer, ranger — was buried near a man named Daniel Hornsby.
Not by choice of proximity in life, but because both of them were killed by Indians on the same day: June 7, 1845. Two men, one date, laid to rest in the same ground out near this stretch of Texas. Three names.
Three rangers. The marker the State of Texas raised in 1936 makes sure you know all of them — Williams, Haggett, Atkinson — men who were sent out ahead of the danger so somebody else wouldn't have to face it alone. That's a debt that tends to outlast the people who owed it.
Which is probably why they put it in stone.
What the marker says
To John Williams and Howell Haggett. Killed by Indians in May, 1836 while detailed from Captain John J. Tumlinson's company of rangers to help protect the families of the Hornsby's settlement on returning from the "Run Away Scrape". To William Atkinson pioneer ranger buried near Daniel Hornsby when both were killed by Indians June 7, 1845. Erected by the State of Texas 1936