Tow Cemetery

Duane's take

The official marker for Tow Cemetery in Llano County tells it this way, and I'm just the one passing it along. Now, out in the Hill Country, a cemetery can tell you things a courthouse never will. And the Tow Cemetery goes back a good long ways — far enough that the oldest date we can point to belongs to a child.

Margaret R. Thorp. Eight years old.

Death date 1850. Said to have died from a snakebite. That one fact — that one heartbreaking, plainly stated fact — is what documents just how old this burial ground really is.

The community that formed around it grew up alongside the Bluffton-Tow Saltworks, and that cemetery was already waiting. There's an obelisk standing out there too, carrying an 1846 date. But here's the thing — it's a memorial for a Morgan family member who was buried somewhere else entirely.

The stone is there. The person is not. That's the kind of detail that'll stop you mid-step if you're paying attention.

The Morgans themselves did put down roots in the area. John F. Morgan — a successful fur hatmaker, of all things — arrived in 1853.

That same year, William Tow and his family settled Tow Valley. Eighteen fifty-three, two arrivals, a community taking shape. What followed was generations of people caring for that ground.

Area families kept it up through the years, and by the 1950s, an association had formed to oversee the work formally. The tending never stopped — it just got organized. The marker calls this cemetery a chronicle of the pioneers and generations that are the Tow area's heritage.

And that's exactly right. From a child lost to a snakebite in 1850, to a fur hatmaker showing up with his trade and his ambitions, to families who decided this ground was worth keeping — it's all still there, out in Llano County, reading like a story that hasn't finished being told.

What the marker says

The 1850 death date of eight-year old Margaret R. Thorp, said to have died from a snakebite, documents the age of this burial ground in the community that formed around the Bluffton-Tow Saltworks. An obelisk with an 1846 date is a memorial for a Morgan family member buried elsewhere. John F. Morgan, a successful fur hatmaker, arrived here in 1853, the same year William Tow and family settled Tow Valley. A long tradition of caring for this site by area families is now overseen by an association formed in the 1950s. This cemetery remains as a chronicle of the pioneers and generations that are the Tow area's heritage. Historic Texas Cemetery 2001