Albuquerque
Nixon, Wilson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Near 1857 Ranch of Samuel and Martha (Hastings) McCracken. Post office, opened 1869, was named by veterans of Sibley's Civil War campaign in New Mexico. Town had businesses, school, blacksmith shop where DeWitt County Sheriff Jack Helm died (1873) of blast from gun of John Wesley Hardin. Post office closed 1883. (1972)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Named by veterans of Sibley's Confederate campaign in New Mexico, the community of Albuquerque grew up near an 1857 ranch, gaining a post office in 1869 along with businesses and a school. Its blacksmith shop was the scene of a famous frontier killing in 1873, when the gunman John Wesley Hardin shot DeWitt County Sheriff Jack Helm; the post office closed a decade later.
Why it matters
The rise and disappearance of this little town, and the violence that made it briefly notorious, capture the lawless edge of Reconstruction-era Texas.
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Related people
- · John Wesley Hardin
- · Jack Helm
- · Samuel McCracken
- · Martha Hastings McCracken
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Site of Old Town of Union Valley
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Settled in the 1860s, Union Valley grew around a log schoolhouse donated in 1872 that also served as Masonic hall, church, and courtroom — the multipurpose civic heart of a frontier settlement. A post office opened in 1883, and stores, cotton gins, saloons, and smithies bearing a roll call of pioneer family names lined its streets. Like so many rural towns, it faded after the Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio Railroad bypassed it in 1906.
Sandies-Dewville Community
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Sandies grew up in the 1830s among settlers of Green DeWitt's Mexican-era colony, quickly gaining a church, a Masonic lodge, and a school in the decades that followed. When the Dew brothers opened a store and cotton gin a mile off in 1886 and a post office followed in 1894, the center of gravity shifted to a new townsite platted as Dewville, drawing the church and school with it. Like many small Texas farming communities, Dewville faded after World War II, its post office shuttering in 1955, and today only cemeteries and a lone Methodist church mark where the two settlements once stood.
Sandies Chapel Cemetery
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This burial ground began with the family of Joseph and Catherine McCoy, pioneers of Green DeWitt's colony, and later served the Sandies Chapel community, with graves reaching back to the 1860s. Among those laid to rest here are a San Jacinto veteran, citizens of the Republic of Texas, Civil War soldiers of the local home guard, and four pioneer Methodist ministers. In one small plot lies a cross-section of early Texas history.
Dewville United Methodist Church
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Methodist worship in the Sandies community began in 1842, and Sandies Chapel was formally chartered by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in 1857. When settlement shifted, the congregation moved a mile in 1897 to the new town of Dewville, building on land donated by Mrs. C. C. Vernor, wife of an early pastor. The church has remained an active center of local life ever since.