Daniel Harrison
Jarrell, Williamson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Tennessee native Daniel Harrison (1816-1870) migrated to Texas in 1835. He served with Texan forces during the Texas Revolution, and as a volunteer for the Republic's militia. He was in the 1839 Battle of the Neches. In 1840, Harrison married Nancy Robbins and soon moved his family to present-day Williamson County and what would be the Corn Hill community. He served in Central Texas' 27th Brigade during the Civil War. As a blacksmith in Corn Hill, a stage stop on the route from Austin to Fort Gates, his work was crucial to traffic on the military road. Later, Harrison also farmed and raised horses and cattle. Originally buried in Anderson Cemetery, Daniel and Nancy were later reinterred in Corn Hill Cemetery. (2007)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Daniel Harrison came to Texas from Tennessee in 1835 and served with Texan forces during the Revolution, later fighting in the 1839 Battle of the Neches as a militia volunteer for the young Republic. Settling in what became the Corn Hill community, he worked as a blacksmith on the stage route from Austin to Fort Gates—vital labor for a military road—while also farming and raising livestock. He later served in Central Texas' 27th Brigade during the Civil War, and he and his wife Nancy were eventually reinterred at Corn Hill Cemetery.
Why it matters
Harrison's life links the founding struggles of the Texas Republic to the everyday frontier labor—blacksmithing, farming, road travel—that knit early Central Texas together.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Daniel Harrison
- · Nancy Robbins Harrison
Related events
- · Battle of the Neches
- · Texas Revolution
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Corn Hill Community
Jarrell, TX
Corn Hill was among the earliest communities in Williamson County, named by county judge John E. King for the hilltop home and cornfield he built in 1852. A stop on the stage line from Georgetown to Fort Gates, it gained a post office in 1855 and grew into a farming village with academies, a college, churches, cotton gins, and even a telephone company. When the Bartlett Western Railway bypassed it in 1909, steam engines hauled homes and businesses two miles north to the new town of Jarrell, leaving Corn Hill a dispersed reminder of its agrarian past.
Jarrell
Jarrell, TX
Jarrell was born of a railroad gambit: developer Orlando D. Jarrell persuaded executives of the Bartlett and Western Railway to route their line through leased land rather than the nearby town of Corn Hill, and in 1909 he began selling lots. When the tracks arrived in 1911, most of Corn Hill's residents — and even two dozen of its buildings — moved to the new town, which thrived on cotton until the crop's decline and the railway's 1935 closure shrank it. The town endured a devastating tornado in 1997 before incorporating in 2001 and entering an era of rapid growth.
Capt. Milton Wesley Damron
Salado, TX
Tennessee-born Milton Wesley Damron came to Texas in the 1840s as part of the Mercer Colony, married Sarah Pennington, and settled in what became Bell County when the colony's original plans fell through. He served as the county's first tax assessor, then joined the Confederate Army, leading a cavalry unit in Indian Territory and Arkansas. Returning to Salado, he worked as postmaster and won election as a legislator, though as a former Confederate he was barred from taking his seat.
Old Round Rock Stagecoach Inn
Round Rock, TX
In the mid-19th century, central Texas towns like Round Rock grew up around the overland stage lines and the great cattle trails that funneled travelers and drovers northward. A stagecoach inn here would have offered a meal, a bed, and fresh teams to passengers rattling through on the long haul between frontier settlements. Such stops were the highway rest areas of their day, knitting together a young and sparsely settled state.