Early Settlers of Kerr County

🏛️The era

In 1846 Texas had only just become part of the United States, admitted as a state at the very end of 1845 after nearly a decade as an independent republic. The line of settlement still hugged the older towns to the east and south, and the Texas Hill Country along the upper Guadalupe River was open frontier.

That year was also the start of the U.S.-Mexican War, and the new state was full of movement: soldiers, surveyors, land speculators, and settlers looking for a stake. German immigrants were settling in the Hill Country during these same years, and communities were pushing steadily up the river valleys.

This frontier was not empty. It was the homeland and raiding territory of Native peoples, including the powerful Comanche, who fought to hold their lands against the spreading settlement. The raids mentioned on the marker were part of a long and violent struggle over who would control the Hill Country, and settlers on its edge lived with that danger every day.

👥People & events

Joshua D. Brown was a Kentuckian who arrived in Texas in 1830 and settled at Gonzales, near James Kerr, a fellow Kentuckian who served as surveyor and resident manager of Green DeWitt's colony. Gonzales was at the center of early Anglo settlement in Mexican Texas, and Brown later did military duty for the Republic of Texas.

After marrying Sarah Jane Goss of Gonzales, Brown headed for the frontier. He learned to hand-rive cypress shingles, splitting thin roofing boards from blocks of wood with a froe and mallet, which took real skill. On the headwaters of the Guadalupe he found what he was looking for: towering cypress trees along the riverbanks, enough to supply a business.

In 1846 he led ten shingle makers to this spot and built a camp of picket houses, simple shelters made of upright logs set side by side in the ground. Raids sometimes forced the crew back to Gonzales for safety, but Brown kept at it, and his shingle making became the first industry at what would become Kerrville.

Brown bought 2,640 acres along the river. When the county was organized in 1856, he insisted it be named for his old friend James Kerr, and he donated the original townsite, including four acres for public buildings and streets, in "Kerrsville," the new county seat. He spent the rest of his life on his ranch near town, and his son A. P. Brown later served as a county commissioner.

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

Brown's shingle camp is a clear example of how American frontier towns often got started. Before farms, courthouses, or churches, there was often a single resource worth harvesting, such as timber, furs, minerals, or good grazing, and someone willing to take the risk to go get it. Industry came first, and the town grew up around it.

The cypress trade also connected this far edge of Texas to the growing settlements downstream. Roof shingles were in steady demand as towns grew, and supplying them tied the frontier to the wider economy of a fast-growing state.

The story also shows the costs of westward expansion. Settlement along the Guadalupe was part of a contest over land with Native nations who had lived and hunted there long before, and Brown's crew retreating to Gonzales during raids is a reminder that this expansion was contested at every step.

🧭If you visit

Stand near the Guadalupe and picture the river lined with giant cypress trees, their wide trunks rising from the water's edge. Bald cypress still grow along Hill Country rivers, and seeing them helps you understand why a shingle maker would travel this far into dangerous country to reach them.

Kerrville today is a comfortable Hill Country town, but this marker takes you back to its very first working camp, a handful of picket houses and eleven men splitting shingles by hand. Before you move on, take a moment to think about how much the valley has changed.

The spot fits well into a scenic Hill Country road trip. Follow the river, stop at parks along the Guadalupe, and link this marker with others in nearby towns to trace how settlement moved up the valley in the years after Texas statehood.