Frio Town Cemetery
Frio Town, Frio County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Founded in 1871, Frio Town served as the first county seat of Frio County. A courthouse was built in 1876, and a number of families built homes in the area. The International and Great Northern Railroad built a line from San Antonio to Laredo in 1881, bypassing Frio Town. By 1883 the new town of Pearsall (16 mi. E) on the rail line became the new county seat. One of the few physical reminders of the historic Frio Town community, this cemetery stands as a testament to the county's early pioneer history. The first burials occurred in 1873, when Calvin Massey (1797-1873) was killed by Indians, and Robert Wesley Hiler (1855-1873) died in a horse riding accident. Among the pioneer settlers interred here are Ben (1813-1893) and Minerva (1817-1895) Slaughter and their descendants, as well as members of the Roberts, Hiler, Little, Loxton, Taylor, Hattox, Blackaller, and Minus families. A number of early graves are unmarked. Six men killed in an Indian raid on the William J. Slaughter sheep ranch in 1876 are buried together in a row of graves. The cemetery also contains the burials of a number of infants and small children, a reflection of harsh conditions on the frontier. (1991)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Frio Town rose in 1871 as the first seat of Frio County, gaining a courthouse and settlers' homes, until the International and Great Northern Railroad bypassed it in 1881 and the county seat moved to rail-served Pearsall. Its cemetery, with burials beginning in 1873, is one of the community's last physical traces. The graves tell a stark frontier story — pioneers like the Slaughters lie here, along with settlers killed in Indian raids, including six men buried in a single row after an 1876 attack, and many infants lost to harsh conditions.
Why it matters
The cemetery is a poignant record of how the coming of the railroad made and unmade Texas towns, and of the dangers frontier families faced on the southwestern edge of American settlement.
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Related people
- · Calvin Massey
- · Robert Wesley Hiler
- · Ben Slaughter
- · Minerva Slaughter
- · William J. Slaughter
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Frio County
Pearsall, TX
Though Spanish explorers passed through this brushy South Texas country as early as 1690, Frio County was not organized until after the Civil War. The county seat shifted from Frio City to Pearsall when the International & Great Northern Railroad arrived in 1883, and in 1876 a Texas Ranger camp under Major John B. Jones guarded settlers against raids. The legendary frontiersman "Big Foot" Wallace spent his last years here.
Frio County
Pearsall, TX
Long home to the Pachal Indians, this South Texas country was first crossed by Spanish explorer Alonso de León in 1690 as he searched for La Salle's ill-fated Fort St. Louis. By 1720 the route through the region had become part of a King's Highway linking Saltillo to East Texas—the same road along which Santa Anna marched toward the Alamo in 1836. Frio County, named for its "cold" river, was created in 1858 and organized in 1871, its seat later moving to Pearsall in 1883.
Moore Cemetery
Moore, TX
Established on land deeded by Moses Veith in 1896, Moore Cemetery was the community's first public burial ground, replacing the scattered private plots and church graveyards of earlier years. Among those interred are pioneers and men who fought in frontier Indian conflicts and both World Wars. The town itself was named for R. B. "Mustang" Moore, an early Texan killed by Comanches in 1861, and was first known as Moore Hollow.
John M. Davenport
Sabinal, TX
John M. Davenport was a stock-raiser and captain of a volunteer company on the violent Texas frontier of the 1850s, where settlers and Comanche bands clashed over the same borderlands. In October 1859 he was killed near here by a raiding party, and the coroner's inquest that followed was said to be the first held in the area for a victim of such a raid. Settlers and soldiers from nearby Fort Inge trailed the band some 200 miles, recovering his gun after the fight.