Hector Family Cemetery
San Marcos, Hays County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Astyanax Troy Hector was born to Scottish immigrants in Virginia in 1823. Though the Hector children were named for Homer's Iliad, Astyanax Troy was later nicknamed "Stine." The family relocated to Texas between 1838 and 1846. Astyanax Troy Hector was a farmer, hatmaker and land surveyor. He married Sarah Jane Hocker in 1851. She died giving birth to their seventh child in 1864. The family cemetery was probably established by their firstborn when he buried her on the family farm near the house. When Hector returned home from the Civil War, he found his thirteen-year-old son, Valerus Gordon Hector, caring for the farm and family. Hector married his wife's youngest sister, Susan Nancy Hocker, in 1865 and they had eleven children. Astyanax Troy Hector died in 1905 and was the last family member to be buried at this site. (1999) Historic Texas Cemetery medallion (added to post)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Astyanax Troy 'Stine' Hector, born in Virginia in 1823 to Scottish immigrants and named for Homer's Iliad, came to Texas as a young man and worked as a farmer, hatmaker, and land surveyor. The family cemetery was begun in 1864 when his wife Sarah died in childbirth and was buried on the farm; while Hector served in the Civil War, his thirteen-year-old son kept the place running. Hector was the last of the family laid to rest here, in 1905.
Why it matters
This quiet family burial ground preserves the ordinary texture of frontier settlement — immigration, hard farm labor, wartime absence, and loss — behind the larger sweep of Texas history.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Astyanax Troy Hector
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
San Pedro Cemetery
San Marcos, TX
San Pedro Cemetery was established in 1909 to serve the San Marcos community and was recognized as a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2007. Its Spanish name reflects the Tejano and Hispanic heritage woven through Hays County's history. The burial ground remains a quiet record of the families who made their lives in this stretch of Central Texas.
Stringtown
San Marcos, TX
John Drayton Pitts, a civil engineer and Georgia legislator, visited Texas in 1842 and later bought 640 acres near San Marcos from General Edward Burleson, land the general had gained after the Battle of San Jacinto. The colony Pitts founded in 1847 drew family and friends who built farmhouses strung at half-mile intervals along the Austin–San Antonio Road, earning the settlement the name Stringtown. Its "model farms" survived early drought, and after emancipation crops were shared with former slaves given land, while Mexican farmers arrived to work the fields and enrich the area's culture.
Fentress Community Cemetery
Fentress, TX
French and Della Tiller and F. W. and Ethel Mercer deeded this land to the Fentress Odd Fellows lodge for a public burial ground in March 1915, though seven known graves—five of them young Williamson and Gillis children—predate the deed to as early as 1888. Two Gillis markers are memorials only, their graves lost across the San Marcos River. Care passed through the Luling Odd Fellows, local Methodist and Presbyterian churches, and finally a community association in 1993.
Jose Antonio Navarro Ranch
Geronimo, TX
José Antonio Navarro was a rare Tejano statesman who bridged Mexican and Texan worlds, holding office under Mexico before championing Texas independence and signing its Declaration in 1836. In 1834 he bought ranch land along Geronimo Creek, and its house sheltered his family during his imprisonment by Mexican forces after the ill-fated Santa Fe Expedition. He held the ranch until 1853.