Helena Kimble Dill Nelson
Alto, Cherokee County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(1770 -- 1848) Mother of child thought to have been first Anglo-American born in Texas, in 1804. Helena Kimble was born in Maryland. Married James Dill in 1786. Moved to Nacogdoches, then under Spanish rule, 1793. There he became an Indian trader and served as alcalde (mayor), 1821-1823. He died 1825. She gained title in 1828 to Dill's land grant, in present Cherokee County. Moved here and soon after married Wm. Nelson.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Born in Maryland in 1770, Helena Kimble married James Dill and moved in 1793 to Nacogdoches, then part of Spanish Texas, where her husband traded with Native peoples and served as alcalde. Her child is remembered as possibly the first Anglo-American born in Texas, in 1804, decades before the region became American. Widowed in 1825, she secured title to Dill's land grant and settled in present Cherokee County.
Why it matters
Her life traces the earliest Anglo presence in Spanish Texas and the pivotal role women played in holding land and family together on a shifting colonial frontier.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Helena Kimble Dill Nelson
- · James Dill
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Candace Midkiff Bean
Linwood, TX
Candace Midkiff Bean came of age on the Texas frontier as the wife of the adventurer Peter Ellis Bean, settling in the piney woods of East Texas during the turbulent years of Mexican rule and the young Republic. Born near Nashville in 1802, she lived out her days near Douglass and died there in 1848. The marker honors her among the pioneer women whose labor and endurance underpinned early Anglo-Texan settlement.
Helena Dill Berryman
Cherokee County, TX
Born in 1804 when Nacogdoches was still Spanish territory, Helena Dill Berryman was remembered by tradition as the first Anglo child born in Texas. She married Lieutenant Henry Berryman in 1823 and later built a log home she named "Forest Hill" on inherited land in Cherokee County, where she hosted noted Texans and took an active hand in the county's growth. After her husband's death she raised thirty orphaned children.
William Preston and Rebecca Kate Conner House
Ratcliff, TX
On land bought in 1852, W. P. "Press" and Rebecca Kate Conner built their home in 1891 from logs harvested on the property, a vernacular L-plan house later expanded with a second story and generations of additions. Press worked as a farmer and rancher while Kate served the surrounding community as its midwife. More than a century on, Conner descendants still own and care for the homestead.
Old Palestine Cemetery
Alto, TX
In 1853, Henry and Helena Berryman deeded four acres here to trustees of the Old Palestine Baptist Church, and Helena later added land where a schoolhouse and graveyard already stood. Many early graves went unrecorded, but stones marked burials as far back as 1861, including several members of the Boyd and Donegan families who died in 1862. Expanded over the years, the cemetery endures as a record of the area's pioneer families.