John B. Denton
Denton, Denton County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Born in Tennessee July 26, 1806, came to Texas in January, 1836. As a Methodist circuit rider killed in the Village Creek Indian fight May 24, 1841 in what is now Tarrant County. Named for Gen. Edward H. Tarrant who commanded the volunteers. Denton city and county were named for the pioneer lawyer, preacher, soldier of that name.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Born in Tennessee in 1806, John B. Denton came to Texas in 1836 and worked as a Methodist circuit-riding preacher and pioneer lawyer. He was killed on May 24, 1841, in the Village Creek fight against Native people in what is now Tarrant County—an expedition led by Gen. Edward H. Tarrant, for whom that county is named. Both the city and county of Denton later took his name.
Why it matters
His life and violent death embody the Republic-era expansion of Anglo settlement into Native lands that defined the Texas frontier.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · John B. Denton
- · Edward H. Tarrant
Related events
- · Village Creek fight
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Quanah Parker
Fort Worth, TX
Born around 1845, Quanah Parker was the son of Comanche chief Peta Nocona and Cynthia Ann Parker, an Anglo girl taken captive as a child and raised among the Qua-Ha-Di band. Refusing the 1867 Medicine Lodge Treaty, Quanah led raids across Texas and Mexico for years and eluded Col. Ranald MacKenzie's cavalry until losses at Adobe Walls and a brutal winter brought his people to the Fort Sill reservation in 1875. There he reinvented himself as a pragmatic leader and liaison, promoting ranching and schooling, prospering in business, and traveling widely—visiting Fort Worth and the Stockyards many times before his death in 1911.
Denton County
Denton, TX
Denton County was carved from Fannin County in April 1846 and organized that July, both town and county named for John B. Denton — a pioneer preacher, lawyer, and Indian fighter who died in 1841. The county seat wandered from Pinckneyville to Alton before settling permanently at Denton in 1850. The marker records the restless early years of a North Texas frontier county finding its footing.
Swisher Cemetery
Lake Dallas, TX
The Swisher Cemetery began on land granted to H. H. Swisher for his service in the Texas War for Independence, marking some of the earliest Anglo settlement in this part of north central Texas. His son, Capt. A. P. Swisher, formally donated ground for the burials of the community then called the French Settlement, later renamed Garza and finally Lake Dallas when the dam on the Trinity's Elm Fork created the lake in 1926. Its 1,100-plus graves include veterans from the Civil War through the Persian Gulf, a century and a half of local history.
Bolivar Cemetery
Sanger, TX
Dr. Hiram Daily laid out the town of Bolivar in 1852 with a burial ground on high ground nearby, and by the 1870s local Masonic and Odd Fellows lodges had set aside acreage for community burials. The graves read like a ledger of frontier life and death: infants and adults lost to the influenza epidemics of 1892 and 1918, farmers and ranchers, teachers, physicians, and ministers. Among them rest veterans of conflicts from the Mexican War through Vietnam, generations of one small Texas community.