John Himes Livergood
Hallettsville, Lavaca County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(September 10, 1815 - October 3, 1893) A native of Pennsylvania, John Himes Livergood came to Texas in 1837 and received 640 acres of land on Peach Creek near Gonzales. From that time until Texas' annexation to the United States nearly ten years later, Livergood played an integral role in the defense of frontier settlements and in several major events during the Republic period. In 1840, Livergood joined Capt. Adam Zumwalt to pursue an Indian party that had attacked his neighbors. The chase ended with a decisive victory at the Battle of Plum Creek. Later he served in several scouting expeditions, including the Spy Company of the Texas Rangers under John (Jack) Coffee Hays. He took part in the Battle of Salado Creek and the Somervell Expedition in 1842. As a member of the doomed Mier Expedition to invade Mexico, he was a survivor of the Black Bean Episode and was finally released from Perote prison in 1844. While visiting family in Missouri in 1847, John H. Livergood met Sarah Ann Elizabeth Perkins (1828-1909). They married in 1847 and established a home (eventually with 13 children) on the Lavaca River. The Livergoods helped found Mossy Grove Methodist Church and were active leaders there. A farmer and rancher, Livergood also entered the political life of Lavaca County, serving as chief justice (county judge) from 1850 to 1852 and later as justice of the peace. In his final military service, Livergood served in the Lone Star Guard, the Texas State Troops and the Confederate army during the Civil War. Both he and Sarah Ann Livergood are buried at Mossy Grove Cemetery. (2001)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Pennsylvania-born John Himes Livergood came to Texas in 1837 and took up 640 acres near Gonzales, throwing himself into the defense of the young Republic's frontier. He joined the pursuit that ended in victory at the Battle of Plum Creek, scouted with Jack Hays's Texas Rangers, and endured the disastrous Mier Expedition—surviving the Black Bean Episode and imprisonment at Perote. Settling on the Lavaca River with his wife Sarah Ann and thirteen children, he became a county judge and justice of the peace before serving the Confederacy in the Civil War.
Why it matters
Livergood's life links the perilous frontier defense of the Republic of Texas to the civic and military history of the Civil War era.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · John Himes Livergood
- · Sarah Ann Elizabeth Perkins
- · Capt. Adam Zumwalt
- · John Coffee Hays
Related events
- · Battle of Plum Creek
- · Mier Expedition
- · Black Bean Episode
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Vienna (Cheney Settlement)
Hallesttsville, TX
Vienna traces to the Republic of Texas era, when Maryland native John Cheney settled the west bank of the Navidad River in 1830 on a spread that once topped 7,000 acres. As the Cheneys sold off land, German, Austrian, and Czech immigrants poured in, and an 1873 post office named the place Vienna for the Austrian capital, complete with school, stores, and a cotton gin. A 1940 flood, closing businesses, and a new highway scattered the community, leaving Vienna Baptist Church as its last standing building.
Sarah Creath McSherry Hibbens Stinnett Howard
Shiner, TX
This marker remembers Sarah Howard, who came to Texas from Illinois with her first husband in 1828 and endured extraordinary hardship on the frontier. Over the following decade she lost husbands and family to frontier violence, survived captivity, and escaped to raise her surviving son, marrying four times before settling with Col. Phillip Howard in Gonzales in 1839. Her repeated survival became emblematic of the endurance demanded of pioneer women on the early Texas frontier.
Ponton Family
Shiner, TX
Virginians William and Isabella Ponton came to Texas in 1829 and received land in DeWitt's Colony, where William became the first recorded settler killed by Comanche in what became Lavaca County; his son Joel later survived an attack with two arrows in his back. The family stood with their neighbors at the Battle of Gonzales, fled in the Runaway Scrape after the Alamo fell, and returned to rebuild after San Jacinto. Across the eras of the Republic, statehood, and the Civil War, the Pontons served as alcaldes, judges, doctors, preachers, and peacemakers.
Half Moon
Shiner, TX
Named for the crescent shape of its timber, Half Moon on Rocky Creek was a gathering place for Native peoples and travelers long before Spanish explorers noted it in 1689. Settlers arrived from the 1830s to trade and farm, and at its height in the mid-1880s the community boasted stores, a saloon, and a post office. When Henry B. Shiner donated land for a railroad in 1887, the rails bypassed Half Moon, and its people and commerce drained away into the new town of Shiner.