Lowry Hampton Scrutchfield
Valley Mills, Bosque County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(June 11, 1824 - November 2, 1900) Born in Nacogdoches in 1824 to Fleming and Nancy Pool Scrutchfield, Lowry H. Scrutchfield moved to Nashville on the Brazos with his widowed mother about 1834. In 1845 he met George B. Erath, who taught him land surveying and introduced him to local Indian tribes. Scrutchfield assisted Erath and John McLennan in surveying Waco Village in 1849. He married Nancy Proffit in 1851; they settled on the John C. Pool survey. Scrutchfield emerged as leader of the small band of pioneers who settled and organized Bosque County. He was elected the new county's first chief justice (county judge) in 1854. (1999)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Born in Nacogdoches in 1824, Lowry Hampton Scrutchfield came to the Brazos country as a boy and learned surveying from the frontier figure George B. Erath, who also introduced him to local Indian tribes. In 1849 he helped survey Waco Village, then settled on the Pool land and emerged as the leading organizer of the pioneers who founded Bosque County. In 1854 his neighbors elected him the new county's first chief justice.
Why it matters
Scrutchfield's life traces the surveyor's chain and the county courthouse — the twin instruments by which the Texas frontier was measured, settled, and turned into organized communities.
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Related people
- · Lowry Hampton Scrutchfield
- · George B. Erath
- · John McLennan
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Scrutchfield Cemetery
Clifton, TX
Set on two acres of an 1846 land survey, this cemetery was deeded to Bosque County for public burials by Lowry Hampton Scrutchfield in 1883. Family tradition holds that an infant, Minnie Henderson, was the first laid to rest here, though the oldest legible stone marks a six-month-old child from 1885. Scrutchfield, his wife, and his mother lie among more than fifty marked and unmarked graves of the county's early settlers.
Poston-Odle Cemetery
Valley Mills, TX
One of the earliest settlements in this part of Bosque County grew up along Hog Creek in the 1850s around a rock building used as a school and church, giving the area the name Rock Church on Hog Creek. After the Civil War, John Odle's family settled here, and Odle set aside this cemetery ground following the 1875 death of his sister, Mary Odle Poston. Pioneer families rest here, and the cemetery gates were built from the stones of the old rock church.
Roden Taylor Crain
Valley Mills, TX
Roden Taylor Crain left Tennessee to join the fight for Texas independence, serving in a San Augustine County volunteer company at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto in April 1836. Like many veterans of that struggle, he was rewarded with a land grant and pension, and he built his life on that frontier acreage in what became Bosque County until his drowning in the Bosque River in 1891.
First Methodist Church of Valley Mills
Valley Mills, TX
Methodism reached this corner of Bosque County in the 1840s, when circuit-riding preachers held camp meetings on a nearby farm. After the railroad pulled Valley Mills south of the river in 1889, the congregation built its first church, then voted to move downtown, completing this brick sanctuary by 1916. Its temple-front entries with Ionic columns, art-glass windows, and pressed-metal roof mark it as a proud small-town landmark.