Moses William Hindes

🏛️The era

In the mid-1850s, the brush country between San Antonio and the Rio Grande was among the last parts of settled Texas to fill in. It was a land of mesquite, prickly pear, and scattered creeks, good for cattle when there was water and punishing when there was none. Families who came here were betting that open range and grass would make up for isolation, drought, and danger.

This was also contested ground. For generations, Native peoples had moved through and raided across South Texas, and the arrival of ranching families with horses and cattle sharpened that conflict. Settlements were few and far apart, and help could be a long ride away.

The Civil War made things worse. With many men away in Confederate service and the frontier only thinly guarded, raids increased across much of Texas. Even after the war ended in the spring of 1865, the frontier stayed unsettled for months and years, as old conflicts went on and the region waited for any lasting order to return.

👥People & events

Moses William Hindes was born in South Carolina and married Mary Jane Mason. Like many Southern families of his generation, the Hindeses moved west in stages, first to Alabama and then to Mississippi in the 1840s. In 1855 they made their biggest move: with six children, an ox-wagon, and a horse-drawn hack, they came to Texas.

After a year in Lockhart, the family pushed on in 1856 into this thinly settled corner of the state. Water decided everything. They tried Ash Creek and San Miguel Creek before settling on the Frio River, and in dry spells they dug wells right into the riverbed to keep their cattle alive. It is a small detail that says a lot about how hard this country could be.

During the Civil War, Moses and his eldest son, George, served as Confederate scouts. In those years raiders struck the area again and again, taking horses and even children. On August 1, 1865, word came of another raid. Neighbors gathered at the Hindes home for safety, and six men took turns guarding forty horses in the corral through the night. The attack came at daybreak, and Moses Hindes was shot and killed defending his homestead.

He was first buried in this boothill and later moved to the cemetery at Pleasanton in Atascosa County. His family stayed. George went on to found the town of Hindes, a family store in Pearsall sold the first pear burner ever marketed, and the marker notes that every generation has produced men who rode with the Texas Rangers. Great-grandchildren raised this marker in 1968.

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

The Hindes story is a South Texas version of a story told all along the American frontier: families moving west in stages, putting up with hardship for the promise of land, and paying for it, sometimes with their lives, in conflict with the people already there. Both sides suffered in that violence, and it shaped the region for decades.

It also shows how ranching shaped Texas. Wells dug in a riverbed during drought and a family store selling a pear burner point to the practical inventions ranchers came up with to live in dry country. Pear burners, which singed the spines off prickly pear so cattle could eat it in hard times, became a well-known tool of South Texas ranching.

Finally, the marker itself is a piece of history. Raised by descendants a century later, it shows how frontier families remembered their own: as founders and defenders. Reading it today, you can also picture the wider story it doesn't tell, including the Native peoples whose homeland this was.

🧭If you visit

This is quiet ranch country, and the marker stands at a small frontier boothill. Expect open brush, mesquite, and prickly pear, the same plants that shaped the Hindes family's lives. Take a moment to picture how far apart the homesteads once were, and how much a creek or river meant out here.

The Frio River and the creeks named on the marker run through this part of South Texas, and the drive through McMullen and Atascosa counties gives you a feel for the land the settlers worked. If you're following the family's trail, Pleasanton, where Hindes was reburied, and the community that bears the Hindes name are both in neighboring Atascosa County.

Services can be far apart in this region, so plan fuel and water ahead. Please respect the cemetery and any private land nearby. It makes a thoughtful stop on a road trip through the brush country between San Antonio and the border.