Nichols Cemetery
Kerrville, Kerr County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Born about 1805, Rowland Nichols settled in Kerr County where he served as county commissioner. Upon his death at the hands of Indians, Nichols was buried, as he wished, under a live oak tree on his farm on April 11, 1859. This site became a community burial ground and the burial place of many area pioneers, including J. C. W. Ingram (1829-1902), for whom the town of Ingram was named. Additional property was later purchased from Lafayette Nichols to enlarge the cemetery. For over a century Nichols Cemetery has served the residents of this part of Kerr County. (1982)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Rowland Nichols, a Kerr County commissioner born around 1805, was killed by Indians and buried in 1859 beneath a live oak on his own farm, just as he had wished. His grave became a gathering ground for the dead of a scattered frontier community, including J. C. W. Ingram, namesake of the nearby town of Ingram. For more than a century this shaded plot has held the region's pioneers.
Why it matters
A single settler's grave grown into a community cemetery captures how Texas Hill Country pioneers, facing danger and isolation, rooted permanence in the land through the people they buried there.
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Related people
- · Rowland Nichols
- · J. C. W. Ingram
- · Lafayette Nichols
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Old Spanish Trail
Kerrville, TX
The Old Spanish Trail threaded through the Hill Country from San Antonio past Bandera Pass, Camp Verde, and Kerrville, a route used for centuries by Comanches and Lipan Apaches. In 1732 Spanish forces under Juan Antonio Bustillo y Cebalos fought the Apaches at Bandera Pass, and over following decades soldiers, missionaries, and adventurers followed the trail toward the San Sabá country and its rumored silver. By the 1850s Camp Verde and Camp Ives anchored military patrols along the same ancient path.
James Kerr
Kerrville, TX
James Kerr, a Kentucky-born veteran of the War of 1812 and former Missouri legislator, came to Texas in 1825 as surveyor general of Green DeWitt's colony and a member of Stephen F. Austin's "Old Three Hundred." He selected the site of Gonzales and named it for the governor of Coahuila, endured the deaths of his first wife and children, and spent decades as a surveyor, Texas Ranger major, and delegate to the conventions that steered Texas toward independence. In 1856 pioneer Joshua Brown gave land here so that Kerr County would bear his old friend's name.
The Dowdy Tragedy of 1878
Mountain Home, TX
In 1878 the Dowdy family moved from Goliad to the Texas Hill Country, settling along Johnson Creek in Kerr County. Only weeks after they arrived, four of the children — Alice, Martha, Susan, and James — were killed in an Indian raid while tending sheep near their home, and were buried the next day at Sunset Cemetery. The attack, on October 5, 1878, was among the last such raids in the county.
Sunset Cemetery
Kerrville, TX
The oldest marked graves in Sunset Cemetery belong to four Dowdy children killed in an 1878 Indian raid soon after their family reached the Texas Hill Country from Goliad. Nearby lie four Byas children lost to an 1880s typhoid epidemic and pioneers like H. L. Nelson, who founded the Mountain Home post office. Assembled over decades from several landowners, the cemetery preserves the hardships of frontier Kerr County.