Samuel Joseph Redgate
Weatherford, Parker County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Born in England, 1800 Member of Legislature, 1858-1861 Died May 20, 1893 Jane Yergins Jordt Daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Yergins Wife of H. E. Jordt Born in what is now Oklahoma August 20, 1836 Died April 8, 1896 In Memory of Mary Yergins-Redgate Born in Germany, June 11, 1816 Died in Dayton, Ohio October 31, 1881 Shortly after Mrs. Yergins was captured by Indians in 1836 a daughter, Jane, was born and the two were ransomed Mrs. Yergins after the death of her husband was married to Samuel J. Redgate Erected by the State of Texas 1936
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This memorial gathers a family whose lives spanned continents and the violent frontier. Mary Yergins, born in Germany, was captured by Indians in 1836; shortly afterward she gave birth to a daughter, Jane, and mother and child were later ransomed. Mary went on to marry Samuel Joseph Redgate, an England-born settler who served in the Texas Legislature from 1858 to 1861. The State of Texas erected the marker in 1936 to preserve their intertwined story.
Why it matters
The Yergins–Redgate family memorial preserves the immigrant journeys and frontier captivity experiences that shaped early Texas in a deeply personal way.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
This 1936 memorial was raised during the Texas Centennial, the hundred-year celebration of Texas independence, when the state placed markers across its map to fix the memory of its early settlers in stone. That origin matters: the marker looks back from 1936 to a founding generation whose lives reached clear back to the early nineteenth century.
The dates gathered here span continents and a raw frontier. Samuel Joseph Redgate was born in England in 1800; Mary Yergins in Germany in 1816; and Jane, Mary's daughter, in 1836 in what was then the vast Indian Territory that would one day become Oklahoma. These were not people born to Texas — they were carried to it by the enormous human migrations of their age.
Their story unfolds against the most dangerous years of the southern plains, when the line between settlement and open country was fluid and violent, and a family's fate could turn on a single day.
People & events
At the heart of this memorial is a mother and daughter. Mary Yergins, German by birth, was captured in 1836 during the frontier conflicts of the era. Shortly afterward she gave birth to a daughter, Jane, and mother and child were later ransomed and returned — a passage of fear and endurance the marker records with stark brevity and no embellishment.
What the record preserves is the shape of survival. Captivity was one of the frontier's hardest ordeals, and being ransomed back was far from guaranteed; that Mary and her infant came through it together is the quiet miracle the stone commemorates. Jane grew up, married a man named Jordt, and lived until 1896.
Mary's own life carried her still further. After the death of her first husband she married Samuel Joseph Redgate, the English-born settler remembered here as a member of the Legislature in the years 1858 to 1861. Mary died in Dayton, Ohio, in 1881, and Redgate in Texas in 1893 — three lives, begun on two continents, drawn together and set down side by side on this one memorial.
Its place in the American story
Few markers hold the great themes of nineteenth-century America so tightly in one frame. Here in a single family are immigration from England and Germany, the westward movement into contested Indian country, the ordeal of frontier captivity, and the resilience of women who bore the sharpest edge of that world.
The immigrant thread is the American story itself. Millions crossed the Atlantic in these decades and pushed inland, and it is easy to forget that many who became 'Texas pioneers' were first English villagers or German emigrants. The Yergins–Redgate memorial makes that origin impossible to overlook.
And it insists on remembering the women. National memory of the frontier has long favored soldiers and statesmen, yet captivity and its aftermath fell heavily on mothers and children. By naming Mary and Jane and preserving what befell them, the marker honors an experience that shaped countless families and is too often left out of the larger story.
If you visit
This is a memorial to read slowly. Its power is not in grand architecture but in the dates and the few plain lines that, taken together, sketch three intertwined lives across a century of upheaval. Give yourself time to piece the family relationships together as you stand before it.
Let the geography on the stone do its work. Names of birthplaces — England, Germany, the country that became Oklahoma — turn a small Texas memorial into a map of long journeys, and remind you how far people traveled to end up on this ground.
Remember, too, that the marker itself is a historical artifact of 1936, a product of the Texas Centennial's effort to remember its pioneers. Visiting it, you stand at the meeting point of two acts of memory: the family's endurance in the 1800s, and a later generation's determination that they not be forgotten.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Samuel Joseph Redgate
- · Mary Yergins-Redgate
- · Jane Yergins
Themes & tags
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