HistoricSiteMarkers
Reconstruction & Gilded Age

Site of Old Gill Farm

Comanche vicinity, Comanche County, Texas

Marker Inscription

Settled 1874 by W. A. Gill (1843-1889), son of W. S. Gill, hero of Battle of San Jacinto. W. A. fought in Civil War and was a Captain in the Texas Rangers. His sons E. V. and Fleet lived here for many years. Remains in this family plot were moved in 1964 to Buffalo Cemetery (1mile N). (1968)

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

W. A. Gill, son of a San Jacinto veteran, settled this Comanche County land in 1874 after fighting in the Civil War and serving as a captain in the Texas Rangers. His sons E. V. and Fleet lived here for many years on the family farm. In 1964 the remains in the family plot were reinterred a mile north at Buffalo Cemetery.

Why it matters

The Gill family's path—from the Texas Revolution through the Civil War to Ranger service and frontier farming—compresses three generations of Texas's fighting and settling history into one homestead.

Own a business near here? Add it to the map.

Related people

  • · W. A. Gill
  • · W. S. Gill

Related events

  • · Battle of San Jacinto

Themes & tags

Westward ExpansionCivil WarFrontier HistoryLandmark

Nearby & related markers

Taylor's Chapel (Concord) Cemetery

Comanche vicinity, TX

This burial ground began beside the Concord Primitive Baptist Church, organized before 1881 in the pioneer country north of Comanche, with its earliest marked grave that of F. M. Warren in that same year. Warren's father, Posey W. Warren, was a deacon and likely founder of the church, and the surrounding land belonged to large settler families like the Browns, one of whom was a Confederate veteran. When a Methodist congregation formed here in 1901 on land from Alabama native James "Hood" Taylor, the site took on the name Taylor's Chapel Cemetery.

Fort Blair, C.S.A.

Desdemona, TX

A few miles southwest stood Fort Blair, the largest of the far-western "family forts" that sheltered settlers through the Civil War years when regular troops were away. Started by C.C. Blair in 1857, its dozen log cabins were linked by pickets, and its families made their own candles, soap, food, and clothing from whatever the land offered while defending against Indian raids. After the war the site became the town of Desdemona, which boomed when oil was struck in 1918.

Corinth Cemetery

Stephenville, TX

In 1880, North Carolina native Dr. William Wallace McNeill and his wife Elizabeth Ann deeded land to the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, for a church, school, and cemetery. The burial ground is the last surviving trace of the vanished Corinth community, with an unknown number of unmarked graves from the late 1800s. Its oldest marked grave is that of Confederate soldier F. J. Simpson, who died in 1899, and later burials include twice-honored Texas State Artist Ethel Lewallen.

Capt. John Stephen Potts

Pottsville, TX

Born in Tennessee in 1816, John Stephen Potts married a cousin of Confederate president Jefferson Davis and served as a justice of the peace and sheriff in Missouri before soldiering for the Confederacy. After the Civil War he came to Texas, paying $500 in gold for Hamilton County sheep range in 1872 and gradually adding land. A devout Baptist and Mason who donated a cemetery site, he was honored when the town of Pottsville was named for him in 1878.