Squaw Creek Cemetery
Hilltop, Gillespie County, Texas
Marker Inscription
On their way west from Arkansas to California about 1856, the family of Francis Marion Nixon and his wife, Catherine Elliot, was forced to detour south from the North Texas Plains to this area to obtain water and forage for their livestock. After first camping on a hill near the Mason/Gillespie County line, thereafter referred to as Nixon Point, they settled in this section of Gillespie County during the 1860s. The Nixon's son, Andrew Jackson Nixon, and his wife, Lurana Wooten, built their home in this vicinity and with their fourteen children formed the nucleus of the community of Squaw Creek. Marriages by their descendants added the names Baethge, Ratto, Strackbein, Mund, Faught, and Gibson to the extended Nixon family line. The Squaw Creek Cemetery grounds were a part of a 110-acre conveyance from A. J. Nixon to his brother-in-law, Henry Strackbeing, in 1872. The first recorded interment is that of Elizabeth Gibson in 1873. The first legal mention of the cemetery occurs in a deed executed by Adolph Strackbein in 1914. Of the approximately 60 interments here, most are members of the extended Nixon family. The burials include those of American Civil War and World War I veterans.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Bound for California from Arkansas around 1856, the family of Francis Marion Nixon detoured south into Gillespie County seeking water and forage and ended up settling there in the 1860s. Their son Andrew Jackson Nixon and his wife Lurana raised fourteen children who, with marriages into the Baethge, Ratto, Strackbein, and other families, formed the community of Squaw Creek. The cemetery, first used in 1873, holds some sixty graves, most of them Nixon kin, including Civil War and World War I veterans.
Why it matters
A single migrating family's decision to stop and stay shows how chance and kinship seeded whole rural communities across the Texas Hill Country in the settlement era.
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Related people
- · Francis Marion Nixon
- · Andrew Jackson Nixon
Themes & tags
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