Sunset Cemetery
Kerrville, Kerr County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The earliest marked graves in this cemetery are those of James and Susan Dowdy's four children. They were killed by Indians in 1878, soon after the family migrated from Goliad. However, local tradition says the first interment in that of M. B. Shults. Plain stones mark burial sites of four Byas children who died in the 1880s typhoid epidemic. Early pioneer H. L. Nelson (1835-1922), who established Mountain Home Post Office, is buried here. Land for this 4-acre cemetery has been acquired from the A. E. Oehler heirs, M. D. Henderson, and Sunset School when it closed in 1953. (1979)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
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.
Why it matters
Its weathered stones record the violence, disease, and perseverance of Hill Country settlement, a intimate ledger of the human cost of westward expansion.
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Related people
- · James Dowdy
- · Susan Dowdy
- · H. L. Nelson
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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.
Nichols Cemetery
Kerrville, TX
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.
Site of the McDonald Massacre
Harper, TX
In 1863 the family of pioneer preacher Matthew Taylor built a cabin near the source of the Pedernales River, deep in the contested Texas hill country. In August 1864 a band of Kiowas attacked, killing Eli McDonald and a young woman and carrying off several women and children, who were taken as far as Oklahoma before being ransomed. Others survived by taking refuge in the cabin or hiding in a nearby cave.
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.