To John Williams and Howell Haggett
Austin, Travis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
To John Williams and Howell Haggett. Killed by Indians in May, 1836 while detailed from Captain John J. Tumlinson's company of rangers to help protect the families of the Hornsby's settlement on returning from the "Run Away Scrape". To William Atkinson pioneer ranger buried near Daniel Hornsby when both were killed by Indians June 7, 1845. Erected by the State of Texas 1936
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This marker remembers rangers killed in the dangerous early years of the Republic. John Williams and Howell Haggett died in a May 1836 encounter with Indians while detailed from Captain John J. Tumlinson's company to protect the Hornsby settlement's families returning from the panicked flight known as the "Runaway Scrape." Pioneer ranger William Atkinson fell in a similar clash in 1845. The State of Texas placed the monument in 1936.
Why it matters
These deaths reflect the violent collision between Anglo settlement and Native peoples along the Texas frontier.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the spring of 1836, the country around present-day Austin was not a state, not even a settled territory in any comfortable sense — it was the raw edge of a brand-new nation fighting for its life. Texas had declared independence from Mexico that March, and by April the revolution reached its climax at San Jacinto. But independence on paper did not make the frontier safe. Out along the Colorado River, scattered families lived on isolated homesteads far from any town, exposed to the dangers of a contested borderland.
This was the era of the early Republic, when the line between soldier and settler blurred almost completely. There was no standing army to speak of and no organized law. Protection came from small mounted companies of rangers — neighbors, really — who rode the country between the settlements, watching the crossings and the trails.
The settlement most associated with this marker lay in that vulnerable zone. Families here had already fled once, and were only beginning to return to fields they had abandoned in panic. Into that fragile, half-emptied landscape the men remembered on this stone rode out to stand guard.
People & events
The story behind this memorial turns on a moment of retreat and return known as the Runaway Scrape. As Mexican forces advanced across Texas in the spring of 1836, terrified families abandoned their homes and fled eastward in a chaotic mass exodus, leaving crops, livestock, and everything they could not carry. When the fighting turned in the settlers' favor, they began the long, anxious journey back to whatever was left.
It was during that return that John Williams and Howell Haggett met their end. Detailed from Captain John J. Tumlinson's ranger company, they had been sent to help shield the families of the Hornsby settlement as those families made their way home. In May 1836 both men were killed. They were not famous soldiers; they were guards on a rescue detail, doing the unglamorous work of getting frightened people safely back to their land.
The marker carries a second name from nearly a decade later. William Atkinson, remembered here as a pioneer ranger, fell in June 1845 in another clash, dying near Daniel Hornsby. Two separate tragedies, years apart, are bound together on one stone — a reminder that for this community the danger did not end with the revolution but stretched on through the entire life of the Republic.
Its place in the American story
The Runaway Scrape and the frontier violence that followed it belong to a larger American pattern: the westward push of Anglo-American settlement and the bloody, contested ground it created wherever it advanced. The men named here died in the collision between that expansion and the Native peoples who already lived on and moved across the land — a collision repeated, in different forms, across the continent throughout the nineteenth century.
The Republic of Texas occupies an unusual chapter in that national story. For nearly a decade Texas was its own sovereign country before joining the United States, and its early rangers became one of the most enduring symbols of the American frontier. The small, self-organized protection they provided — ordinary men patrolling in place of an army — is exactly the kind of improvised institution that defined life on every moving edge of settlement.
That this monument was raised by the State of Texas in 1936, on the centennial of independence, is telling. A century later, the young nation was consciously gathering up the names of its earliest dead and carving them into the landscape, deciding whose sacrifices would be remembered as foundational.
If you visit
This is a memorial, not a battlefield or a grand monument, so come expecting something quiet and easy to miss. Its power is in the plainness of the inscription — a short roll of names and dates that stands in for lives cut off in the middle of ordinary, dangerous work.
Take a moment with the two different years cut into the stone, 1836 and 1845. That gap of nearly a decade tells you more than any single date could: this was not one terrible event but a long stretch of uncertainty, when a family returning to its own farm still had to be escorted home. Read the names slowly, and notice how many people are gathered around this one marker — the men who died, the captain they served under, the settlement they were sent to protect.
If you're building a road trip through the Austin area, this makes a thoughtful early stop before you visit the polished capitol landmarks downtown. It sets the stage — a reminder that the settled, comfortable city grew up on ground that once felt like the far end of the map.
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
- · John Williams
- · Howell Haggett
- · William Atkinson
- · John J. Tumlinson
- · Daniel Hornsby
Related events
- · Runaway Scrape
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
To Josephus Hornsby
Austin, TX
Josephus Hornsby, son of pioneer Reuben Hornsby, grew up on the exposed Colorado River frontier east of Austin, settling in 1832. As a young Ranger he fought in the Indian and Mexican clashes of the Republic era — the Flores and Brush fights, Plum Creek in 1840, and the Vasquez and Woll campaigns — and in 1842 rescued two captives from an Indian raid in Austin.
Site of the Home of Reuben Hornsby
Austin, TX
Reuben Hornsby and his wife Sarah built this home in 1832, the first in what is now Travis County and part of Stephen F. Austin's colonizing effort on the Texas frontier. Renowned for their hospitality, the Hornsbys nursed Josiah Wilbarger here after he was scalped and left for dead in 1833. Hornsby and his sons rode as Rangers and Indian fighters, and Captain John J. Tumlinson's company was organized on this very ground in 1836.
Site of Fort Colorado
Austin, TX
Established in June 1836 and first commanded by Colonel Robert M. Coleman, this stockade — also called Coleman's Fort — was one of the young Republic of Texas's farthest frontier outposts. Manned by Texas Rangers under Coleman and later captains Michael Andrews and William Eastland, it guarded settlers along a contested edge of settlement until it was abandoned in November 1838. The State of Texas marked the site in 1936, the republic's centennial year.
Fort Colorado Historical Marker
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In the first anxious years of the Republic of Texas, the young nation strung frontier posts along its edge to guard settlers from raids. This site marks Fort Colorado — also known as Coleman's Fort — a short-lived station of the late 1830s garrisoned by early ranging companies on the Colorado River near present-day Austin. It stood only about two years before being abandoned as the line of settlement shifted.