Vicinity of Bradbury Settlement
Junction, Kimble County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(2 mi. above forks of N. and S. Llano rivers) One of earliest Kimble County communities. Opened by James Bradbury, Sr., a frontiersman. Between 1850 and 1864 he moved here from Williamson County with six children, after death of his wife. He erected several picket or log buildings, and had blacksmith shop for repairing guns and tools.Main business was ranching. Diet included fish, game, honey and bear meat cured as bacon. Five other men (some with families) lived nearby. Bradbury was killed in 1872 in an Indian fight. In 1875 his land was bought and occupied by Dr. E.K. Kountz and family. (1970)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Where the North and South Llano rivers meet, frontiersman James Bradbury, Sr. built one of Kimble County's earliest settlements, arriving with six children after his wife's death. His cluster of picket and log buildings included a blacksmith shop for mending guns and tools, and families lived off ranching supplemented by fish, game, honey, and even cured bear meat. Bradbury was killed in an Indian fight in 1872, and by 1875 his land had passed to Dr. E. K. Kountz.
Why it matters
It captures the hardscrabble reality of settling the Texas Hill Country frontier, where isolated ranching families faced daily danger at the edge of Anglo expansion.
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Related people
- · James Bradbury, Sr.
- · Dr. E. K. Kountz
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Isaac Kountz
Junction, TX
On Christmas Eve, 1876, sixteen-year-old Isaac Kountz was killed on this spot while herding his father's sheep in Kimble County, one of countless flashpoints of violence on the Texas frontier. His younger brother Sebastian, only eleven, escaped, and a posse joined by Texas Rangers pursued the raiders to the Guadalupe River. Isaac was buried in the Junction Cemetery, and the marker recalls the perils that shadowed even the youngest members of settler families.
Kimble County
Junction, TX
This hill country along the Llano was home to Jumano and Apache peoples when Spanish explorers passed through in the 1600s and 1700s, before the Comanche came to dominate the region by the mid-1800s. Frontier forts and the Texas Rangers guarded the area as Anglo settlement pushed westward, and the county was organized in 1876, named for an Alamo defender. Long troubled by outlaws until the Rangers restored order in the 1880s, it settled into a livelihood of sheep and goat ranching for wool and mohair.
The Killing of Sam Speer
Junction, TX
On Christmas Eve 1876, seventeen-year-old Sam Speer was killed by a band of Indians while driving horses near this spot, his brother's large-caliber rifle failing to fire in the moment. Recorded as the last such killing in Kimble County, the event marked the closing of an era of frontier conflict along the Llano; Speer rests in the North Llano Cemetery.
Old Bear Creek Texas Ranger Camp
Junction, TX
Established in October 1877, the Old Bear Creek camp served as a patrol base for Company E of the Texas Rangers' Frontier Battalion, watching the Llano River country for Indians and outlaws. The region was a haven for cattle and horse thieves, but within weeks Lieutenant N. O. Reynolds and his thirty men had captured many; in 1878 they helped repel one of the area's last Indian raids. Their presence, maintained into the mid-1880s, opened Kimble and nearby counties to peaceful settlement.