William C. Hays
Minden, Rusk County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(April 24, 1806 - December 20, 1893) Enlisted in cause of Texas independence in Kentucky, Dec. 18, 1835. Fought in victory at San Jacinto, April 21, 1836. Received land grants as service pay, and brought family to Texas to live. Here he aided Gen. Sam Houston in treating with Chief Bowles at Shawnee village; was a charter member and elder in Maple Grove Presbyterian Church, and an early Worshipful Master, Mt. Enterprise Masonic Lodge. Five of his sons fought for Confederacy in 1860s.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Born in 1806, William C. Hays cast his lot with the Texas independence movement, enlisting in Kentucky in December 1835 and fighting in the decisive victory at San Jacinto in April 1836. Rewarded with land grants, he brought his family to settle the East Texas frontier, where he helped General Sam Houston negotiate with the Cherokee leader Chief Bowles and became a founding church elder and Masonic lodge master. Five of his sons later took up arms for the Confederacy.
Why it matters
Hays embodies the arc of an ordinary Anglo settler through the birth of the Texas Republic — from revolutionary soldier to frontier community-builder — the human scale on which a young nation was actually built.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · William C. Hays
- · Sam Houston
- · Chief Bowles
Related events
- · Battle of San Jacinto
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Maple Grove Cemetery
Minden, TX
Maple Grove Cemetery began in sorrow, with the 1879 burial of Paul and Martha Rettig's infant son Joseph on the family's Rusk County land. When two children of the tenant-farming Kinsey family were laid to rest nearby in 1883, the plot gradually became a community burial ground, formally cared for by a committee organized in 1895. Its roughly 600 graves hold three generations of area families and veterans of wars from the Texas Revolution through World War II.
Welch Cemetery
Henderson, TX
When Georgia-born Anna Welch chose this East Texas hillside for her own grave in 1877, she started a family burial ground that would gather generations of pioneers around her. Her son, Civil War veteran Andrew Jackson "Jack" Welch, owned the land, and in 1898 the family formally set aside the tract as a cemetery in his will. Enlarged by descendants into the twentieth century, it holds settlers and veterans of four wars.
McCune Cemetery
Laneville, TX
McCune Cemetery grew out of the Chinquapin community in the pine country of Rusk County, its roots reaching back to pioneer James L. McCune, who came to Texas in David G. Burnet's colony and took a land grant in 1835. His son married a local Cherokee woman, Delila Storm, in 1836, and their third child's 1852 burial opened the family graveyard. More than 200 graves now rest beneath hickories, oaks, and chinquapins on land still held by McCune heirs.
Bethel Cemetery
Henderson, TX
Bethel Cemetery grew up beside a community, school, and Methodist church at Bethel Springs, with its earliest marked grave dating to 1879 and likely older burials before it. Among those laid to rest are founders of Henderson and veterans of the Texas War for Independence, the U.S.-Mexico War, and the Texas Indian Wars—including A.K. Van Sickle, who served in all three. Today, one of the oldest cemeteries in Rusk County, it is the last trace of a community that has otherwise vanished.