Battle of Brushy Creek

The plaque lists the dead; the Handbook of Texas shows a fight in two parts. About February 25, 1839, Jacob Burleson, captain of some twenty-five riders, found a Comanche camp near Post Oak Island, ordered a charge on foot, and was shot in the back of the head while helping a young friend untie a horse. Within hours General Edward Burleson arrived with thirty-two men and chased the Comanches along Battleground Creek until dark. They left behind a wounded man the Handbook calls a Black slave. In 1925 Taylor's schoolchildren raised money for a granite marker.

What the plaque says

Battle of Brushy Creek A skirmish between Comanche raiders and a local militia near here in mid-winter (1839) led to the last major battle between Anglo settlers and Indians in Williamson County. The Comanche retaliated on February 18, 1839, by attacking several area homes, including those of Mrs. Robert Coleman and Dr. J. W. Robertson. Mrs. Coleman and her son, Albert, were killed. Another son, Tommy, and seven of Robertson's slaves were taken captive. The ensuing battle along nearby Brushy Creek claimed the lives of Jacob Burleson, Edward Blakely, the Rev. James Gilleland, and John B. Walters. (1993)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Round Rock — 17 mi
  A table-shaped stone in Brushy Creek gave Round Rock its name in 1854; the Chisholm Trail crossed the creek near it, and Old Town stayed behind when the railroad pulled the town east.
• Inner Space Cavern — 18 mi
  A Georgetown cave found in 1963 when highway engineers drilled test holes, holding Pleistocene fossils and 72-degree rooms that visitors reach by an artificial tunnel.
• Williamson County Courthouse — 19 mi
  The fifth Williamson County courthouse, a Beaux Arts building by C. H. Page, rises over a Georgetown square of more than 50 Victorian-era buildings.
• LBJ Presidential Library — 25 mi
  A ten-story travertine archive on the University of Texas campus holding 45 million pages from a presidency of civil rights laws, the War on Poverty and Vietnam.

More markers nearby

• Howard Bland, Sr. — 3.6 mi
• United States Senator Morgan C. Hamilton — 3.9 mi
• Bill Pickett — 3.9 mi
• Tex Avery — 3.9 mi