Beef for the Confederacy

Jesse L. Driskill, one of the stockraisers named here, was paid in Confederate dollars and came out of the war with no cattle and no money. He rebuilt his herds driving cattle north on the early Chisholm Trail with his brother-in-law William H. Day, then in 1871 moved his family to Austin and ran ranches as far off as Kansas and Dakota. In 1885 he bought a city block there for $7,500, and the Driskill Hotel opened on December 20, 1886. A late freeze in 1888 killed 3,000 of his cattle, and he lost the hotel.

What the plaque says

Beef for the Confederacy Throughout Hays County, 1861-65, as in the rest of texas, beef production for the Confederacy was a major patriotic service. Leading ranchers, called Government Stockraisers, had the duty of supplying the Commissary Department of the Army. Hays County, with its well-established cattle industry, had several men designated as C.S.A. Beef Raisers. These included James M. ("Doc") Day, John W. Day, Wm. H. Day, and their brother-in-law, Jesse L. Driskill; Wm. Washington Moon; and Ezekiel Nance. These men had hazardous work. They had either to fight or detour around Indians, rustlers and enemy patrols. Herds had to swim flooded streams, some with quicksand beds. Wm. H. Day once was almost drowned while swimming a herd across the flooding Brazos. At least two of the Day brothers were in military service as well as supply duty. Moon, a veteran of the Mexican War, and founder of the city of San Marcos, not only was a stockraiser but also joined the 32nd Cavalry. He donated beef to soldiers' families and furnished leather and horse feed to his cavalry company. Beside supplying beef to the quartermasters, Nance manufactured cotton cloth for the Confederacy. (1965)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Spring Lake and the Meadows Center — 5.1 mi
  The headsprings of the San Marcos River, among the longest-inhabited places in North America, once an amusement park with a swimming pig and now seen from glass-bottom boats.
• Lockhart Courthouse Square — 13 mi
  A cotton-era courthouse town named the Barbecue Capital of Texas, built near the 1840 Plum Creek fight that followed the killing of Comanche leaders at peace talks.
• McKinney Falls State Park — 18 mi
  Limestone falls on Onion Creek inside Austin, where people camped under a rock overhang for thousands of years and a financier of the Texas Revolution built his stone ranch house.
• Gruene Historic District — 20 mi
  A cotton town on the Guadalupe that the boll weevil emptied, rescued in the 1970s by a kayaking architecture student, with a dance hall that says it has never closed.

More markers nearby

• Kyle Cemetery — 1.3 mi
• Kyle Auction Oak — 2.5 mi
• Kyle — 2.5 mi
• John Wheeler Bunton — 2.5 mi