Col. Leonard Williams

Leonard Goyen Williams was a man of languages and treaties. The Handbook of Texas says he fought in the Fredonian Rebellion, lost the sight in one eye at the siege of Bexar, and was a ranger sergeant in 1836. Sam Houston gave him the title colonel and in 1842 named him one of four commissioners to treat with Native nations. He joined the Tehuacana Creek councils, served as agent at Torrey's Trading Post, and was later sent to try to ransom Cynthia Ann Parker. The entry does not mention the plaque's Comanche captivity.

What the plaque says

Col. Leonard Williams (1798-1854) Heroic frontiersman and soldier. Was made Colonel by his friend, President Sam Houston. After being a Comanche captive, was a diplomat and Indian agent. Settled near here, 1845. Built area's first tank, using scraper of cowhide. Wife was Nancy Isaacs. They had six children. (1967)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Texas Ranger Hall of Fame and Museum — 17 mi
  The official state repository of Texas Ranger memorabilia, opened in 1968 in Fort Fisher Park on the Brazos, named for a Ranger post of 1837 whose site no one has located.
• Waco Suspension Bridge — 17 mi
  A Brazos crossing opened in January 1870 as the longest single-span suspension bridge west of the Mississippi, tolled until 1889, closed to vehicles in 1971 and now walked.
• Dr Pepper Museum — 18 mi
  The 1906 bottling plant of the Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Company, built where Dr Pepper outgrew a Waco drugstore soda fountain, now the Dr Pepper Museum.
• Waco Mammoth National Monument — 18 mi
  A bone bed on the Bosque River where a nursery herd of at least 19 Columbian mammoths was trapped and drowned by floodwater 65,000 to 72,000 years ago, left in place under a dig shelter.

More markers nearby

• Mt. Calm Methodist Church — 2.3 mi
• First Baptist Church of Mt. Calm — 2.4 mi
• Birome — 6.2 mi
• Saint Paul's Church of Gerald — 7.6 mi