County Named for Texas Confederate William R. Scurry 1821-1864

William Read Scurry was born in Gallatin, Tennessee, on February 10, 1821, and reached Texas in 1839, the Handbook of Texas says. Licensed to practice law before he was twenty-one, he became a district attorney in 1841, an appointment Adolphus Sterne's diary called a bad one. He was Thomas J. Rusk's aide-de-camp in 1842. After the Mexican War, in which he rose to major, he practiced law in Clinton and co-owned the Austin State Gazette until 1854. He was buried in the State Cemetery in May 1864, and the state later raised a marble shaft over his grave.

What the plaque says

Member Secession Convention. As Lt. Colonel 4th Texas Cavalry Regiment, ably commanded forces at Val Verde and Glorieta Canyon battles in Arizona-New Mexico Campaign 1861-62. Promoted Brigadier General. Commanded immediate land attack recapture of Galveston 1863. In Red River Campaign to prevent Texas invasion, led brigade Battles of Mansfield, Pleasant Hill, La. and Jenkins Ferry, Ark. where he bravely met death. A memorial to Texans who served the Confederacy. Erected by the State of Texas 1963

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Scurry County Museum — 2.6 mi
  Snyder's county museum on the Western Texas College campus, with the rifle used to shoot the white buffalo, an 1878 chuckwagon and the millionth barrel of the Canyon Reef oil boom.
• Heart of West Texas Museum — 23 mi
  Colorado City's museum in a restored downtown house, from a mammoth dug up at Lake Champion in 2001 to an Ice Age bison and the wartime telegrams sent to a local family.
• National WASP WWII Museum — 32 mi
  Hangar 1 at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, where the women of the WASP trained to fly every aircraft in the Army's arsenal in World War II, then waited thirty-three years to be called veterans.

More markers nearby

• Scurry County's Canyon Reef Oil Field — steps away
• Home County of Famous Frontiersman J. Wright Mooar — steps away
• Scurry County — steps away
• Santa Fe Railway in Scurry County — steps away