Early Settlers of Kerr County

People lived along the Guadalupe and its forks long before the shingle makers; artifacts suggest arrivals 6,000 to 10,000 years ago. In historic times Lipan Apaches, Comanches and Kiowas hunted here, and Spanish troops crossed the area in the mid-1700s while defending San Antonio from Apache raids. Indians drove Brown's crew off soon after 1846; they came back in 1848 and called the place Brownsborough. Settlers who followed in the early 1850s built sawmills on the streams. Raids grew so troublesome that the army opened Camp Verde in 1855, and the last raid in the county came in 1878.

What the plaque says

Early Settlers of Kerr County (The Shingle Makers) The earliest permanent settler at this point on the Guadalupe was Joshua D. Brown (1816-74), a native of Kentucky who came to Texas in 1830 and settled at Gonzales near a fellow Kentuckian, James Kerr, surveyor and resident manager of Green DeWitt's Colony. Brown did military duty for the Republic of Texas. After marrying Sarah Jane Goss of Gonzales, he sought new opportunities on the frontier, learned the art of hand-riving cypress shingles, and found here on the Guadalupe's headwaters an abundance of giant cypress trees suitable for commercial use. In 1846, he led to this site ten shingle makers, and built a camp of picket houses in which to work. Despite Indian raids that sometimes drove the crew to Gonzales for safety, he made a success of the first industry operated at later site of Kerrville. Brown bought 2,640 acres of land with frontage on the river. When the county was organized in 1856, he insisted upon having it named for his friend, James Kerr. He donated the original townsite, including 4 acres of land for public buildings and streets in Kerrsville (as town was then called), the county seat. He lived out his lifetime on his ranch near town. A son, A. P. Brown, was county commissioner in 1935-36. (1971)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Schreiner Mansion — steps away
  The 1879 downtown home of Charles Schreiner, the Alsatian-born merchant, banker and rancher whose store and mohair trade built Kerrville.
• Treue der Union Monument — 15 mi
  An 1866 German-language monument in Comfort over the graves of Hill Country Unionists killed at the Nueces in 1862, its flag of thirty-six stars kept at half-staff.
• Old Tunnel State Park — 19 mi
  A railroad tunnel abandoned in 1942 that now shelters up to three million Mexican free-tailed bats, who fly out each evening from May through October.
• Fort Martin Scott — 22 mi
  An army post of 1848 on Barons Creek beside the German town, where soldiers kept the peace of a Comanche trade and paid the merchants in hard cash.

More markers nearby

• Kerr County — steps away
• James Kerr — steps away
• Kerrville Mountain Sun — steps away
• Kerrville — steps away