Henderson Cemetery (Two miles north)

Kerr County's German settlers largely opposed secession. Unionists from Kerr, Gillespie and Kendall counties helped form the Union League in the summer of 1861, and by 1862 they had organized companies to guard against Indians and against local Confederate forces. In July 1862 Kerr and neighboring counties were declared in rebellion against the state. A party of Unionists gathered on Turtle Creek in Kerr County and set out for Mexico; others who stayed home were arrested, imprisoned or killed. Men from the county served on both sides, and the bitterness lasted long after the war.

What the plaque says

Henderson Cemetery (Two miles north) Howard Henderson (1842-1908) came to Texas in 1857. He was a survivor of the Civil War Battle of the Nueces in 1862, in which he and other Unionists were ambushed by a Confederate force near the Nueces River. He later served as Texas Ranger. Henderson married Narcissa Turknett in 1866 and they settled near this site. In 1870, upon the deaths of their infant twin sons Thomas and Philip, they began a family burial ground which became known as Henderson Cemetery. Other family members and neighbors were also buried in the graveyard. (1990)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Schreiner Mansion — 8.1 mi
  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 — 23 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.
• Vereins Kirche and Main Street — 26 mi
  The octagonal Society Church on Fredericksburg's market square, rebuilt in stone in the 1930s, beside a main street laid out like a Rhine village.
• Old Tunnel State Park — 26 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.

More markers nearby

• Old Ingram — 2.1 mi
• Mary Ann Kent Byas Chambers Morriss — 3.3 mi
• Nichols Cemetery — 3.3 mi
• Schumacher Crossing on the Guadalupe River — 4.1 mi