Hoerster, Daniel

Daniel Hoerster was born in Prussia in 1843. His family reached Texas in 1846, settled in Fredericksburg and moved to Willow Creek in Mason County in 1856. He opposed secession but served with the Mason County Minute Men during the war, and afterward drove cattle, ranched and went into business. In 1871 he built one of Mason's first stone buildings, a general store later turned into the Southern Hotel, and he married Wilhelmina Jordan that December. He commanded a Minute Men company in 1872-73 and served as the county's cattle and tick inspector.

What the plaque says

Hoerster, Daniel Daniel Hoerster, cattle brands inspector, killed in 1875 by cattle rustlers in Mason County War -- a feud between the law and lawless. (1967)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Mason — 7.1 mi
  A reconstructed officers' quarters on Post Oak Hill above Mason, standing where the army's stone fort was taken apart by the town that grew up below it.
• Eckert James River Bat Cave Preserve — 18 mi
  A limestone cave on the James River where about four million Mexican free-tailed bats raise their young each summer, kept open to visitors by a family's gift.
• Enchanted Rock State Natural Area — 24 mi
  A dome of pink granite north of Fredericksburg that rises some 385 feet above Sandy Creek, creaks as it cools at night, and has drawn people for thousands of years.
• Llano County Courthouse Square — 26 mi
  The 1893 Romanesque courthouse on Llano's square, built after a fire at the height of a boom that was meant to make the granite town an iron city.

More markers nearby

• Kothmann Homesite and Cemetery — 0.6 mi
• Mason County — 6.3 mi
• R. Grosse and Sons — 7.1 mi
• Fort Mason and Camp Llano, C.S.A. — 7.1 mi