John Berry, Frontiersman

Berry's farm east of Georgetown is now a county park. A travel account says it grew into a larger holding and a community called Berry's Creek, with a blacksmith shop, a gun shop and a pecan grove, and that his old farmhouse still stands. The park sits around two springs that feed a fish pond, and the county parks department calls its pecans a century-old heritage grove. The account calls the farm a plantation; none of the sources read says who worked it.

What the plaque says

John Berry, Frontiersman (1786-1866) A native of Kentucky and veteran of the War of 1812, John Berry moved in 1816 to Indiana. In 1827 he brought his family to the Atascosito District of Texas. Mexico awarded him lots in Liberty and Mina (Bastrop) when those towns were founded. Berry's oldest sons, Joseph (1811-1842), John Bate (1813-1891), and Andrew Jackson (1816-1899), served in the Republic of Texas Army. All three were Texas Rangers before and after the War for Independence (1836) and in the Battle of Plum Creek (1840). Joseph was the first casualty in the Mier Expedition (1842), and John Bate was in Perote Prison for a year. A Williamson County pioneer, John Berry settled three miles northeast of Georgetown in 1846. He built a blacksmith and gun shop and a spring-driven grist mill near Berry Creek. Berry had 18 children by his three wives: Betsy Smeathers (d. 1818), daughter of pioneer Texan William Smeathers (Smothers); Gracie Treat (d. 1830); and Hannah Devore (1812-1904). Five sons and three sons-in-law served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War (1861-1865). Berry died at age 80 and was buried near his home. His descendants include a great-grandson, Audie Murphy, the most decorated soldier in American history. (1978)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Williamson County Courthouse — 3.9 mi
  The fifth Williamson County courthouse, a Beaux Arts building by C. H. Page, rises over a Georgetown square of more than 50 Victorian-era buildings.
• Inner Space Cavern — 6.0 mi
  A Georgetown cave found in 1963 when highway engineers drilled test holes, holding Pleistocene fossils and 72-degree rooms that visitors reach by an artificial tunnel.
• The Round Rock — 12 mi
  A table-shaped stone in Brushy Creek gave Round Rock its name in 1854; the Chisholm Trail crossed the creek near it, and Old Town stayed behind when the railroad pulled the town east.
• Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge: Doeskin Ranch — 26 mi
  A free federal refuge north of Lake Travis kept for two songbirds that need old juniper and oak, with trails at the Doeskin Ranch unit near Bertram.

More markers nearby

• San Gabriel Lodge No. 89, A. F. & A. M. — 2.9 mi
• San Gabriel Park — 3.0 mi
• City of Weir — 3.2 mi
• Iota Chapter, Kappa Sigma Fraternity — 3.7 mi