Joseph Bird

Camp Groce, where Bird was stationed, stood on Leonard W. Groce's Liendo Plantation two miles east of Hempstead. It opened in 1862 to train Confederate recruits, but stagnant water in Clear Creek made it sickly, and in the summer of 1863 it became a prison for Union soldiers captured at Galveston and Sabine Pass. Between June 1863 and December 1864 it held about 1,100 Union soldiers and sailors. A yellow fever outbreak in September 1864 forced the prisoners out for a month, and in December they were taken by rail to Galveston and released to the Union fleet.

What the plaque says

Joseph Bird (July 15, 1821-August 15, 1909) For more than 50 years after becoming a pioneer settler of this area, North Carolina native Joseph Bird greatly contributed to the development of Blanco County as a distinguished frontier Baptist minister, postmaster, Civil War soldier, county judge, rancher, and prominent community leader. Bird married Eliza L. Doriss in Arkansas in 1844. About 1854 they and their six children settled on land between Cypress Creek and the Pedernales River. They built a log cabin close to this site about 1858 and eventually their family grew to include 12 children. The area's pioneer settlement, called Birdtown in Joseph's honor, was renamed Round Mountain by the time a post office was established here in 1857. Bird served as postmaster in 1859-66 and in 1873-74. For the Baptist churches he helped found in the area Bird served as an itinerant pastor and performed marriages, baptisms, and funeral services. He enlisted in the Confederate army as a first lieutenant in 1862 and was stationed at Camp Groce, Waller County, Texas. Bird moved to Johnson City while serving his two terms as Blanco county judge in the early 1890s. Eliza Bird died in 1896 and in 1900 Joseph married Martha A. Gill. Bird was buried in the Round Mountain Cemetery. (1994)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Pedernales Falls State Park — 10 mi
  The Pedernales stepping down over layered limestone east of Johnson City, a river that can turn from a placid stream to a torrent in minutes.
• Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park — 11 mi
  The Johnson City district of the national park: the Victorian house where Lyndon Johnson grew up, and the stone barns his grandfather built in the Johnson Settlement.
• Longhorn Cavern State Park — 18 mi
  A cave carved by an underground river in the Hill Country, cleared of mud by hand in the 1930s and reached down 52 stone steps on a guided tour.
• Inks Dam National Fish Hatchery — 21 mi
  A free federal hatchery below Inks Dam on the Colorado, with thirty production ponds that draw birds and a look at how fish are raised from egg to harvest.

More markers nearby

• Robert Price — 0.7 mi
• Home County of Pioneer Leader Joseph Wilson Baines — 3.8 mi
• Captain Jesse Burnam — 6.6 mi
• Charles Haynes — 7.3 mi