Kendall County

In 1859 residents of Boerne and Sisterdale petitioned for a county of their own, and the legislature carved it from Kerr and Blanco counties in 1862. In 1861 Kerr County had passed the ordinance of secession 76 to 57, but its Precinct 2, the area that became Kendall County, voted against it 53 to 34, largely because so many of its German settlers opposed both slavery and secession. After the war the county backed Edmund J. Davis for governor by more than two to one in 1869 and nearly three to one in 1873.

What the plaque says

Kendall County; created January 10, 1862; organized February 18, 1862. Named in honor of George Wilkins Kendall, 1809-1867; poet, journalist, author and farmer. One of the founders of the New Orleans Picayune; member of the Santa Fe Expedition; most successful sheep raiser in the Southwest, Boerne, the county seat

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Treue der Union Monument — 16 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.
• Frontier Times Museum — 21 mi
  A museum built of fossils, petrified wood and cave formations in Bandera, holding a printer-historian's collection of frontier relics and oddities.
• Old Tunnel State Park — 22 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.
• Natural Bridge Caverns — 24 mi
  The largest known cavern in Texas, found in 1960 by four college cavers under a ranch family's land, entered beneath a 60-foot limestone bridge and still growing.

More markers nearby

• Early Kendall County Jails — steps away
• German Music in Boerne — steps away
• Early Boerne Schoolhouses — steps away
• Homesite of Albert Paul Kutzer — 0.2 mi