Lowry Hampton Scrutchfield

Lowry Scrutchfield learned the frontier trade from Erath, and then found a household to join. The Handbook of Texas says he accompanied George Erath to the South Bosque valley in 1845, where he met the Neil McLennan family and moved into their home. After serving as Bosque County's first county judge until 1858, he moved to Searsville and helped form its first Masonic lodge. He spent almost fifty years in the county, much of that time helping defend settlers against what the Handbook calls Indian attacks, and died November 21, 1900.

What the plaque says

Lowry Hampton Scrutchfield (June 11, 1824 - November 2, 1900) Born in Nacogdoches in 1824 to Fleming and Nancy Pool Scrutchfield, Lowry H. Scrutchfield moved to Nashville on the Brazos with his widowed mother about 1834. In 1845 he met George B. Erath, who taught him land surveying and introduced him to local Indian tribes. Scrutchfield assisted Erath and John McLennan in surveying Waco Village in 1849. He married Nancy Proffit in 1851; they settled on the John C. Pool survey. Scrutchfield emerged as leader of the small band of pioneers who settled and organized Bosque County. He was elected the new county's first chief justice (county judge) in 1854. (1999)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bosque Museum — 8.7 mi
  A Clifton museum holding what it calls the largest repository of Norwegian artifacts in the South and Southwest, with Bosque County finds some 10,000 years old and a log cabin built by the Olson family.
• Meridian State Park — 19 mi
  A 505-acre park in Bosque County where World War I veterans of a Civilian Conservation Corps company dammed Bee Creek in 1933-34 for a 72-acre lake and cut stone buildings around it.
• Waco Mammoth National Monument — 20 mi
  A bone bed on the Bosque River where a nursery herd of at least 19 Columbian mammoths was trapped and drowned by floodwater 65,000 to 72,000 years ago, left in place under a dig shelter.
• Mother Neff State Park — 23 mi
  A Leon River park that grew from six acres Isabella Neff left the state in her 1921 will, where Civilian Conservation Corps Company 817 built a stone tower, a pavilion and roads in the 1930s.

More markers nearby

• Original Site of Valley Mills — 3.0 mi
• Election Oak — 4.6 mi
• Rock Springs Cumberland Presbyterian Church — 6.0 mi
• Prairie Chapel School — 7.5 mi