Lyons Family Cemetery

The boy taken in this raid came home a stranger. In 1847 Warren Lyons rode into the settlements with a Comanche trading party, and two Fayette County neighbors recognized him. He had two Comanche wives and was slow to leave; talk and what one account calls "a little clever bribery" brought him to his mother. At home he refused ordinary clothes, sleeping indoors and a saddle. After offering the governor his services in 1850, he rode as a Ranger under Edward Burleson in 1851. His mother, Martha, later deeded the family plot for the city cemetery around it.

What the plaque says

Lyons Family Cemetery James Lyons (b. 1778) brought his family to Texas from New York in 1820. While working outside his cabin near this site on Oct. 15, 1837, Lyons was killed by Comanches. His was the first grave in this family cemetery. His 12-year-old son Warren (b. 1825) was captured in the attack and held by the Indians for about 10 years before he was able to return home. In 1848 he married Lucy Boatright. They later settled in Johnson County, where he died in 1870. A stone erected here in 1931 states incorrectly that Warren Lyons, rather than his father James, was a victim of the 1837 raid. (1976)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Nativity of Mary, Blessed Virgin Catholic Church (High Hill) — 2.3 mi
  A red brick Gothic Revival church of 1906 in a German farm settlement, where two San Antonio painters spent 1912 faking marble columns and stone vaults on wood.
• Saints Cyril and Methodius Catholic Church (Dubina) — 6.0 mi
  The church of Texas's first Czech settlement, under a sky-blue painted ceiling that was whitewashed in the 1950s and brought back from faint traces by its own parishioners.
• St. John the Baptist Catholic Church (Ammannsville) — 7.9 mi
  A wooden Carpenter Gothic church built in 1919 after storm and fire took two before it, its dusty-rose interior painted by an artist whose name was lost for decades.
• St. Mary's Church of the Assumption (Praha) — 8.9 mi
  The mother parish of the Czech settlements around Flatonia, a stone-fronted church of 1895 whose ceiling Gottfried Flury turned into a turquoise garden, with an August 15 feast since 1855.

More markers nearby

• Col. William F. Upton — steps away
• Turner Hall — 0.7 mi
• Schulenburg — 0.8 mi
• Bermuda Valley Farm — 1.3 mi