Mormon Settlers in Bandera County

Lyman Wight had a long road to Bandera. Born in Herkimer County, New York, in 1796, he fought at Sackett's Harbor in the War of 1812 and joined the Mormons in Ohio in 1826. In 1838, after fighting between Mormons and their neighbors in Missouri, he and Joseph Smith were among fifty church leaders tried there for treason. On April 8, 1841, he was elected to the Quorum of Twelve Apostles and put in charge of the church's sawmill on Wisconsin's Black River. When Brigham Young took over after Smith's murder in 1844, Wight refused his authority.

What the plaque says

Mormon Settlers in Bandera County Entered the year-old town of Bandera in March, 1854. Leader was Lyman Wight, church elder who had separated from followers of Brigham Young and taken a colony of 250 to Texas in 1846. Settling first in Austin, then Fredericksburg (where they opened grist and saw mills) the group at last established "Mormon Camp" near Bandera on the Medina River. There they built houses with vegetable gardens in between; milled grain; made furniture from native wood to sell in East. In 1858, after Wight's death, the colony dispersed, although a remnant remained in Bandera. (1967)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Frontier Times Museum — steps away
  A museum built of fossils, petrified wood and cave formations in Bandera, holding a printer-historian's collection of frontier relics and oddities.
• Treue der Union Monument — 19 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.
• Schreiner Mansion — 22 mi
  The 1879 downtown home of Charles Schreiner, the Alsatian-born merchant, banker and rancher whose store and mohair trade built Kerrville.

More markers nearby

• Old Texas Ranger Trail — steps away
• Captain Jack Phillips — steps away
• Camp Montel, C.S.A. — steps away
• Great Western Cattle Trail — steps away