Private Frank Marshall, C.S.A.

Marshall's company reached Camp Wood on June 14, 1861. It was the first Confederate volunteer company raised in Harrison County and was named for Walter P. Lane, though Lane himself joined the Third Texas Cavalry. One of the rangers, W. W. Heartsill, kept a journal of the stay, published in 1876 as Fourteen Hundred and 91 Days in the Confederate Army. Union troops had left the post that spring. Edward Dixon Westfall, an early settler, lived at Camp Wood in these years, raising cattle and guiding the Confederates.

What the plaque says

Private Frank Marshall, C.S.A. Buried here, 3/10 mi. from Camp Wood. A 29-year-old Harrison Countian, symbolizes Texans who died for the Confederacy in the Arizona-New Mexico campaign. Served from April 19, 1861, till death June 16, in W. P. Lane Rangers in second front stretched from San Antonio to Santa Fe. Frontier posts at Camp Wood, Ft. Inge, Ft. Clark, Camp Hudson, Howard Spring and Ft. Lancaster supported the 1861-1862 campaign to make the Confederacy an ocean-to-ocean nation. Combat forces included such Texans as Tom Green, Wm. R. Scurry, W. P. Hardeman and Wm. Steele, all later to be generals in the Confederate army. Green and Scurry commanded troops that won Battle of Valverde in Feb. 1862. This victory and others enabled the Confederacy to occupy Arizona and New Mexico and hope to gain California. However, Texas troops found their lines too long and supplies an impossible problem. With scanty food, no blankets, no means of transportation, the army limped back to Texas. On reaching San Antonio, troops hid near the Menger Hotel, pooled their rags to dress one man, then sent out for clothes to cover them so they could go home. Yet these same men re-grouped and won many victories later in the Civil War. (1965)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Real County Historical Museum — 16 mi
  A small county museum in Leakey, at the head of the Frio Canyon, with a log-cabin parlor, an 1880s horse-drawn hearse, a wool and mohair shearing machine and 1910s jail cells.
• Garner State Park — 17 mi
  The Frio River park that Uvalde County built with the Civilian Conservation Corps and named for its own vice president, where people have danced on the stone pavilion every summer since the 1940s.
• Devil's Sinkhole State Natural Area — 26 mi
  A 140-foot shaft into a cavern outside Rocksprings, seen only on guided tours from a platform at the rim as some three million bats spiral out on summer evenings.
• Kickapoo Cavern State Park — 27 mi
  A lightly developed former ranch on the Kinney-Edwards line with twenty caves, a Saturday tour into a 1,400-foot cavern and a summer bat flight from Stuart Bat Cave.

More markers nearby

• Site of Camp Wood — steps away
• Site of the Mission San Lorenzo de La Santa Cruz — steps away
• Charles A. Lindbergh in Texas — 0.3 mi
• Dixie Settlement — 3.7 mi