Robert E. Neill

A crippled left arm did not keep Robert Neill from soldiering. Descendants say he served in Captain Highsmith's company of the 1st Texas Mounted Volunteers in the Mexican War and came to what is now Atascosa County in 1853. They place him with the Rangers in 1855, in the 1859 campaign against Juan Cortina, and later at La Bolsa Bend. During the Civil War he was a first lieutenant in the Atascosa County Mounted Minute Men of the Texas State Troops. He died in 1878 and lies in Brite Cemetery, where the family gathered in 2007.

What the plaque says

Robert E. Neill Born in Williamson County, Tennessee, in 1827, Robert E. Neill migrated with his family to what is now Caldwell County, Texas, at the age of four. At age nine, while grinding corn meal for the Texas army, he suffered a crushing injury that crippled his left arm. Despite this, he went on to serve in the U.S. Army in 1847, during the war with Mexico. Afterward he was a rancher but volunteered with the Texas Rangers and other units, as needed. His military career concluded with service to the confederacy in the Civil War. Neill retired to his ranch and family. He and his wife, Elizabeth, had five children, and spent their remaining years on their property in Atascosa County. Robert died in 1878. (2015)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Longhorn Museum — 5.6 mi
  Atascosa County in one roadside museum: longhorn-and-mustang ranching, a moved railroad depot and caboose, a horse-drawn hearse and the town that calls itself the birthplace of the cowboy.
• Atascosa County Courthouse — 11 mi
  The only surviving Mission Revival courthouse in Texas, built in 1912-13 on Jourdanton's town circle after a county seat vote that some residents still call a theft.
• Mission Espada and the Espada Aqueduct — 18 mi
  The southernmost San Antonio mission and the oldest Spanish aqueduct in the United States, still carrying river water over Sixmile Creek to the fields after nearly three centuries.
• Mission San Juan — 19 mi
  The mission near the river bend where the San Antonio got its name in 1691, with an unfinished church foundation and farm fields still watered by an eighteenth-century acequia.

More markers nearby

• Verdi — 2.9 mi
• St. Joseph's Catholic Church — 4.3 mi
• Dr. Ben and Mona Parker and KBOP Radio — 5.8 mi
• North Pleasanton — 6.3 mi