The Dowdy Tragedy of 1878

The Dowdys settled on Johnson Creek, which rises seven miles west of Mountain Home and runs southeast twenty-four miles to the Guadalupe northwest of Ingram. The stream was first called Minter's Creek, after an early settler. After Col. Albert Sidney Johnston laid out a military road along its banks it became Johnston Creek, and when several Johnson families settled there the name shifted again to Johnson Creek. Intermittent in its upper reaches, it crosses steep slopes and benches that give the land a stairstep look, with shallow stony soils, grasses and open stands of live oak and Ashe juniper.

What the plaque says

The Dowdy Tragedy of 1878 The pioneer family of Susan (1830-1913) and James Dowdy (1818-1900) moved from Goliad to Kerr County in 1878 and settled on Johnson Creek. Shortly after the family arrived, four of the Dowdy children, Alice, Martha, Susan, and James, were killed by Indians while tending sheep near their home. The attack occurred on Oct. 5, 1878, at a site about 3.5 miles northwest of present Ingram. The victims were buried the following day at Sunset Cemetery, northwest of Ingram. This incident was one of the last Indian raids in Kerr County. (1979)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Schreiner Mansion — 14 mi
  The 1879 downtown home of Charles Schreiner, the Alsatian-born merchant, banker and rancher whose store and mohair trade built Kerrville.
• Lost Maples State Natural Area — 27 mi
  A canyon of the upper Sabinal where a relict stand of bigtooth maples turns color each autumn, a sight that drew crowds up a gravel road long before there was a park.
• Treue der Union Monument — 29 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.
• Kimble County Historical Museum — 35 mi
  A free county museum in Junction, the town at the meeting of the North and South Llano, with the papers, photographs and tools of a ranching county.

More markers nearby

• Sunset Cemetery — 0.6 mi
• Hunt Japonica Cemetery — 5.3 mi
• Education in Hunt — 5.9 mi
• Schumacher Crossing on the Guadalupe River — 6.0 mi