The Hon. Samuel Boyd Patton

Patton's homestead of about 1847 began the Curry's Creek settlement, a string of homesteads along five miles of Curry Creek west of present Kendalia. Judge William Jones built a sawmill on the creek in 1850, John S. Hodges a saw and grist mill, and Parson Daniel Rawls built the area's first cotton gin in 1853. A Masonic lodge chartered in 1858 met at Robison's gristmill before its charter moved to Blanco. By the late 1850s more than 100 people lived there. The settlement declined after 1880; by the 1980s only graves and remnants were left.

What the plaque says

The Hon. Samuel Boyd Patton Born in South Carolina in 1787, Samuel Boyd Patton moved to Tennessee as a youth. After serving in the war of 1812, he moved to Alabama, where he held public office and served in the state legislature. In 1837 Patton moved to Texas. He was appointed to the Board of Land Commissioners and was a member of the Congress of the Republic of Texas. He helped organize Blanco County and served as the first chief justice (county judge) from 1858-60. He was the second chief justice in Kendall County in 1865. He died in 1869 and is buried across the field nearby. (1996)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Old Tunnel State Park — 19 mi
  A railroad tunnel abandoned in 1942 that now shelters up to three million Mexican free-tailed bats, who fly out each evening from May through October.
• Luckenbach — 20 mi
  A store, saloon and dance hall on Grape Creek that a humorist bought in 1971, declared a free state of mind, and turned into a pilgrimage for Texas music.
• Lyndon B. Johnson State Park and Historic Site — 20 mi
  A state park on the Pedernales opposite the LBJ Ranch, with a working Texas-German farm kept as it was around the First World War and the permit desk for the ranch tour.
• Treue der Union Monument — 21 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.

More markers nearby

• C.S.A. Home Front Producer George Wilkins Kendall — 2.9 mi
• Specht's Crossing — 8.2 mi
• The Engel Store — 8.5 mi
• Pinta Trail Crossing of the Guadalupe River — 9.2 mi