William W. Moon

Moon's mother died at his birth, and two days later his father was killed at the battle of Horseshoe Bend. He fought in the Indian wars in Florida in 1836 before moving to Bastrop in 1838, received land in Milam's District in 1839, and rode as a Texas Ranger in the Plum Creek fight. He enlisted for the Mexican War from San Marcos in October 1846. In the first county election, in August 1848, he was elected constable. After the Civil War he directed cattle drives as far as Red River Station.

What the plaque says

William W. Moon (March 25, 1814 - Jan. 7, 1897) Orphaned two days after his birth, William W. Moon grew up with two uncles in his native Alabama. He married Sophronia Elizabeth Sublett (1819-46) in 1834 and moved to Bastrop, Texas in 1838. Moon joined the texas Rangers and first visited San Marcos Springs during a running Indian battle in 1843. Enchanted by the countryside, he brought his family here in 1845 and built a cabin at this site. The Moons were the first permanent Anglo-American settlers in what is now Hays County. Sophronia Moon died April 21, 1846, but her husband and four daughters were soon joined by other pioneers who decided to make their homes here. William W. Moon made many contributions to the growing settlement. His cabin was the site of the first sermon preached and the first school held in Hays County. In 1846 he helped build the log church-schoolhouse which became a courthouse when Hays County was organized (1848). Moon and his family were charter members of the Presbyterian church formed in 1853. In addition to ranching, Moon operated a hotel and stage stop, blacksmith shop, and freight line. He was elected county sheriff and served, 1846-47, in the Mexican War, and 1862-63, in the Civil War. He died in 1897 and is buried in Wimberley Cemetery. (1975)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Spring Lake and the Meadows Center — 0.8 mi
  The headsprings of the San Marcos River, among the longest-inhabited places in North America, once an amusement park with a swimming pig and now seen from glass-bottom boats.
• Gruene Historic District — 14 mi
  A cotton town on the Guadalupe that the boll weevil emptied, rescued in the 1970s by a kayaking architecture student, with a dance hall that says it has never closed.
• Lockhart Courthouse Square — 16 mi
  A cotton-era courthouse town named the Barbecue Capital of Texas, built near the 1840 Plum Creek fight that followed the killing of Comanche leaders at peace talks.
• Sophienburg Museum and Archives — 17 mi
  The hilltop where Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels raised the Adelsverein's headquarters in 1845, now the museum and archive of the German colony that became New Braunfels.

More markers nearby

• Site of Hays County's First Public Building — steps away
• The Courthouses of Hays County — 0.2 mi
• Founding of the First Methodist Church — 0.2 mi
• San Marcos Mill Tract — 0.4 mi