TexasEscapes.comTexas Escapes Online Magazine: Travel and History
Columns: History, Humor, Topical and Opinion
Over 1800 Texas Towns & Ghost Towns
NEW : : TEXAS TOWNS : : GHOST TOWNS : : TEXAS HOTELS : : FEATURES : : COLUMNS : : ARCHITECTURE : : IMAGES : : SITE MAP : : SEARCH SITE
HOME
SEARCH SITE
ARCHIVES
RESERVATIONS
Texas Hotels
Hotels
Cars
Air
Cruises
 
 Texas : Features : Columns : "Texas Tales"

Susan's Indians

by Mike Cox
Mike Cox

Rebecca Duncan Rich was not a woman to be trifled with.

Recently widowed, in 1850 she lived with her older brother John Bruce Duncan and other family members in newly created Caldwell County. Not far down the road from their place lay Lockhart, population 40, a collection of log cabins and only three plank buildings.

Early one morning, Rebecca and her niece, Susan Jane Ayres, happened to be on the porch of the Duncan cabin when startled by an Indian woman who stuck her head up from a place of concealment in a nearby draw. Then a male Indian raised his head to look around. Apparently satisfied they could proceed unchallenged with whatever they had in mind, the two Indians stood and faced Rebecca and Susan.

By this point in Texas history, hostile Indians posed no real threat in the eastern half of the state. How two Indians came to be in Caldwell County went unexplained in a later telling of the story, but it seems highly unlikely they had an attack in mind. Maybe they meant only to beg for food, or perhaps hoped to steal grub or horseflesh. Whatever their purpose that morning, they hardly constituted a war party. But back then, none of that made much difference to a pioneer Texas lady who surely had heard stories of Indian depredations.

Dora E. Frey, who heard the tale from her grandmother Susan, later described what happened next in “The Haynes Family Papers,” a privately printed family history published in 1988:

“My Aunt Becky and Grandmother grabbed their guns without waiting to call the menfolks, took aim and fired. Both Indians fell dead!”

Two Indians may have been shot in their tracks that morning, but Mrs. Frey’s hand-me-down story has more holes in it than the unfortunate Indian couple. If the incident happened in 1850, only Rebecca, at 21, would have been capable of aiming a firearm. (Since she had to fire at least twice to kill the Indians, it must have been a revolver.) Susan, the daughter of Rebecca’s sister Juliana Duncan Ayres, was only a toddler. She had been born on Christmas Day 1848.

Her aunt Rebecca E. Duncan, born in Georgia in 1829, came to Texas with her family in 1836. When her father George Washington Duncan died in 1849 at Webberville in Travis County, Rebecca and her mother Penelope moved to Caldwell County to live with John Bruce.

Rebecca had married a man named Rich, but he died not long after their nuptials. Within two years of the shooting incident, Rebecca found another husband, Charles Haynes.

A Kentuckian, Haynes had come to Texas in 1836 from Cincinnati in a company of volunteers who called themselves the Buckeye Rangers. He fought at San Jacinto, and settled in Caldwell County in 1848.

Not long after Rebecca and Charles got married on Oct. 31, 1852, Penelope Duncan and her son decided to move to what they called “the mountains” of Llano County. The Haynes’ joined them.

Susan and her parents apparently stayed in Caldwell County. On April 11, 1867, at 19, she married James Yates, an Englishman ten years her senior who had arrived in Lockhart on New Year’s Day in 1845. Yates had ridden as a Texas Ranger in the 1850s and fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War.

In time, the cabin where Rebecca Duncan had killed the two Indians got torn down, replaced by a creamery. During the construction of the creamery, as Mrs. Frey put it, “the bones of those two children of the forest (the slain Indians) were discovered.”

The problem was what to do with the remains. Without going into the details of who made the call or when, Mrs. Frey said “it was decided that since they were, in a sense, Susan Ayres’ Indians and since she had married into the Yates family, they should be in the Yates plot at the cemetery. And that is how the two Indians came to be buried with the people who killed them!”

Well, Susan Ayres Yates is indeed buried in Section E of the Lockhart City Cemetery, but it was her nervy Aunt Becky who killed the Indians. Susan died July 16, 1896. Her husband lived until 1922 and is buried next to her. Fourteen of their kinfolks also lie in the Yates plot, including Mrs. Frey, who died in 1963. While the cemetery’s long list of graves does not include any mention of “Susan Ayres’ Indians,” there’s ample room in the Yates plot to have accommodated their remains.

© Mike Cox
"Texas Tales"
June 11 , 2009 column

Related Topics: People | Texas History | Texas Towns | Texas | TE Online Magazine | Features | Columns |

The Texas Rangers
A definitive history
More Books by Mike Cox - Order Here
 
 
HOME | TEXAS ESCAPES ONLINE MAGAZINE | TEXAS HOTELS
TEXAS TOWN LIST | TEXAS GHOST TOWNS | TEXAS COUNTIES

Texas Hill Country | East Texas | Central Texas North | Central Texas South | West Texas | Texas Panhandle | South Texas | Texas Gulf Coast
TRIPS | STATES PARKS | RIVERS | LAKES | DRIVES | MAPS

TEXAS FEATURES
Ghosts | People | Historic Trees | Cemeteries | Small Town Sagas | WWII | History | Black History | Rooms with a Past | Music | Animals | Books
COLUMNS : History, Humor, Topical and Opinion

TEXAS ARCHITECTURE | IMAGES
Courthouses | Jails | Churches | Gas Stations | Schoolhouses | Bridges | Theaters | Monuments/Statues | Depots | Water Towers | Post Offices | Grain Elevators | Lodges | Museums | Stores | Banks | Gargoyles | Cornerstones | Pitted Dates | Drive-by Architecture | Old Neon | Murals | Signs | Ghost Signs | Then and Now
Vintage Photos

TRAVEL RESERVATIONS | HOTELS | USA | MEXICO

Privacy Statement | Disclaimer | Recommend Us | Contributors | Staff | Contact TE
Website Content Copyright ©1998-2008. Texas Escapes - Blueprints For Travel, LLC. All Rights Reserved
This page last modified: June 11, 2009