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Miss
Ann Whitney left Massachusetts to come to Texas
and teach. She was employed at a private school on the Leona River
– the first school in Hamilton
County to convene after the Civil War.
School then was taught only in the summer months and the small unnamed
schoolhouse was hardly more than a square of logs badly stacked.
The loose openings in the walls helped ventilate the structure that
hot July day in 1867.
Ann was warned that a group of horsemen were approaching the isolated
school. Since she knew of a group that was due to pass the school
that day she assumed the riders where townsmen or settlers she knew.
The group rode
into view and started shooting arrows into the classroom. It was
a costly mistake for Ann to have made. She barely had time to push
several students to safety and was helping two more escape through
a window when members of the group rushed inside and she was shot
to death. Two children huddled beneath the loose floorboards of
the schoolhouse and as she died – she selflessly arranged her skirts
to better conceal them.
The Comanches were accompanied by a red-headed white man. This man
asked two of the captured boys if they wanted to accompany the group.
It was in this manner that John Kuykendall was made a captive. The
other boy related the story after he had been released.
A 17 year-old
girl named Amanda Howard – having witnessed the scene from horseback
– rode dangerously close to the Comanches in order to cut back to
the trail and warn settlers of the attacking Indians. Her cool-headedness
saved many Hamilton Countians from the fate that befell poor Ann
Whitney.
Miss Whitney
was buried in the Graves-Gentry cemetery of Hamilton
– and her grave was marked by a marker which reads: “In Memory of
Ann Whitney - frontier school teacher - Born in Massachusetts about
1835. Killed by Comanche Indians July 9, 1867. Resting in hope of
a glorious resurrection. Erected by the schoolchildren of Hamilton
County.
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