On the end of her life, Sarah Creath McSherry Hibbins Stinnett Howard might declare 5 surnames, one from her begin and one from each of her 4 husbands. Alongside the easiest way, she had endured additional struggling on the Texas frontier than most pioneers, man or woman. In her youth she was described as “a beautiful blonde… with a graceful demeanor and a pure coronary coronary heart.” She had witnessed two of her husbands, her solely brother, and one amongst her kids killed in entrance of her eyes, and had misplaced a third husband in mysterious circumstances. She herself had been captured by Comanches and escaped on a dangerous and painful journey sooner than stumbling injured and bleeding proper right into a Texas Ranger camp.
Nevertheless she had survived.
Sarah is initially from near Brownsville, Illinois, the place she was born Sarah Creath spherical 1810, and married John McSherry when she was a teen. In 1828, the newlyweds moved south and settled in DeWitt's Colony on the Guadalupe River in south Texas, then a Mexican province. A son was born to them in 1829. Then tragedy struck.
On an in every other case good day this yr, John left the cabin spherical midday to fetch water from a close-by spring. Moments later, Sarah heard screaming and opened the cabin door to see Indians killing and scalping her husband. She quickly slammed the door and locked it, locking herself and the new child inside, then grabbed John's rifle, determined to defend herself and the new child as best she might. As she waited throughout the quiet cabin, the Indians disappeared as quietly as that that they had come.
In route of the night time an individual named John McCrabb occurred to be passing by. When he observed what had occurred and heard Sarah's story, he put her and the new child on his horse and led them by means of the darkness to the home of the McSherrys' nearest neighbors, Andrew Lockhart and his family, about 10 miles upriver. Mother and teen remained with the Lockharts for a lot of months until Sarah remarried, to a wealthy Guadalupe Valley man named John Hibbins (moreover generally known as Hibbons or Hibben). After Sarah gave begin to her second teen, she returned to Illinois collectively together with her two kids in 1835 to go to kin. In early 1836, accompanied by Sarah's solely brother, George Creath, they returned to Texas by means of New Orleans. In February the 4 met with John Hibbins in Columbia, Texas (within the current day's West Columbia) on the Brazos River and from there headed west to the Guadalupe Valley in an oxcart. They under no circumstances made it. Fifteen miles from residence, they’ve been attacked by a band of 13 Comanches who killed Sarah's husband and brother, captured her and the children, and rode north.
“They traveled slowly up by means of the wooded nation,” wrote John Henry Brown in his 1880 e-book Indian Wars and Texas Pioneers“Mrs. Tie Hibbins securely at night and lie around her.” The following day, a warrior, uninterested in listening to the cries of Sarah's toddler, killed him by smashing his head in opposition to a tree as Sarah watched helplessly. Days later, the group crossed the Colorado River deep into Comancheria and relaxed the security measures beneath which they held their prisoners.
Sarah was at a crossroads. Although she realized there was a possibility to flee, she knew she couldn't make it safely collectively together with her youthful son, and so she made the heartbreaking decision to go away him. She wrapped him in a buffalo robe and slipped quietly out of the Indian camp into the darkness.
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“Daylight found her solely a short distance from the camp, not more than a mile or two,” Brown wrote, “and he or she hid herself in a thicket, from which she shortly observed and heard the Indians in pursuit. The savages pressured the little boy to shout loudly: 'Mama! Mama!' Nevertheless she knew that her solely hope for herself and her teen was to flee, and he or she remained silent.”
When Sarah was optimistic the Comanches had given up their search, she made her method by means of the thick brush and down the Colorado, in the end stumbling upon a riverside cabin the place 18 Texas Rangers had merely settled in for dinner. Although she had solely run 10 miles, it had taken her 24 hours. “She was so torn with thorns and thorns, so just about with out clothes, and so battered throughout the face that her state of affairs was deplorable,” Brown wrote.
The Rangers, beneath the command of Captain John J. Tumlinson Jr., quickly saddled up and began looking out the Comanches. The following morning, after a short nonetheless exhausting fight, they rescued Sarah's teen.
Sarah and her son subsequent moved to stick with the Harrell and Hornsby households near present-day Austin, escaping with them when the Mexican navy that had captured the Alamo in March moved north. They in the end found refuge with the Dewitt Colony's former neighbor, Claiborne Stinnett, and throughout the spring of 1837 Sarah and Claiborne have been married. In 1838 Stinnett was elected sheriff of Gonzales County. That fall, the sheriff disappeared whereas returning north to Gonzales from Linnville on Lavaca Bay. He was believed to have been killed, each by Indians or, as Brown believed, by two runaway slaves. Regardless, Sarah was a widow as soon as extra.
At this stage she was nonetheless barely 30 years earlier, nonetheless had already been widowed 3 instances and had seen her brother, a child and two husbands killed in entrance of her eyes. On Would possibly 29, 1839, she married her fourth and final husband, Phillip Howard. In June 1840, the couple left the Guadalupe Valley and moved west to the San Juan Capistrano Mission south of San Antonio. Upon their arrival, they fell sufferer to an Indian assault, with Sarah's son narrowly escaping seize a second time. The Howards later moved further down the San Antonio River into southern Goliad County. There they expert further Indian raids and fled as soon as extra, this time near present-day Hallettsville in Lavaca County. There Sarah lastly found peace, gave begin to 3 daughters and her husband was appointed district select. Of their later years, the Howards moved as soon as extra, settling in Bosque County, the place Sarah died of pure causes on March 28, 1870. She was with Phillip for higher than half of her 60 years – her reward after prolonged years of hardship.
This textual content first appeared in Wild West Journal
