If you are going to read about this Baby Head Cemetery the most reliable source is going to the Texas Escapes Website. The writers of that website on all things Texas have been collecting local legend and having real conversations with local since before there was in internet. It was a passion project to collect stories.
The Texas Historical Marker at the location of the cemetery does not give any actual historically accurate information. It just repeats local legend around how the cemetery got its name.
“According to local oral tradition Baby Head was given to the mountain in the area in the 1850s when a small child was killed by Indians and its remains left on the mountain. A local creek also carried the name and a pioneer community founded in 1870s became known as baby head.”
The marker goes on to say the oldest burial is of a child Jodie Mcneely who died in 1884. The marker was erected before Findagrave. Today, from what headstones have been documented, we can see that Nancy Jane Combs Fleming who was born in 1797 and died in 1881 and Jesse Carter born 1821 and died 1867 were buried before 1884.
When I first read about how the Cemetery got it’s name I thought of what happened in Legion Valley which is the exact same distance from llano as Baby Head but going south not north.
It was one of the many violent confrontations between the Comanches living in llano County and Euro-Americans settlers. The best brief history of the “Legion Valley Massacre” is from Baylor University, The Texas Collection. The names of the victims seem more accurate to me than the Texas Handbook online details which are based on the book by J.W. Wilbarger Indian Depredations in Texas written in 1889.
During the tragedy two infant children were killed when their heads were smashed against rocks on a hill in 1868. There is no clear location of where the children actually died. Below is the most relied upon rendition of the events that took place on that fateful day in February.
