Josiah P. Wilbarger

He was born in Rockingham County, Virginia, and moved to Kentucky in 1818. Wilbarger moved to Pike County, Missouri, in 1823 and married Margaret Barker in September 1827. They left for Texas soon after the wedding and reached what is now Matagorda County on December 26. Wilbarger was a teacher at Matagorda for a year before moving to La Grange, where he taught and surveyed until he settled in Stephen F. Austin's colony in a bend of the Colorado River, some ten miles above the site of present Bastrop, Texas.

In August 1833, Wilbarger was a member of a surveying party of four that was attacked by the Comanche about four miles east of the site of present Austin, Texas. Two of the men were killed and scalped by the Comanches. The other two managed to flee. Wilbarger was scalped and the Comanche left him for dead, but he was still living when he was found the next day by Reuben Hornsby and taken to the Hornsby home for treatment. Wilbarger managed to survive by crawling into a nearby stream to wash his wounds. According to legend, Wilbarger was thought to have been killed. Meanwhile, Wilbarger realized that he was too weak from the loss of blood to make it back to Hornsby’s, so he propped himself against a large tree, and for several hours, he lapsed in and out of consciousness. During the long night, Wilbarger’s sister, Margaret Clifton, who lived in Missouri, appeared to him in a dream and said to him, “Josiah, stay where you are and your friends will come and get you.”

That night back at the Hornsby’s Bend, Sarah Hornsby was also dreaming. She dreamed that Wilbarger was wounded and bleeding but alive. She awoke Reuben to tell him what she had seen in her dream, but he replied, “it is just a dream, Sarah, go back to sleep.” Sarah did go back to sleep, but again the dream came to her, so she got up and prepared breakfast, determined to send her husband and the other men off at first light to find Wilbarger. She gave her husband a description of the tree and he was found there the next day. Wilbarger never completely recovered from his wound although he lived for eleven more years. He died at his home near Bastrop in 1845 after an accident in which he struck his head on a low support beam inside his cotton gin. He died because his exposed skull became diseased.

Wilbarger County, Texas is named in honor of Josiah Wilbarger and his brother, Mathias Wilbarger. Wilbarger Creek in Travis County is also named for him.

The actor Don Collier played Wilbarger in the 1967 episode "The Man Who Wouldn't Die" of the syndicated television series, Death Valley Days. Jan Clayton was cast as his sister, also named Margaret. Some disputed wild west legends say that after recovering, he spent 10 years hunting down each member of the party that attacked him and put a bullet between their eyes and even scalped their leader's grandchild for revenge.[1]

• Josiah Wilbarger's entry in the Biographical Encyclopedia of Texas hosted by the Portal to Texas History.