Richard was a constable in Perry County in 1933.
Elizabeth died before 1840. Sometime in the mid to late 1830’s, Hilburn
and his son Richardson and others moved to Southwest Texas. Richard was
granted a Headright Certificate, number 64, 3d Class, dated October 4,
1844 when he established that he and his family had arrived in the
Republic of Texas in 1839. Census records, birth and death certificates
shows that several of the Baucoms, Barbers, and Qualls of the Brush and
Coon Creek areas follow Hilburn to the Bexar, Atascosa, and Lavaca
Counties of Texas.
Richard descendants often refer to him as the
"Peace Keeper" for he chose to follow John Coffee "Jack" Hays into the
Texas Rangers in 1845 rather than follow the plow. After Texas joined the
Union, Captain (later Colonel) Hays’ men served alongside the U.S. forces
in the Mexican War. Hilburn was appointed third sergeant of Captain
Gillespie’s Company of the First Texas Mounted Rifles. The First Sergeant
was William A.A. "Bigfoot" Wallace. After the war, Hilburn and Richardson
both joined Captain Wallace’s Texas Ranging Company. The Texas Rangers was
organized to maintain peace and order on the Texas Frontier. Several books
and magazine articles have been written about "Bigfoot" Wallace.
In the early 1850’s, Richard and Richardson
shared property in San Antonio. Richardson married Maria Luisa Leal on May
10, 1851. Maria Luisa Leal was a descendant of the Canary Islanders who
helped founded San Antonio in 1731. Richard remarried on July 31, 1854 to
Nancy Dickens. The two men took up land together and maintained their home
place near the El Camino Real where it crosses Atascosa County. Richard
was laid to rest in 1866 and Richardson passed away on August 17, 1877.
Richard was a prominent citizen of Atascosa
County and served on its first grand jury. Hilburn, Texas a community
named for Richard Hilburn was just west of State Highway 16 and six miles
south of Poteet in central Atascosa County. In 1904 the Hilburn school had
sixty-nine students and two teachers. It was consolidated with the
Jourdanton schools in the mid-1920’s. In 1936 Hilburn had a number of
scattered dwellings. By the late 1980’s only a cemetery remained at the
site.
Among Richardson and Luisa Hilburn’s children who
remained in Atascosa County was Richard’s namesake Richard Hilburn, born
February 21, 1855. He married Sarah Jane Kaufman February 26, 1874. Jerome
Hilburn, the second child of Richardson married Margaret Qualls. It was
his ranch that the Hilburn Cemetery is now located.
Richard Hilburn’s descendants are many, both in
Perry and surrounding counties of Tennessee and in and around Southwest
Texas. Many of the Halbrooks, Barbers, Baucoms, Warrens, and Qualls can
trace their ancestry to Richard Hilburn - Mexican War Veteran,
Frontiersman, Indian Fighter, Lawman, and a Texas Ranger.