Attractions

The only Union monument erected in a state south of the Mason-Dixon line is this memorial to local men who were killed, as Union sympathizers, when Civil War hostilities wracked the nation. With the predominantly German settlers of Comfort openly sympathetic with the Union cause, Confederate forces arrived to make all males over age 16 pledge allegiance to the Confederacy. Homes and farms, of those who refused, were burned. Some were lynched. More than a hundred were killed. About 65 men attempted to flee from persecution to Mexico, but they were met by Confederates at the banks of the Nueces River. Nineteen were killed and nine were captured and later executed. Three years later, the unburied remains of the farmers (along with eight other Unionists killed a couple of months later) were returned and buried in a mass grave that is now marked by a simple obelisk. Marker is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.