Note:  Article supplied by Marti Martin of the Woodford Co. Historical Society, KY, from the San Antonio Express, Dec. 21, 1931.

“Civil War Hero, 92, Dies in Utopia

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John C. Ware, Fighter in Indian Wars, Will be Buried Near Home

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(Special Correspondent)

UVALDE, Tex., Dec. 20.–John C. Ware, 92 Uvalde County’s oldest man, Indian fighter , ex-Ranger, and Civil War veteran, died Sunday at Utopia.

Funeral services will be held Monday afternoon and burial will be in the Wareville Cemetery near the home in which Ware lived for almost 80 years.  The old town of Waresville  was named in honor of Ware’s father Capt. William Ware, who settled in the Sabinal canyon in 1849.

Ware was born on Ware Creek in Montgomery County July 20, 1828.  His father was born in Kentucky in 1800 and came to Texas in 1828.  He played and important part in helping Texas to obtain its independence from Mexico.  He was wounded in the fighting  around the old Veramendi house on Soledad Street in San Antonio with Col. Ben Milan.  Later he was one of the 22 captains who led their men to victory against Santa Anna on the fields at San Jacinto.  William Ware was the Sabinal Canyon’s first white settler, and his son John C. Ware, was the first white child.

Ware’s mother who was Betsy Ann Crane, daughter of Capt. John Crane, who was killed in a battle with Cherokee Indians, and for whom Crane County takes its name, died Dec. 20, 1849.  Exactly 62 years later to the day, her son John passed away.

Shortly after settling in the Sabinal Canyon, Capt. William Ware died, March 9, 1853, leaving the fate of his family with his young son and a few neighbors.

At 14 John Ware rode on his first Indian trail, when he was a member of a party who chased a band of marauders which had taken horses  from one of Ware’s neighbors.  Several other skirmishes with the Indians followed later that year , and at 17 Ware enlisted in a Ranger band, organized by John Davenport in 1837.  It was while he was with this band he killed his first Indian in a battle on the Leona River near Uvalde.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Ware enlisted and served on the Rion Grande as a first lieutenant in Company B, of Duff’s Regiment.  During the last year of the war he was called home to protect the people from Indian raids.

Following the death of his first wife, Capt. Ware was married to Mattie Bates, April 29, 1880.  By his two marriages Ware was the father of 16 children and one adopted son.  He was married to his fist wife Elizabeth Ann Fenley, when the entire group of settlers of the Sabinal Valley were congregated in a fort at the time of an Indian raid.  Children of the first marriage still living are Mrs. Emmaline Ware Holderness, New York City; William Ware, San Antonio; Joel Ware, Utopia; Ira and Oscar Ware, New Mexico; Berry Ware, Sabinal; Media Ware Fenley, Sanderson; and Mrs. Agnes Ware Woodward, Wichita Falls.  Children of the second marriage now living are Mrs. Minnie Miller, Utopia and Sabinal; Mrs. Harvey Donohe, Sabinal; Mrs. Gaylord Keener, Elizabeth, La.; George and Burgress Ware, Utopia.  Surviving also are the two sisters, Mrs. Amanda Bowles of Los Angles, Calif., and Mrs. Emma Taylor of Uvalde.”