Mary Ward Dancer

ASHALL & MARY WARD DANCER

Ashall Dancer was born in 1795 in Tennessee. In 1813 he married a woman named Mary Ward in Stewart County, Tennessee. She was born in Tennessee about 1798.  The couple had eleven children, two born in Bastrop County, Texas. Ashall and his wife moved to Texas around 1836, traveling from Tennessee and settling in Bastrop County. Bastrop County papers give a list of all the children of Ashall and wife at the time of immigration into Texas.

In 1839 church elders A. Dancer and R. G. Green were sent from the Providence Church in Bastrop County to help organize a church in Fayette County, the Plum Grove Baptist Church, often referred to as the Hopewell Church. In October of 1839 A. Dancer, a strong anti-missionary Baptist was chosen as its pastor. It was the first church of       Primitive Baptist faith west of the Colorado River.

One of their sons, John Dancer, served with Capt. Dawson and died on September 18, 1842 in the Salado Creek massacre. He is buried with the soldiers on Monument Hill overlooking La Grange in Fayette County.

In 1849 Ashall Dancer was killed by Indians Mary Dancer died in 1853.