Peripatetic pioneer elected first Bosque County judge On this
day in 1854, Lowry Scrutchfield was elected the first Bosque
County judge. Scrutchfield was born in Nacogdoches in 1824. Some
ten years later his widowed mother moved her family to
Nashville-on-the-Brazos in Milam County, where they lived in the
home of her oldest son, John C. Pool. Here Scrutchfield spent
his late childhood and met Maj. George B. Erath, from whom he
learned Indian scouting and surveying. He accompanied Erath in
1845 to the South Bosque valley, where he met the Neil McLennan
family and moved into their home. Scrutchfield assisted Erath in
laying out the townsite of Waco village. In 1851 Scrutchfield
married Nancy Proffitt, and the couple moved to Bosque
Territory, settling on the east side of the Bosque River several
miles north of the site of present Valley Mills. One of the
first original settlers in Bosque Territory, Lowry Hampton
Scrutchfield emerged as the leader of the small group of
pioneers who explored, settled, and organi