From Breaks of the Balconies by Allan Stovall, published in 1967 and long out of print. This excerpt draws a picture of life in the Aldine Community along the Dry Frio and gives us a glimpse of these neighbors whose lives were entangled in the story of Ben Maples murder..
“One of the first families to move to the Dry Frio was the family of Ben Maples. Ben, who married *Serilda Whistler, daughter of William Cox, was related to the family of John Bingham and Ike Cox. These people moved to the Dry Frio about 1871 and settled in what later became the Aldine Community. They were, perhaps, the first families to locate there. There were three children in the Ben Maples family when these people arrived on the Frio. Seven other children were born to the Maples afterward, and the youngest of these seven was Ike Maples, named for Ike Cox, a relative of Ben’s. Ike Maples was born January 29, 1889 and remembers many of the happenings in that area during the early days of settlement.
Some of the neighbors of the Cox family were Joe Netherlin [Joseph Addison Neatherlin 1831-1922], John Bingham, the Cox families, and the **Luxtons.
Ben Maples was killed by a local badman [20 September 1892], one Jim Lafferty, for which crime Lafferty was given a seventy-five year prison sentence. Jim Lafferty’s brother, John, lived in one of Ben Maples’ houses and was a good citizen of the community. He tried without success to persuade his brother Jim to move out of the settlement, knowing that he was connected with a gang of outlaws and horse thieves, which gang was, later on to be broken up by the sheriffs of Edwards, Uvalde, and Kimble counties, together with members of the Texas Rangers. Jim Lafferty killed Maples at the John Lafferty cabin and narrowly escaped being killed himself by one of Ben Maples’ sons. Maples’ wife had gone that day with other members of the family to Uvalde for supplies, and the news of her husband’s death was brought to her as she was purchasing supplies at the Schwartz store in Uvalde.”
Dan MacMillan, a bad man himself, married one of the Ben Maples girls. After his marriage, he became a guard at the penitentiary where Jim Lafferty was being held. MacMillan took advantage of his authority as prison guard to avenge his father-in-law’s death by ending the career of Jim Lafferty with a charge from his double-barreled shotgun.”
*Note: Serilda Cox married Ben Maples and after his death she married Mr. Whistler.
**Note: James Madison Luxton (1844 – 1924) was known as Mat. He was the younger half-brother of Nathan Bedford Forrest, by their mother’s second marriage. During the Civil War, he was a Confederate-aligned guerilla, and later in life a Texas deputy sheriff. He married Mary E. Arnold in 1868 in Grimes County. They were in Uvalde by 1892. Mat is buried in the Reagan Wells Cemetery.