Sindy Riller was the daughter and youngest child of Kaufman County pioneer Rolin Boles (See Wall of Honor).  She was born 22 Nov 1840 in Hinds Co MS and came to Texas as a small child.  In 1857 she married Benjamin P Swearingen (Swangem) in Kaufman.  B P Swearingen was killed in the Civil War and in 1865 Sindy married John M Williams who died in 1891.  Sindy had 2 sons - William Irvine Swangem (1857-1927) and Samuel Houston Swangem (b & d 1861).

   Sindy Riller was a true Texas woman.  She was only 11 years old when her father died, and with her mother very ill, Sindy was raised by her three older brothers.  Boles family lore says Sindy could shoot and ride better than most men by the time she was 15 and that she wasn't afraid of anything.  In 1856, only a couple of weeks after her mother's death, and much to her family's dismay, Sindy married a dapper lawyer from Massachusetts named Benjamin Pilates Swearingen whom she met in Trinidad the year before.  The marriage surprised all who knew the pair as he was an oddity - he had come to Texas on a whimsey, as a sight-seer, not as most had, to acquire land and to scratch a living from it.  And like her brothers, she originally found him comical in dress and demeanor - a dandy who did not know how to survive as a pioneer.

   Though a yank by birth, Ben Swearingen enlisted in the 12th Texas Cavalry - Confederate States Army, in 1861 and on two trips home on furlough in 1862, told Sindy how the men were suffering from lack of proper food, shelter and without medicines and medical care.  In 1863 Benjamin died form the conditions he had described to her, from typhoid fever contracted while encamped near Hot Springs AR.

   It is well documented that after Benjamin's death in Novemeber 1863, Sindy Riller was better off than many others within the county, as her name never appears on an Indigent List.  However, it wasn't Sindy's own welfare that concerned her - it was the thought of the men from Kaufman County still in the war and who needed provisions, as her husband had.  It was her belief that lack of adequate provisions were the cause of her husband's death.

   In 1864 and early 1865, Sindy Riller found the courage and means to make several trips into Arkansas, Louisiana and eastern Texas, with wagon loads of provisions for the men of Kaufman County who were serving in the Confederacy.  These trips were partly funded by William D. Irvine, whose son, John Love Irvine was a true friend to Benjamin and was killed in the war.  Irvine sent his slave, a man named Ely, with her on the trips.  She made the trips hoping her efforts would keep others from dying and because she did not want to believe her husband died in vain.

   It is not known exactly how many times Sindy Riller made these trips.  It is noted in Kaufman County Commissioner's Records that in Janauary 1865 she was paid the amount of $38.00 to take bandages and medicines to men who were to meet her in Fannin County.  Her efforts deserve recognition.

Sindy died 1 May 1914 and is buried at Oakland Cemetery in Terrell.

• Women in the Civil War
• Kaufman County's "Kith and Kin"