1890 Clay County Jail
Henrietta, Clay County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Constructed in 1890 by the Pauly Jail Building and Manufacturing Company of St. Louis, Missouri, this is Clay County's third jail building. Construction of the jail included adjacent living quarters for law officers and their families. Stuccoed in 1929, the two story brick structure, with stone foundation and sills, boasts details of corbelled brick, rusticated stone, and pressed metal. Official use of the building was discontinued in 1973. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1986
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Erected in 1890 by the Pauly Jail Building and Manufacturing Company of St. Louis, this was Clay County's third jail and, in the fashion of the day, included living quarters so a lawman and his family could reside on site. The two-story brick structure shows off corbelled brick, rusticated stone, and pressed metal, and was stuccoed in 1929. It served the county until 1973.
Why it matters
Purpose-built jails like this one marked the arrival of permanent institutions and formal law in the young counties of the settling West.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Cambridge
Henrietta, TX
Founded in 1860, Cambridge was abandoned in 1863 as frontier raids swept the area, then revived when settlers returned in 1870 with a grist mill. By the mid-1870s it had a school, church, hotel, newspaper, and a military telegraph line linking Fort Sill and Fort Richardson. When the Fort Worth and Denver Railroad bypassed it in 1882, the town—by then called Henrietta—shifted, and only its cemetery remains at the original site.
Clay County
Henrietta, TX
Clay County's early years were so hard that it was formally disorganized in 1862 amid Indian raids, not reorganized until 1873. Henrietta served as a base for buffalo hunters until 1878, and in 1875 William S. Ikard brought the first Hereford cattle in Texas here from Illinois. The county seat itself moved from Cambridge to Henrietta in 1874.
Cambridge Cemetery
Henrietta, TX
Cambridge Cemetery in Clay County traces its origins to about 1852, in the early years of Texas statehood when Anglo settlement was pushing into the north-central part of the state. A burial ground of this age marks one of the first permanent footholds of a pioneer community on this frontier. Its founding date places it among the older cemeteries in the region.
Sanzenbacher Ranch Headquarters
Henrietta, TX
German immigrant Johann Sanzenbacher founded this Clay County ranch in 1873 on land near a frontier military road and the Little Wichita River, and his descendants have worked it ever since. The operation has run under several cattle brands over its long life, and the dressed-stone ranch house that still anchors the headquarters was raised in 1890 and enlarged with a columned portico by 1910.