Applewhite Homestead
La Vernia, Wilson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The family of Henry Applewhite (1630-1704), who sailed from England to Jamestown, Virginia, in 1656, remained in Virginia for several generations. Applewhite's descendant, Thomas Applewhite, was born in North Carolina in 1791 and served as a sergeant in the War of 1812. In 1842 Thomas married his second wife, Elizabeth Oglesby (1820-1898). The Applewhites, accompanied by eight slaves, moved to this area of Texas in 1853. They purchased 214 acres of farmland here in 1854 and by 1860 the Applewhites owned nine slaves, some of whom had taken the Applewhite name. According to local oral tradition, at one time the Applewhites' homestead may also have served as a brief stop for stagecoaches traversing the area along an alternate route of that part of the Chihuahua Road extending from Indianola to San Antonio. Thomas (d. 1864) and Elizabeth Applewhite are buried in La Vernia in Concrete Cemetery. A number of Applewhite families, the descendants of African Americans who established homes here during the 1860s, remained in the area for many generations. Thomas and Elizabeth Applewhite's original stone house was mostly destroyed during highway construction in the 1950s. Sesquicentennial of Texas Statehood 1845-1995
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The Applewhite line reached Texas through Thomas Applewhite, a North Carolina–born War of 1812 sergeant who, with his wife Elizabeth and eight enslaved people, moved to Wilson County in 1853 and bought 214 acres here the next year. Local tradition holds the homestead served briefly as a stage stop on an alternate branch of the Chihuahua Road running from the coast to San Antonio. After emancipation, African American families who had taken the Applewhite name established their own homes nearby and remained in the area for generations, their story bound up with the land's original stone house, largely destroyed by 1950s highway work.
Why it matters
The homestead holds together two threads of the Texas story—Anglo pioneer settlement and the enduring African American community that emerged from slavery on the same ground.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The Applewhite Homestead sits at the meeting point of two eras — the pioneer settlement of early Texas and the Civil War years that followed — and, more importantly, at the meeting point of two peoples whose histories were bound together on this land. When Thomas Applewhite brought his family here in 1853 and bought 214 acres the next year, he was joining a stream of Southern planters moving west into Texas in the decade before the Civil War, carrying the institution of slavery with them.
This was cotton and cattle country south of San Antonio, still frontier in feel, laced by the long freight and stage roads that connected the Gulf coast to the interior. A homestead here in the 1850s was both a farm and, sometimes, a waypoint on those roads — a place where travelers and teams might briefly stop.
The deeper backdrop is the American institution of slavery and the emancipation that ended it. The people the Applewhites brought here in bondage, and their descendants, would make this ground their own in freedom — which is why this single homestead holds two of the largest threads in the Texas story at once.
People & events
The marker reaches far back, to a Henry Applewhite who sailed from England to Jamestown in 1656, but the Texas chapter begins with his descendant Thomas, born in North Carolina in 1791, a sergeant in the War of 1812. In 1842 Thomas married his second wife, Elizabeth Oglesby. Eleven years later the couple moved to this part of Texas, accompanied by eight enslaved people, and by 1860 they held nine — some of whom had taken the Applewhite name.
Local oral tradition holds that the homestead may have served, for a time, as a brief stop for stagecoaches on an alternate route of the Chihuahua Road running from the coast at Indianola to San Antonio. Thomas died in 1864; he and Elizabeth, who lived until 1898, were buried in La Vernia's Concrete Cemetery.
But the family's story did not end with them. A number of African American Applewhite families — descendants of the people once enslaved here, who established their own homes in the area during the 1860s — remained for many generations. The original stone house they all knew was mostly destroyed during highway construction in the 1950s, so the memory now rests in the name and the land rather than in walls.
Its place in the American story
This homestead tells, on one small patch of Texas ground, a story the whole nation shares and still wrestles with. The westward migration of slaveholding families in the 1850s, the reality of human beings counted as property in census returns, and the transformation of enslaved people into free families who claimed a name and a place of their own — these are the central movements of nineteenth-century American history.
The detail that some of the enslaved had "taken the Applewhite name," and that free Applewhite families built homes nearby and stayed for generations, is quietly profound. Across the South after emancipation, formerly enslaved people faced the question of who they would now be; many kept the surnames tied to the places they knew, and built enduring communities on or near the land where they had been held. That is African American history in its truest local form.
That both stories share one marker — pioneer and enslaved, planter and freedman — is exactly the point. The American past is not two separate histories running side by side but one history, lived by different people on the same ground.
If you visit
Come here understanding that the thing to "see" is mostly what is no longer here. The Applewhites' original stone house was largely destroyed by highway construction in the 1950s, so this is a site to read and imagine rather than tour — a place where the land itself is the document.
Let the marker slow you down. It asks you to hold two communities in mind at once: the North Carolina planter family that settled 214 acres in the 1850s, and the African American families who took the Applewhite name and made real homes here in freedom, staying for generations. Standing on this spot, you can feel how completely those two stories occupied the same ground.
If your travels take you into La Vernia, Thomas and Elizabeth Applewhite lie in Concrete Cemetery. Visiting both places turns an abstract history into something you can trace across the landscape — and makes this an unusually rich, and honest, stop on a Wilson County road trip.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Plan your visit
NearbyMake a day of it — museums, food, and places to stay near this marker.
Attractions
- Green Acres Golf and Games10.4 mi away
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Related people
- · Thomas Applewhite
- · Elizabeth Oglesby Applewhite
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
La Vernia
La Vernia, TX
Founded about 1846–47 by Claiborne Rector, who built a stage stop and blacksmith shop to serve travelers on the Chihuahua Road, this Wilson County settlement grew up along one of early Texas's major trails—still traced by Main Street today. First called 'Post Oak,' it was renamed for the green oaks of the area when mail service began in 1856. Settled largely by Southerners seeking fertile land, it became a Civil War recruiting and officer-training center.
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Under Mexican rule, the Gonzales Road linked the DeWitt Colony settlement of Gonzales to San Antonio de Béxar, fording the Cibolo Creek at a natural crossing about twenty-two miles east of the town. That ford ran through land granted to spy Erastus "Deaf" Smith, who is said to have watched Mexican troops from a nearby tree in 1835. The crossing became a rendezvous during the Texas Revolution, where relief forces under captains like Juan Seguín and Albert Martin gathered in early 1836 hoping to reinforce the Alamo, before annexation and new roads left the old ford abandoned.
Rector Chapel Cemetery
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This cemetery grew from the friendship of two early La Vernia settlers: William Wiseman, who ran the town's first cotton gin, and William Claiborne Rector, a veteran of the Battle of San Jacinto who farmed, carried the mail, and supplied horses for the stage line. Together they organized the Cibolo Presbyterian Church in 1852, and after Rector's death Wiseman built a new chapel on his farm named in his friend's honor, setting aside four acres in 1877 for worship and burial. Though the chapel itself was moved to town in 1891, the weathered gravestones still mark the community's founding generation.