Austin County
Bellville, Austin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
A part of the grant to Stephen F. Austin in 1821, created a municipality under the Mexican government in 1828, became a county of the Republic of Texas, March 17, 1836. Named in honor of Stephen Fuller Austin, 1793-1836, pioneer empresario, founder of Anglo-American Texas. San Felipe de Austin, capital of Austin's colony, 1824-1836, seat of provisional government of Texas, 1835-1836. County seat, 1837-1848, Bellville, since.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Austin County traces its beginnings to the 1821 grant that brought Stephen F. Austin's first Anglo-American colonists to Mexican Texas, and its seat, San Felipe de Austin, served as the capital of Austin's colony and the cradle of Texas's provisional government during the 1835–36 crisis. Organized as a Mexican municipality in 1828, it became a county of the new Republic in March 1836, named for the empresario himself. Bellville has been the county seat since 1848.
Why it matters
As the heart of Austin's original colony and the meeting place of Texas's revolutionary provisional government, this county is where Anglo-American Texas was first settled and where its independence movement took shape.
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Related people
- · Stephen Fuller Austin
Related events
- · Founding of San Felipe de Austin, 1824
- · Provisional government of Texas, 1835-1836
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Alexander Glenn Family Graveyard
Bellville, TX
Alexander Glenn and his wife Sarah left Georgia for Texas, settling first in the Mill Creek Forks area before moving to Bellville in 1854 and buying one of the community's earliest homes. Glenn served as Austin County surveyor through the 1850s, a key role in a young county still measuring out its land. This small burial ground on that original property holds the couple and their daughter, tended today by the local historical society.
Austin County Jail
Bellville, TX
Declaring their old lockup "unsafe, unfit, and inadequate," the Austin County Court contracted in 1896 with the Pauly Jail Building Co. of St. Louis to erect this jail for $19,970. Its Romanesque Revival design—crenelated parapets, bartizans, and stone window arches—was made to harmonize with the county's 1886 courthouse, which later burned. The gallows, used only once in 1901, have since been removed and the jailer's quarters enlarged, but the original exterior survives.
Pilgrims Rest Cemetery
Bellville, TX
Established in 1861 as the Civil War began, Pilgrims Rest Cemetery serves a rural community in Austin County. Designated a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2006, it holds the graves of families who settled the surrounding farmland. Its founding year places its earliest burials against the backdrop of a nation torn by war.
Buckhorn Cemetery
Bellville, TX
Established in 1880, Buckhorn Cemetery is among the rural burial grounds of Austin County that trace the settlement of central Texas after the Civil War. Designated a Historic Texas Cemetery in 2001, it preserves the resting place of an early farming community. Such graveyards are often the last physical record of the families who first worked the surrounding land.