Austin County Jail
Bellville, Austin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Calling their old jail "unsafe, unfit, and inadequate," the Austin County Court contracted in 1896 with Pauly Jail Building Co. of St. Louis to erect this structure at cost of $19,970. Romanesque Revival style, with crenelated parapets, bartizans, and stone window arches harmonized with the 1886 courthouse, which later burned. The gallows, used only in 1901, have been removed; jailer's quarters have been enlarged; but original exterior is preserved. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1976
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
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.
Why it matters
County jails and courthouses like this one expressed the civic ambition and hard frontier justice of a maturing Texas.
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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
Bellville, TX
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.
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
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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.