Blanket
Blanket, Brown County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Local tradition states that Blanket Creek received its name in 1852, when a group of surveyors came upon a band of Tonkawa Indians who had been caught in a rainstorm while hunting buffalo. The Tonkawa spread their wet blankets on the sumac bushes to dry, and the surveyors named the stream Blanket Creek. Permanent settlement was sparse until Pinkney and Sarah Anderson bought land from Almonta Huling in 1873, opening a general store just southwest of the present town. Anderson’s store housed the first Blanket post office in 1875, and the town became a stop on the stagecoach route from Brownwood to Fort Worth. Robert Dickey was the first schoolteacher, beginning in a log building in 1878 before a permanent schoolhouse was built with lumber hauled from Fort Worth. The 1880 U.S. census documented people from 18 states and the countries of Jamaica, Norway and Prussia living here. In 1891, arrival of the Fort Worth and Rio Grande Railway led T.A. Wilkinson to develop the Blanket townsite company. W.T. Smith of Rockwell City, Iowa, became company president and laid out a new townsite into blocks and lots; Smith also served as immigration agent for the F.W. & R.G., founded the Lone Star High School and College, and operated a mercantile store in Blanket. Residents of the former village moved their homes and businesses to the new townsite. Blanket continued to grow, with the first bank opening in 1903 and the town incorporating in 1912. During its peak of prosperity during the cotton era, three gins operated here. David P. Cobb was Blanket’s town doctor for more than 62 years, an example of the perseverance and tradition of a rural town that has survived droughts and economic downturns to remain a viable community.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Local tradition says Blanket Creek got its name in 1852, when surveyors found a band of Tonkawa hunters drying their rain-soaked blankets on the sumac bushes. Permanent settlement followed in the 1870s around a general store and post office, and Blanket became a stop on the Brownwood-to-Fort Worth stagecoach line before the Fort Worth and Rio Grande Railway arrived in 1891 and prompted a whole new townsite. Sustained by cotton gins and a doctor who served for more than sixty years, the town incorporated in 1912 and has endured droughts and downturns ever since.
Why it matters
Blanket's arc — from a Tonkawa hunting ground to a stagecoach stop to a railroad cotton town — is the frontier-to-farm story repeated across the settling of Texas.
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Related people
- · Pinkney Anderson
- · Sarah Anderson
Themes & tags
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