Charles Lewis McGehee Cabin
San Marcos, Hays County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The McGehee family came to Texas from Alabama in 1847. In 1859, Charles Lewis McGehee, Jr. (1837-1929) acquired this property along the San Marcos River. He soon built a cabin (1/2 mi. E) for his wife, Sarah Jane (Humphreys), and their children. One of the oldest existing structures in this part of Hays County, the cabin features a fireplace and chimney of hand-hewn stone. About 1870, McGehee moved his family from the farm into the town of San Marcos, where he worked as a land developer and stock dealer. (1985)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1847 the McGehee family left Alabama for the fresh farmland of newly annexed Texas, and by 1859 Charles Lewis McGehee, Jr. had claimed a stretch of the San Marcos River. The cabin he raised for his wife Sarah Jane and their children — with its hand-hewn stone fireplace and chimney — remains one of the oldest structures in this corner of Hays County, a survivor of the era when settlers turned river bottoms into homesteads before drifting into town life.
Why it matters
Modest cabins like this one are the physical record of Anglo-American settlement in the Texas Hill Country, marking the transition from frontier farm to established community in the years before the Civil War.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When the McGehee family arrived from Alabama in 1847, Texas had only just become a state. The Republic of Texas had been annexed by the United States in 1845, and the Mexican–American War was still being fought over where the new state's borders ran. Families from the older Southern states poured west looking for cheap, fertile land, and Texas promised plenty of it.
The country around the San Marcos River was a natural draw. The river rises from large springs at the edge of the Balcones Escarpment, where the rolling Hill Country drops down to the blackland prairie. Clear, steady water, good bottomland and timber along the banks made it an attractive place to settle. Hays County was organized in the late 1840s, and the town of San Marcos grew up near the springs in the years that followed.
By 1859, when Charles Lewis McGehee, Jr. took up land along the river, the area was moving from frontier to farming community. It was also the last stretch of calm before the national crisis. Within two years Texas would leave the Union and the Civil War would begin, and the decade after it would change how Texans farmed, traded and lived.
People & events
Charles Lewis McGehee, Jr. was born in 1837, so he was only about ten when his family made the long move from Alabama to Texas. He grew up in a young state, and by his early twenties he was ready to stake out a place of his own. In 1859 he acquired land along the San Marcos River.
On that land he built a cabin for his wife, Sarah Jane, born a Humphreys, and their children. It was a frontier home, but it was built to last. Its fireplace and chimney were made of stone shaped by hand, the hearth where the family cooked, kept warm and gathered. The cabin still stands about half a mile east of the marker, and it ranks among the oldest surviving buildings in this part of Hays County.
The farm years did not last forever. Around 1870 McGehee moved his family into San Marcos itself, where he made his living as a land developer and stock dealer. That move from homestead to town merchant was a common path for ambitious settlers of his generation. He lived to 1929, which means he saw Texas go from a newly annexed frontier to a state of railroads and automobiles.
Its place in the American story
The McGehee story is a small version of one of the biggest movements in American history: the westward migration of families from the older states into land newly opened to settlement. Like thousands of others, the McGehees left the Deep South for Texas in the years right after annexation, carrying their farming traditions, their family networks and their hopes for land onto new ground.
The cabin also shows how that frontier changed in a single lifetime. A young man built a stone-chimneyed home on river bottomland, and about a decade later he had moved to town to trade in land and livestock. That was the pattern across the West: settlement began with scattered farms and turned quickly into commercial towns, land markets and stock trading.
Buildings from this period are scarce. Many early cabins were torn down, burned, or swallowed by later houses. The ones that survive are among the few physical records of how ordinary settlers lived, which is why a modest cabin can matter as much as a grand mansion.
If you visit
The marker stands near the San Marcos River, and the cabin it describes sits about half a mile to the east. Treat the marker as your starting point, and check locally whether the cabin can be seen or visited before you go looking, because access to historic structures can be limited.
Take a moment to picture the river valley as a young family in 1859 would have seen it: fewer roads, more open land, and the river as the center of daily life. If you can see the cabin, look for the hand-hewn stone fireplace and chimney. That stonework is the cabin's signature, and it is a big part of why the building has survived.
San Marcos fits easily into a Hill Country road trip. The spring-fed river is still the town's centerpiece, and a walk along it helps you understand why settlers came here in the first place. Pair this stop with a visit to downtown San Marcos, the town McGehee moved his family into around 1870.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Charles Lewis McGehee, Jr.
- · Sarah Jane Humphreys McGehee
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Site of the First Town of San Marcos
San Marcos, TX
Officially named Villa de San Marcos de Neve, this settlement was founded by Mexican colonists in 1807 and counted just 81 residents at the start of 1808. A devastating flood that year, followed by repeated raids, made the site untenable, and the villagers abandoned it by 1812. Its brief life marks the first attempt to plant a town on the San Marcos River.
Don Felipe Roque de la Portilla
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In 1807, at the request of Spanish Texas's governor, the Army captain and rancher Felipe Roque de la Portilla led more than fifty settlers to found San Marcos de Neve where El Camino Real crossed the San Marcos River. The colony issued town lots and built homes around a plaza, but floods, missing supplies, and raids by Comanches and Tonkawas broke it; by 1812 Portilla led his people back toward the Rio Grande. He remained a prominent frontier leader, later helping establish another Texas colony.
McGehee Crossing
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This spot marks where the Camino Real—the King's Highway from Nacogdoches to the Rio Grande—forded the San Marcos River. The French explorer St. Denis traveled it in 1714 to open trade with the Spanish, and the Austins likely crossed near here during their 1820–21 colonization efforts. Thomas McGehee settled on the east bank around 1846, and the family's long association gave the crossing its name.
Charles Cock Home
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Charles S. Cock built this limestone house in 1867, in the years when San Marcos was still a young frontier town finding its feet after the Civil War. A farmer who later served as mayor in the early 1880s, Cock raised his home from a mix of local materials—limestone, elm, pine, and cedar—the kind of hand-gathered construction typical of the Texas Hill Country.