Coleman County Jail
Coleman, Coleman County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Second county jail. (First was a small 1879 structure on lawn of courthouse.) Erected in 1890, this building is a good example of Victorian jail architecture with some traces of Romanesque Revival. Belting at ground and second floors a notable detail. Lower floor contains living quarters for the jailer. Upper floor houses both maximum and minimum security cells. Only one person, a convicted murderer, was ever hanged here. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1970
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Erected in 1890 to replace a small 1879 structure on the courthouse lawn, this was Coleman County's second jail — a sturdy example of Victorian jail design with Romanesque Revival touches and decorative belt courses between its floors. The jailer and family lived on the ground level while maximum- and minimum-security cells filled the upper story. In all its years, only one man, a convicted murderer, was ever hanged here.
Why it matters
Fortress-like county jails like this one mark the arrival of formal law and order on the West Texas frontier, and stand today as landmarks of nineteenth-century civic architecture.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Robert M. Coleman
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Kentucky-born Robert M. Coleman came to Texas in 1832 and threw himself into the revolution, commanding volunteers at the Siege of Bexar in December 1835. As a delegate he signed the Texas Declaration of Independence in 1836 and then served as aide-de-camp to General Sam Houston at the decisive Battle of San Jacinto. He later took up arms as a Texas Ranger on the frontier before his death in 1837.
Western Trail Marker
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This tablet, placed by a local Daughters of the American Revolution chapter, honors the Western Trail that funneled vast herds of longhorns north through Coleman in the decades after the Civil War. For nearly thirty years, cowboys drove cattle "up the trail" along this route, part of the great open-range cattle drives that defined the postwar Texas economy.
Blair House
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Georgia native J. T. Blair came to Coleman County in 1897, married into a pioneer local family, and made his living as foreman of the Overall Ranch while running his own spread. In 1914 he built this Classical Revival house in town—designed by architect J. P. Caldwell—so his five children could attend Coleman's schools. The Blair family kept the home for sixty years.
Colonel James E. McCord
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James E. McCord came to Texas from South Carolina in 1853 and made his name surveying the raw frontier, including the ground around Camp Colorado. When the Civil War drained regular defenses, he took charge of the Texas Frontier Regiment, a hard-to-discipline band of frontiersmen, and in 1863 was unanimously elected its colonel. He scrapped the predictable patrol routes that raiders had learned to slip past, favoring surprise scouting expeditions, and his outfit was eventually absorbed into Confederate service as the 46th Texas Cavalry.