Community of Pilgrim
Pilgrim, Gonzales County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Named in honor of Thomas J. Pilgrim (1804-1877), noted pioneer educator. Born in Connecticut, he came in 1828 to Texas, where in 1829 he organized a school at San Felipe, in Stephen F. Austin's Colony. Also started first Sunday School in Texas. In 1838 he received a land grant of 1,476 acres (including this site) from Texas Republic. Settled in Gonzales in 1840; started a Sunday School and was superintendent until 1871. Community became a prominent trading post in early 1840s and a hideout of famous gunman John Wesley Hardin in 1870s.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This community carries the name of Thomas J. Pilgrim, a Connecticut-born educator who arrived in Stephen F. Austin's colony in 1828 and opened a school at San Felipe the next year, along with what is remembered as Texas's first Sunday School. An 1838 land grant from the young Republic of Texas brought him to this area, and he settled in nearby Gonzales in 1840. By the 1870s the little trading post here had also gained a rougher reputation as a hideout of the notorious gunman John Wesley Hardin.
Why it matters
Pilgrim planted the seeds of formal schooling in Anglo-American Texas, and the community's story braids frontier education together with the outlaw legends of the post-Civil War era.
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Related people
- · Thomas J. Pilgrim
- · John Wesley Hardin
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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The Gonzales County community of Pilgrim took its name from Thomas J. Pilgrim, an educator granted land here by the Republic of Texas in 1838. Decades later, in 1883, members of a nondenominational Union church — representing Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, and Quaker families — organized this Cumberland Presbyterian congregation, building a sanctuary in 1886 on land donated by Crawford Burnett. Neighbors helped raise and furnish the building, which became a gathering place for camp meetings and summer revivals.