Corsicana State Home
Corsicana, Navarro County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Created by the 20th Legislature in 1887, the State Orphan Asylum originally provided care for orphans under age 14. State officials located the institution in Corsicana after local citizens donated over 200 acres at this site. The first students arrived in 1889, and by 1890 enrollment totaled 54. Classes met in the chapel before a school building was erected in 1889. By 1897 the institution had an independent school district. Renamed State Orphan Home before 1899, the facility housed about 400 students in 1900. Here they received academic and vocational instruction. The campus once had extensive farmlands to supply food and provide agricultural training for students. Physical facilities were enlarged as enrollment increased. During the Depression of the 1930s, residents numbered over 800. The campus school was phased out at the end of the 1955-56 academic year, and students transferred to Corsicana public schools. In 1957 the home was placed under jurisdiction of the Texas Youth Council and was renamed Corsicana State Home. Thousands of children have benefited from the care and schooling provided by the home. Prominent former students include Robert W. Calvert, Texas Supreme Court Associate Justice, 1950-61, and Chief Justice, 1961-72. (1977)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1887 the Texas Legislature created the State Orphan Asylum, and Corsicana citizens donated more than 200 acres to bring it to their town. The first children arrived in 1889, and the campus grew into a self-sustaining community with its own school district and working farmlands that both fed the residents and taught them a trade. Through the Depression the home sheltered more than 800 children, and later, renamed the Corsicana State Home, it continued caring for young Texans, among them a future Texas Supreme Court chief justice.
Why it matters
The home reflects the Progressive-era belief that the state itself should shelter and educate orphaned children, a chapter in the American history of public child welfare.
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Related people
- · Robert W. Calvert
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Meritt Drane
Corsicana, TX
Born in Kentucky to a wealthy farming family, Meritt Drane set out for Texas in 1858, drawn by "the fire of youth." Unable to serve in the Confederate army because of a disability, he instead helped manage the affairs of soldiers' wives during the Civil War, then built lasting success in farming and stock raising in Navarro County's rich Blackland soil. As a Corsicana civic leader he sold farm machinery, served on the school committee that opened the town's first public schools in 1882, and helped establish the State Orphan Home—so respected that a post office was named "Drane" in his honor.
Odd Fellow and Rebekah Children's Home
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In 1885 the Grand Lodge of Texas, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, founded this home as one of the state's first fraternal orphanages, on 200 acres given by the Corsicana lodge and local citizens. It grew into a self-contained community with its own school district, farm and dairy, power plant, and even a gym and swimming pool, peaking near 400 residents in the 1920s. It also sheltered the aged until 1928, closed its school in 1943, and, renamed in 1948, has cared for more than 5,500 people over its life.
James L. Collins
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Oak Valley School
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Oak Valley was one of thirty school districts laid out in Navarro County in 1867, though classes waited until the 1870s, when a new state constitutional provision finally allowed taxes to fund public education. A one-room schoolhouse rose late that decade on land later deeded by the Garner family, and by 1919 nearly a hundred students filled a new two-room building. The school served the rural area for more than seventy years before the Corsicana district absorbed it in 1949.