De Witt County Courthouse
Cuero, DeWitt County, Texas
Marker Inscription
De Witt County organized in 1846 with Cameron as the first seat of government. Clinton was county seat from 1850 to 1876, when its two-story frame courthouse was moved to the new seat of Cuero. That building burned in April 1894. The present courthouse was built from 1894 to 1896, designed by A.O. Watson and completed under supervision of Eugene Heiner. The Richardson Romanesque building, strongly influenced by H. H. Richardson's Allegheny County Courthouse, is a three-story sandstone and granite courthouse with a six-story clock tower and flanking pavilions. In 2007, the courthouse was rededicated with a ceremony patterned after the 1896 original dedication. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1966
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
DeWitt County was organized in 1846, and after its seat shifted from Cameron to Clinton and finally to Cuero, a series of courthouses served its citizens. The present Richardsonian Romanesque courthouse rose from 1894 to 1896, a three-story sandstone and granite building crowned by a six-story clock tower and modeled on H. H. Richardson's celebrated Allegheny County Courthouse. Rededicated in 2007 in a ceremony echoing its 1896 original, it remains the county's civic centerpiece.
Why it matters
The courthouse embodies the ambition of frontier Texas counties, whose grand seats of government announced permanence and civic pride on the settling landscape.
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Related people
- · A.O. Watson
- · Eugene Heiner
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
James Norman Smith
Cuero, TX
They called James Norman Smith "Uncle Jimmy the Peacemaker," and his long life stitched together much of early Texas. Educated in North Carolina and a teacher in Tennessee — where one of his pupils was the future president James K. Polk — he came to Texas in 1840 and taught the first school in what became DeWitt County. He then surveyed the county, served as its first clerk, organized Presbyterian churches across the region and its first Masonic lodge, and at an 1857 rally introduced his old Tennessee friend Sam Houston to the crowd.
First Presbyterian Church of Cuero
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On July 8, 1849, settlers gathered beneath a live oak at the home of Dr. Robert and Mary Peebles to form Live Oak Presbyterian Church, the first Presbyterian congregation in DeWitt County. Led by the Rev. William Cochran Blair, the church moved to the county seat at Clinton in 1851, and over the following decades several area congregations rose and eventually merged into a single church at Cuero by 1883. Congregations from Indianola and Thomaston later joined as well, keeping the church at the center of community life.
St. Michael's Catholic Church
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Established in 1875 on land donated by a land and immigration company, St. Michael's Parish took its name in memory of an early member's late husband and soon opened a Catholic school. Its growth was shaped by disaster: when the 1886 hurricane destroyed the coastal town of Indianola, many fleeing families found refuge and faith in Cuero, swelling the parish before its brick church was finished in 1892. Across the twentieth century the congregation kept expanding its churches, schools, and halls to serve a community of hundreds of families.
Proctor-Green House
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