Dr. Horace G. Clark
Independence, Washington County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Born in Massachusetts. Coming to Texas (1850) with wife, Martha Davis Clark, he was principal and second president of Baylor Female College. Mrs. Clark also taught and counseled students. Family operated dormitory on this site 20 years. Dr. Clark, with $1,000 gift from Dr. Asa Hoxey, built 3-story main hall. He was ordained to ministry (1858) at Independence Baptist Church. Family opened Clark's Academy, Houston, 1871; Dr. Clark took Holy Orders (1880), Christ Episcopal Church, Houston, and was a rector in Corpus Christi. Mrs. Clark, a lifelong Baptist, died in 1896.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Massachusetts-born Horace G. Clark came to Texas in 1850 with his wife Martha and became principal and second president of Baylor Female College at Independence, where Martha also taught and counseled students. The couple ran a student dormitory here for two decades, and with a $1,000 gift from Dr. Asa Hoxey, Clark built a three-story main hall. Ordained a Baptist minister in 1858, he later opened Clark's Academy in Houston and eventually took Holy Orders in the Episcopal church.
Why it matters
Independence was a cradle of Texas higher education, and the Clarks' work at Baylor Female College reflects the early push to educate women in 19th-century Texas.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the mid-1800s, Independence in Washington County was one of the most important educational centers in Texas. Baylor University was chartered there in 1845 by the Republic of Texas as a Baptist institution. From the start, education for women was part of the picture. The women's side developed into Baylor Female College, which became a separate institution after the Civil War.
Most Americans of that era expected little formal education for women beyond the basics. Schools that offered young women serious study were part of a growing national movement. In frontier Texas, building a college of any kind took faith, money, and hard physical labor.
The Clarks arrived in 1850, when Texas had been a state for only a few years. They lived through statehood, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. Theirs was a long career spanning some of the most turbulent decades in Texas history.
People & events
Horace G. Clark was born in Massachusetts and came to Texas in 1850 with his wife, Martha Davis Clark. He became principal and later the second president of Baylor Female College. Martha was a partner in the work, not a bystander. She taught and counseled students, and for twenty years the family ran a dormitory on this site. Students lived under their roof and in their care.
Clark also left his mark on the campus itself. With a $1,000 gift from Dr. Asa Hoxey, he built a three-story main hall, a sizable undertaking for a frontier college. In 1858 he was ordained to the ministry at Independence Baptist Church, which joined his role as educator with a religious vocation.
Their story continued after Independence. In 1871 the family opened Clark's Academy in Houston. Clark later took Holy Orders in the Episcopal Church at Christ Church in Houston in 1880 and served as a rector in Corpus Christi. Martha stayed a Baptist all her life and died in 1896. It's a quietly striking detail: a devoted couple who ended up in different churches.
Its place in the American story
The Clarks' work belongs to the larger story of women's education in the United States. Across the nineteenth century, female seminaries and colleges argued in practice that women deserved serious schooling. Many of their graduates went on to teach, and that helped spread education across a growing nation.
Independence also shows how religious denominations drove much of early American higher education, especially in the South and West. Both Baylor University and the women's college that grew out of it later moved away from Independence, but the institutions carried on. The town is remembered as an early home of Texas higher education.
The Clarks' lives also mirror broader patterns: the migration of New Englanders to the frontier, the central role of faith in public life, and the partnership of husbands and wives who ran schools together.
If you visit
Independence today is a small, quiet community. That stillness is part of its appeal, because it is hard to believe it was once a center of learning in Texas. Standing at this site, imagine a dormitory full of young women, and the Clarks looking after them for twenty years.
The area has several other markers and remnants of old Baylor, so it's worth taking time to wander. Washington County has rolling hills and a lot of early Texas history nearby, which makes it a good day trip from Houston or Austin.
This is a good stop for families interested in how education and opportunity grew in America. Ask your kids to imagine going to school when college for women was a new and uncommon idea.
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
- · Horace G. Clark
- · Martha Davis Clark
- · Asa Hoxey
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Davis Family
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The Davis family were renowned educators whose roots ran back to the Rev. Abner Davis, founder of Shurtleff College in Illinois. Drawn to Texas by Baylor Female College, daughter Martha and her husband joined its staff in 1851, and in the following years much of the extended family followed to devote their talents to Baylor at Independence. One daughter, "Little Mary," even taught among Indians briefly before turning to the college.
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