Eliza Pitts Malone
San Marcos, Hays County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1842, Eliza Pitts (1832-1923) and her parents came to Texas from Georgia. She was a charter member of First Methodist Church in San Marcos and served as an active church leader. She married James Lafayette Malone in 1850, and they had sixteen children. During the Civil war, 1861-65, Eliza Malone ran their 1,000-acre farm and sewed for Confederate soldiers. After her husband died, she and her daughter Bramwell Malone built this home in 1909. Although in her eighties during World War I, she contributed to the war effort by knitting socks for soldiers.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Eliza Pitts came to Texas from Georgia as a girl in 1842, married James Lafayette Malone in 1850, and raised sixteen children while helping build the life of early San Marcos as a charter member of its First Methodist Church. When the Civil War took the men away, she ran the family's thousand-acre farm and sewed for Confederate soldiers; decades later, in her eighties, she knitted socks for American troops in World War I. Widowed, she and her daughter built this home in 1909.
Why it matters
Her long life spans two wars and shows how women sustained households, farms, and the home front across generations of American conflict.
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Related people
- · Eliza Pitts Malone
- · James Lafayette Malone
Themes & tags
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