Farmer Community
Cone vicinity, Crosby County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Girlhood home of Mrs. Ima Smith, First Lady of Texas, wife of Governor Preston Smith. Settlement began here in 1887. The school district was created in 1893, with its early building funded by gifts from friends, including residents of Amarillo and Colorado City. Religious faiths active in Farmer have been the Methodists (organized about 1890), Baptists (organized 1891), Presbyterians, Church of Christ, Seventh Day Adventists, and others. Service and social clubs have included P.T.A., Singsong, baseball club, Forty-two Club, Farmer Community Reunion. 1970
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Settlement of the Farmer community began in 1887 on the West Texas plains, and by 1893 residents had organized a school district, funding an early building with gifts from as far away as Amarillo and Colorado City. Churches of many faiths took root here, and the community produced Ima Smith, who grew up in Farmer and became First Lady of Texas as the wife of Governor Preston Smith.
Why it matters
Tiny farm communities like Farmer, built on volunteer schools and neighborly clubs, formed the social fabric of the settling High Plains and occasionally sent their children onto the state stage.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Ima Smith
- · Governor Preston Smith
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Pearce Chapel-Strip Cemetery
Abernathy, TX
When a 1.5-by-15-mile 'Strip' of land opened to homesteaders in the 1890s, settlers like William Houston Pearce built a schoolhouse that doubled as a place of worship, birthing Pearce Chapel Methodist Church. A cemetery followed in 1898, and a small post office, union church, and community grew up around it before nearby Abernathy drew the settlement away. The chapel and school were eventually moved, but the cemetery endures with veterans of the Civil War through World War II among its graves.
Happy Union
Plainview, TX
Drawn by cheap land and a healthful climate, families like the Matslers, Pearsons, and Neils began settling this stretch of Hale County around 1890, ranching and raising feed and hauling supplies by rail from Amarillo. In 1897 they built a single room that served at once as school, church, and community center, and chose the hopeful name Happy Union. Cotton gins, a store, and a grain elevator followed, and irrigation later made it a prosperous farming area that kept its close-knit identity even as growth stayed modest.
First Baptist Church of Lubbock
Lubbock, TX
When Lubbock was barely a settlement, the First Baptist congregation organized in 1891 and met in the county jail until a small church was built in 1901. Early members funded their work with box suppers, ice cream parties, and quilting bees, and the church grew alongside the town—swelling when Texas Technological College opened in 1925 and welcoming servicemen from the area's Army airfields during World War II. By mid-century it had moved to its present Broadway location and broadened into wide-ranging ministries.
Monterey High School
Lubbock, TX
Monterey High School opened in 1955, taking its name from one of the two original townsites platted for Lubbock. That earlier Monterey was founded in present-day northwest Lubbock by W. E. Rayner in 1890, but in a notable 1891 compromise Rayner joined forces with the rival townsite's promoters to establish Lubbock in its current location. The school thus carries forward the name of a would-be town that merged into the city instead.