First Presbyterian Church of Cuero
Cuero, DeWitt County, Texas
Marker Inscription
On July 8, 1849, a group of settlers gathered together under a live oak tree at the home of Dr. Robert and Mary C. Trigg Peebles to form the Live Oak Presbyterian Church, the first Presbyterian congregation in De Witt County. Led by the Rev. William Cochran Blair, the church's charter members included Elizabeth Smith Barnhill, Miles Squier Bennet, Mary C. Trigg Peebles, James Norman Smith, and Elizabeth H. Morehead Smith. In 1851 the church was relocated to Clinton (3 miles south), the De Witt county seat. In 1855 the county's second Presbyterian church was organized in Concrete (11 miles north), and in 1878 a third congregation began in the new county seat of Cuero. By 1883 the three churches had merged into one congregation located in Cuero. Eventually, congregations from Indianola and Thomaston also joined the Cuero church. A number of structures have housed the church over the years, and the members have maintained an active involvement in community affairs. The street in front of the church was renamed in honor of the Rev. Dr. William Angus McLeod, who served as minister here from 1919 until his death in 1947.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
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.
Why it matters
Born under a live oak in the settlement era, this congregation traces the spread and consolidation of frontier Texas communities across a shifting map of county seats.
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Related people
- · Rev. William Cochran Blair
- · Mary C. Trigg Peebles
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.
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De Witt County Courthouse
Cuero, TX
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.
Cuero Land and Immigration Company
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Chartered in early 1872, the Cuero Land and Immigration Company set out to develop more than 4,000 acres carved from an 1833 Mexican land grant. Its founders were men of standing — among them civil engineer and congressman Gustav Schleicher and Fletcher S. Stockdale, who had briefly served as governor of Texas in 1865. By donating land to lure the Gulf, Western Texas and Pacific Railway, the company brought the first train in March 1873, touching off a land boom that made Cuero a thriving railroad terminus and civic center.