Fort Magruder, C.S.A.
Austin, Travis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Fort Magruder, C.S.A. During the Civil War, Fort Magruder was built near here west of Congress Avenue. Named for Gen. John Bankhead Magruder, commander of Texas Confederate forces, it was one of three forts planned to protect Austin from a possible Union attack from the coast. In the winter of 1863-64, Maj. Julius Kellersberg supervised building of the L-shaped earthen fort. Due to wartime manpower shortages, citizens provided slaves to construct the fort. Large enough for 200 soldiers, the fort was sited along what was then the San Antonio Road. Other forts were planned for the Houston Road and College Hill. In early 1864, Union forces attacked Texas from the Red River area of Louisiana, and Fort Magruder was abandoned. (2003)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In the winter of 1863-64, Confederate engineers threw up this L-shaped earthen fort near Congress Avenue, one of three planned to shield Austin from a feared Union thrust up from the coast. Named for Gen. John Bankhead Magruder, commander of Texas's Confederate forces, it was built by enslaved people supplied by citizens amid wartime labor shortages. When Union forces struck instead from Louisiana's Red River in early 1864, the never-tested fort was abandoned.
Why it matters
It marks both the Confederacy's anxious defense of its Texas capital and the forced labor of enslaved people that made that defense possible.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · John Bankhead Magruder
- · Julius Kellersberg
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Ira Hobart Evans
Austin, TX
New Hampshire–born Ira Hobart Evans rose to major in the Union Army during the Civil War, earned the Medal of Honor, and stood in the honor guard at President Lincoln's funeral in 1865. Sent to Texas and later returning as a Freedmen's Bureau agent, he won election to the state legislature and in 1870 became the youngest and first Republican Speaker of the Texas House. He went on to lead Texas railroad and land ventures and served for nearly a decade as president of the board of Tillotson College, a forerunner of today's Huston-Tillotson University, remodeling this Austin house with architect Alfred Giles.
Edward Clark House Outbuilding
Austin, TX
Edward Clark—Texas lieutenant governor and, in 1861, its Confederate governor—bought this property in 1856, and this buff-brick building likely served as an outbuilding and possibly as quarters for the ten enslaved people he owned. Its plan matches typical slave quarters of the period, and despite 1930s alterations by owner Mamie Hatzfeld it survives as a rare pre-Civil War residential structure in Austin. The building was designated a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 2012.
Robert S. Stanley House
Austin, TX
Robert S. Stanley, a Travis County-born African-American stonemason, built this Austin home for his wife Francis and their children in 1895, and later raised a stone store building on West Mary Street that his second wife Jennie ran as a general store. His skill shows in the house's rusticated limestone construction, two-foot-thick half-basement walls, and longleaf pine framing—craftsmanship sturdy enough to keep the home in his family for over a century. Stanley rests at Austin's Evergreen Cemetery.
Texas School for the Deaf
Austin, TX
The Texas Legislature founded the Texas Deaf and Dumb Asylum in 1856, and the school opened in 1857 — with no students on the first day, but eleven by summer, taught under a demanding regime of work and self-sufficiency. Emily Lewis, whose memoir records those early years, served the school across four decades until her 1914 retirement, through a turbulent succession of superintendents including the frontier figure John Salmon 'Rip' Ford. A separate school for non-white deaf students was created in 1887 and remained segregated until integration in 1965.