Hattie Barnes Adkisson
Jewett, Leon County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Hattie Barnes was born January 2, 1886, in Jewett. Her family moved to San Marcos around 1908 where Hattie graduated from the Coronal Institute. Hattie married James Thedford Adkisson on May 12, 1910. They returned to Jewett and had two sons. Hattie was active in the community and Presbyterian Church. Texas women were granted the right to vote on June 28, 1919. In 1920, Jewett citizens, disenchanted with city officials, elected Hattie and five other women as mayor and aldermen. Jewett became one of the earliest female-governed towns in the nation. During Mayor Adkisson's two terms, many improvements were implemented. Hattie was ultimately appointed to serve on state and federal civic work committees. (2016)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Born in Jewett in 1886, Hattie Barnes Adkisson returned to her hometown after schooling in San Marcos and became a leading figure in community and church life. In 1920—barely a year after Texas women won the vote—frustrated Jewett citizens elected Hattie and five other women as mayor and aldermen, making the town one of the earliest female-governed municipalities in the nation. She oversaw civic improvements across two terms and later served on state and federal committees.
Why it matters
Hattie Adkisson's all-woman town government stands as a striking early example of women exercising political power in the immediate wake of suffrage.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Hattie Barnes Adkisson's story unfolds in the Progressive and modern era of the early twentieth century, a period of sweeping reform in American public life. Born in the small East Texas town of Jewett in 1886, she came of age just as women across the country were pressing, decade after decade, for a fuller role in civic affairs — and, above all, for the right to vote.
Her early path was a familiar one for an ambitious young woman of her generation and region: schooling away from home (she graduated from the Coronal Institute after her family moved to San Marcos around 1908), marriage, and a return to her roots. Back in Jewett she built the life of an active community member and churchwoman, the kind of local leadership through which many women exercised influence before they could cast a ballot.
Then the ground shifted. Texas granted women the right to vote on June 28, 1919 — ahead of the national amendment that would follow — and almost overnight the possibilities for a civically engaged woman like Hattie expanded dramatically. Her story sits right at that hinge between the old order and the new.
People & events
Hattie Barnes was born on January 2, 1886, in Jewett. Around 1908 her family moved to San Marcos, where she graduated from the Coronal Institute, and on May 12, 1910, she married James Thedford Adkisson. The couple returned to Jewett, raised two sons, and Hattie threw herself into the life of the town and its Presbyterian church.
The turning point came fast. Texas women won the vote in June 1919, and in 1920 the citizens of Jewett — disenchanted with their city officials — did something remarkable: they elected Hattie and five other women to serve as mayor and aldermen. In one stroke, Jewett became one of the earliest female-governed towns in the entire nation, its government handed to women barely a year after they had gained the right to vote at all.
Mayor Adkisson did not treat the office as symbolic. Across two terms she oversaw many civic improvements to the town. Her competence carried her beyond Jewett as well: she was ultimately appointed to serve on state and federal civic work committees, her local leadership recognized at levels far above her small hometown.
Its place in the American story
Hattie Adkisson's all-woman town government is a vivid marker of one of the great transformations in American democracy: the entry of women into political power. The timing is what makes it extraordinary. American women secured the vote nationally with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920 — and Texas women had gained it in 1919 — so Jewett's citizens elected an entire slate of women to govern them in the very first moments that such a thing was even possible.
All-woman municipal governments were rare enough in this period to draw national notice, and they mattered far beyond their small populations. They proved, in the most concrete way, that women could not only vote but hold and wield executive and legislative authority — running a town's finances, ordering its improvements, answering to its voters.
That Hattie went on to serve on state and federal committees shows how a small town's bold experiment could ripple outward. Her career traces the larger arc of the era: women moving from the church hall and the volunteer society into the mayor's chair and the government committee room, claiming a permanent place in American public life.
If you visit
Jewett is a small town in Leon County, and visiting Hattie Adkisson's marker is a chance to stand in the place where an genuinely national 'first' quietly happened. There's no grand monument to the event in the popular imagination — which is part of what makes finding it here, in her own hometown, feel like a discovery.
As you read the marker, let the scale of it land. Picture the Jewett of 1920: a community frustrated enough with its leadership to hand the whole town government to six women, at a moment when women had only just won the right to vote. It's the kind of local audacity that history books tend to overlook.
Jewett makes a rewarding stop on a Leon County history route, especially for travelers drawn to the story of women's rights and civic life. Pair it in your imagination with the town around you — the church where Hattie was active, the streets her administration worked to improve — and you'll feel how one determined woman and her colleagues left a mark far larger than their town.
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
- · Hattie Barnes Adkisson
- · James Thedford Adkisson
Related events
- · Texas women's suffrage (1919)
Themes & tags
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