Hayes Park
Weches, Houston County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Named for Dr. J.W. Hayes (1854-1932), who came from Tennessee to Texas in 1860s and was a trail driver, locomotive engineer, and rancher. Entering Kentucky School of Medicine at 40, he graduated and became missionary to Indians. Wife Lena Belle (1883-1920). A son, G.J. Hayes, M.D., gave park site to honor outstanding physicians of Augusta since the 1860s: Drs. S.P. Cunningham (1840-1935), Hall Wilson (1860-1906), Ben S. Elliott (1866-1918), S.C. Kennedy (1883-1970), and Drs. Douglas, McDaniel, Pugh. (1971)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This park honors Dr. J. W. Hayes, a Tennessee native who came to Texas in the 1860s and lived a strikingly varied life as a trail driver, locomotive engineer, and rancher before entering medical school at forty and becoming a missionary physician to Native people. His son, also a doctor, donated the park to commemorate the physicians who served the Augusta community from the 1860s onward.
Why it matters
The park pays tribute to the frontier country doctors whose care sustained isolated rural communities across generations of East Texas life.
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Related people
- · J. W. Hayes
- · G. J. Hayes
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Site of Old Town of Augusta
Weches, TX
Frontiersman Daniel McLean and his brother-in-law John Sheridan settled here in 1821, soon joined by other pioneer families. The little community—first called Boston, then Augusta after a postmaster's daughter in 1857—weathered deadly frontier violence, including the Edens-Madden Massacre, and grew to some two dozen stores, a Masonic lodge, and a coeducational academy. As ranching and forestry supplanted cotton, the town faded away.
Daniel McLean_John Sheridan
Weches, TX
Daniel McLean and his brother-in-law John Sheridan were among the earliest Anglo settlers of this part of East Texas. McLean first came in 1813 with the Gutiérrez-Magee expedition seeking to free Mexico from Spain, then returned to claim land when Stephen F. Austin opened Texas to colonists in the 1820s. Both men were killed by Indians in 1837 while chasing stolen horses, and Mrs. Sheridan recovered their bodies with a boy's help so each could be buried on his own land.
The Edens-Madden Massacre
Weches, TX
In the turbulent 1830s, while the able-bodied men of the Edens and Madden families were away, their women, children, and elders sheltered together at John Edens's cabin when Indians attacked, killing several and burning the house. A few escaped — including four-year-old Balis Madden and a little girl — and two wounded women survived, while an enslaved woman remembered as Patsy or Betsy rescued some of the family. The fire and the fog of the raid left the fate of the missing uncertain.
Augusta Union Church
Grapeland, TX
Probably built in the 1850s, this rural "union" church opened its doors to several denominations and doubled as the Augusta community's schoolhouse in its early years. Its fabric—shiplap siding, Greek Revival trim, Victorian-era shingled gables, and an early-twentieth-century steeple—records generations of change layered onto one modest frame building. It still gathers the community each year for homecoming observances.