Hayrick
Robert Lee, Coke County, Texas
Marker Inscription
First county seat of Coke County, 1889-1890. Robert Lee then became the county seat.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
For a single year, 1889 to 1890, the settlement of Hayrick served as the first county seat of Coke County before the honor — and the population — shifted to nearby Robert Lee. Named for a distinctive nearby mountain, Hayrick lost its reason for being once the courthouse moved on.
Why it matters
Hayrick is a classic Texas ghost town, a place that flickered to life as a county seat and then all but vanished when the political center of gravity moved a few miles away.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Coke County
Robert Lee, TX
Coke County was carved from Tom Green County and created in March 1889, part of the wave of county organization that followed the settlement of West Texas. It honors Richard Coke, the Democrat who served as governor from 1874 to 1876 and then two decades in the U.S. Senate. The county seat moved from short-lived Hayrick to Robert Lee in 1890.
Locklin Bartholomew Murray
Robert Lee, TX
Born in Mississippi in 1849, Locklin Bartholomew Murray came to Texas as a boy and, by about 1888, settled to ranch in the Yellow Wolf Valley near Sanco. In 1894 the citizens of Coke County elected him sheriff and tax collector, and he held the office through four straight terms until 1902, building a reputation as an honest and effective lawman. He and his wife Susan raised seven children to adulthood on the frontier.
Henry Davis Pearce
Robert Lee, TX
Illinois-born Henry Davis Pearce came to Texas in 1856 and joined the Confederate army at New Orleans in 1861, seeing hard service at the Siege of Vicksburg and the Battle of Mansfield and being captured at Pleasant Hill before serving to war's end. He later wrote a history of Confederate veterans, raised a large family, and helped organize Runnels County before moving to Robert Lee in 1906.
First Methodist Church of Robert Lee
Robert Lee, TX
Organized in 1891 as settlers were still putting down roots in the ranch country of west-central Texas, this Methodist congregation grew through three successive sanctuaries. The frame buildings of 1896 and 1907 gave way in 1928 to the present Classical Revival structure, with its art-glass windows and triumphal-arch entry marking a young town's investment in permanence.