Henry G. Madison Cabin
Austin, Travis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Built about 1863 at 807 East 11th Street; homestead of Henry Green Madison (1843-1912), policeman and farmer, his wife Louise, and their eight children. In 1886, Madison built a frame house enclosing the cabin, which remained hidden until a razing crew found it in 1968. The log structure was donated to the City of Austin in 1968 by Mrs. Ninabelle Wooten, dismantled and reassembled on this site in 1973 as an exhibit dedicated to the Black heritage of the city. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1974
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This log cabin was built about 1863 as the East Austin homestead of Henry Green Madison, a Black policeman and farmer, and his wife Louise, who raised eight children here. Madison later enclosed the cabin within a frame house in 1886, hiding it until a demolition crew rediscovered the logs in 1968. Donated to the city, the structure was dismantled and reassembled on this site in 1973 as an exhibit dedicated to Austin's Black heritage.
Why it matters
The cabin preserves the tangible story of an African American family building a life in Reconstruction-era Texas, a rare surviving witness to Black settlement in the city.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Henry Green Madison
- · Louise Madison
- · Ninabelle Wooten
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Rosewood Park
Austin, TX
Austin's 1928 city plan pushed communities of color to the east side by withholding services elsewhere, and in response the city established Rosewood Park in 1930 as its first public park for African Americans. Carved from the Bertram family's Boggy Creek homestead, it opened with a pool, ballfields, and a clubhouse in a remodeled 1870s limestone home, and it has hosted Juneteenth celebrations every year since. Its Doris Miller Auditorium, built in 1944, later became a noted stop on the "Chitlin' Circuit" before Austin's pools and parks integrated in 1963.
Laurine Cecil Anderson
Austin, TX
Born to enslaved parents in Tennessee in 1853, Laurine Cecil Anderson educated himself at Memphis schools and Fisk University before coming to Texas in 1880 to lead a training school in Brenham. He went on to head what is now Prairie View A&M University, served as founding president of the Colored Teachers State Association, and for thirty-two years led Austin's only high school for Black students. Two days after his death in 1938, the city's school board voted to name that school in his honor.
Site of Old Anderson High School, Kealing Junior High School
Austin, TX
Austin's first high school for Black students opened in 1884 as Robertson Hill School and, through several moves and renamings, became L. C. Anderson High School, honoring a longtime principal. Kealing Junior High, the city's first junior high for Black students, opened on this site in 1930, named for educator Hightower Theodore Kealing, and later merged with the Anderson buildings. The schools here closed in 1971 under court-ordered desegregation, and the old buildings were later razed or lost to fire.
Simpson United Methodist Church
Austin, TX
This congregation grew from a Sunday School class organized in 1880 to serve Black residents of far-eastern Austin, taking the name Simpson Mission in honor of Bishop Matthew Simpson — a Methodist leader, abolitionist, and famed orator. Early worship met in a community schoolhouse and then a frame sanctuary before the congregation moved to this site in 1922. For well over a century its missions, service projects, and revivals have shaped Austin's Black community.