HistoricSiteMarkers
Civil WarProgressive & Modern Era

Home of Capt. A. J. Harris

Belton, Bell County, Texas

Marker Inscription

State Senator, Confederate veteran, lawyer, teacher at Salado College. Birthplace of Harris' grandson, famous World War II General, Walton Harris Walker. Home was built in 1866 of limestone quarried nearby. Mortar contains horsehair. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1966

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

Built in 1866 of nearby limestone — its mortar bound with horsehair — this Belton home belonged to Captain A. J. Harris, a Confederate veteran who went on to serve as a state senator, lawyer, and teacher at Salado College. The house is also remembered as the birthplace of his grandson, Walton Harris Walker, who became a noted general in World War II. In one modest limestone dwelling, two very different chapters of American military history meet.

Why it matters

The home links the Civil War generation to the world wars of the next century, showing how one Texas family's service spanned the arc of the nation's conflicts.

Own a business near here? Add it to the map.

Related people

  • · A. J. Harris
  • · Walton Harris Walker

Themes & tags

Nearby & related markers

A Memorial to Civil War Education in Texas

Belton, TX

This memorial recalls what the Civil War did to Texas schooling. Baylor University — including the 'Female Department' that became Mary Hardin-Baylor — had run at Independence for fifteen years when war came in 1861, and it suffered along with education statewide: state school funds stopped, many of the 1860's 2,416 college students marched off as soldiers, and numerous of Texas's 25 colleges closed. In the classrooms that remained, the old, the disabled, and women taught children who wrote on slates or in smoothed sand for want of paper.

Clark House

Belton, TX

Built in the early 1890s, this Belton house was given by businessman Peter Hammersmith to his son as an 1895 wedding gift, then sold in 1899 to Sophie Clark, the widow of a Rogers lumberman. During World War II it was divided into a duplex to ease the housing shortage created by nearby Fort Hood. Distinguished by its semicircular shingled bargeboards, it stayed in the Clark family for over eighty years.

42nd Reunion of Hood's Texas Brigade

Temple, TX

In the decades after Appomattox, Confederate veterans gathered to keep the memory of their service alive, and in 1906 the survivors of Hood's Texas Brigade held their 42nd reunion in Temple. The men met at the First Baptist Church, rode in one of Temple's first automobile parades, heard a memorial ceremony led by the brigade's original chaplain, and closed with a rousing chorus of 'Dixie.' Founded in 1872, the veterans' association held reunions until 1934.

Raleigh Richardson White, Sr.

Temple, TX

Born to a wealthy Missouri plantation family, Raleigh R. White defied his father to join the Confederate army at 21, serving under Nathan Bedford Forrest and rising to acting colonel. A religious conversion after the war redirected his life: ordained a Baptist minister in 1873, he moved his large family to Texas in 1882 and became an influential itinerant preacher, active in seminaries, missions, and Baptist work among African Americans. His son later founded the Temple hospital that grew into Scott & White.