Home of Texas Attorney General George McCormick

🏛️The era

When this cottage went up in 1868, Texas was in the thick of Reconstruction. The Confederacy had been defeated only a few years earlier, slavery had ended, and the state was being governed under the supervision of the federal government while Texans fought bitterly over what their postwar society would look like.

Columbus, on the Colorado River in Colorado County, was already an old town by Texas standards, rooted in the era of early Anglo-American colonization in the 1820s. By the late 1860s it was a settled community of farms, courthouse business, and families trying to rebuild their lives after the war.

The great political event of the following decade was the writing of a new state constitution. By the mid-1870s, conservative Democrats had regained control of Texas government, and many of them were determined to replace the Reconstruction-era constitution, which they saw as giving too much power to the state government. The result was the Texas Constitution of 1876, a document that deliberately limited state power, restrained spending, and decentralized authority.

That constitution, much amended, still governs Texas today. So the world of this modest cottage is directly connected to rules that shape Texas life in the twenty-first century.

👥People & events

George McCormick was born in Virginia in 1841 and came to Texas as a young man in 1858, part of the steady stream of Southerners moving west in the years before the Civil War. When the war came, he served in the Confederate Army, as so many young men of his generation and background did.

After the war, McCormick built a life in Columbus. The cottage was raised in 1868 in what the marker calls the "Early Texas" style, framed of cypress and pine and held together with old-fashioned square nails. It had five rooms, with the kitchen and dining room set apart from the main house, a common arrangement in hot climates that kept cooking heat and the risk of fire away from the living quarters. In 1871 McCormick married Myrah Thatcher, and the couple raised five children.

McCormick's legal and political career then carried him far beyond Columbus. He helped write the Constitution of 1876, served as attorney general of Texas from 1878 to 1880, and later spent eight years, from 1884 to 1892, as judge of the 25th Judicial District. He died in 1905.

Perhaps the most touching detail is the simplest: the house stayed in the McCormick family for a hundred years. Through all those decades of change, from Reconstruction to the modern era, this little cottage remained a family home.

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

The story of George McCormick traces an arc that many Southern men of his generation followed: Confederate service, then a return to civilian life and a role in rebuilding state government after Reconstruction. Understanding figures like him helps explain how the postwar South was reshaped, and by whom.

The Texas Constitution of 1876 is the heart of this marker's larger significance. Written in reaction to Reconstruction, it reflected a deep distrust of concentrated government power, and its influence has been enormous. Because it is still in force, every Texan lives under a framework that McCormick and his fellow framers helped design.

The cottage also matters as architecture. Simple homes like this one, built of local wood with hand-wrought methods, once dotted the Texas landscape but have mostly disappeared. A surviving example, held by one family for a century, offers a rare, tangible look at how ordinary Texans, even ones who rose to high office, actually lived.

🧭If you visit

Columbus is one of the most charming old towns in this part of Texas, with tree-shaded streets and historic homes that invite you to slow down. This marker fits naturally into a walking tour of the town's older neighborhoods.

When you look at the cottage, notice its modest scale. It is easy to imagine that a future attorney general would live somewhere grand, but this home is a reminder that public life in 1870s Texas often began in plain, practical houses. Look for the simple lines typical of early Texas building, and think about the detached kitchen that once stood apart from the living rooms.

Please remember that historic homes like this may be private residences. Enjoy it from the street and respect the property.

Columbus sits conveniently between Houston and San Antonio, so it makes an easy detour on a cross-state drive. Combine this stop with the town's other historic sites to get a feel for how Texas changed from frontier colony to modern state.