Hutto
Hutto, Williamson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Located near Shiloh, one of the earliest villages in Williamson County, this area was settled in 1855 by J. E. Hutto (1824-1914) and Adam Orgain, a former slave. Hutto sold land for this townsite to the International & Great Northern Railroad in 1876. A post office was established in 1877 with Hutto as postmaster. By 1882, the town had a school and a Baptist church. By 1898, there were six churches, a Masonic lodge, newspaper, hotel, bank, two gins, and several stores. Hutto grew rapidly after Swedish immigrants turned nearby farms to cotton production. The town was incorporated in 1911.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This corner of Williamson County was settled in 1855 by J. E. Hutto and Adam Orgain, a former slave, near the early village of Shiloh. When Hutto sold land to the International & Great Northern Railroad in 1876 a town took shape, and he became its first postmaster the next year. Fueled by the railroad and by Swedish immigrants who turned nearby farms over to cotton, Hutto grew from a single church and school in 1882 to a bustling town that incorporated in 1911.
Why it matters
Hutto's founding by both a white settler and a formerly enslaved man, and its later growth through Swedish immigration, reflects the varied peoples who built Central Texas farm towns after the Civil War.
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Related people
- · J. E. Hutto
- · Adam Orgain
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Klattenhoff House
Hutto, TX
German-born William Klattenhoff immigrated to Texas in 1872 at seventeen, and work on the International and Great Northern Railroad brought him to Hutto, where he bought land in 1876. After marrying Alvina Plattow he built a first home, then a grander second house in 1896 as his success as farmer, rancher, and businessman grew. The homestead stayed in the family into the 21st century, a marker of German settlement in the region.
Caldwell-Palm House
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T. J. Caldwell and his wife Letitia raised this sturdy limestone house on the eve of the Civil War in 1860, quarrying its walls from the surrounding land and, as the marker plainly records, relying on the labor of enslaved people to build it. Their daughter Mary married Swedish immigrant Sven William Palm, whose family kept the property for more than a century. Around it grew the small Caldwell Heights community of school, cotton gin, and farmsteads.
Round Rock
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Settlement gathered here in the late 1830s, and by mid-century former Austin mayor Jacob Harrell was selling lots near the Stagecoach Road crossing at Brushy Creek. A post office opened in 1851, and the community soon renamed itself Round Rock for a distinctive limestone ford; immigration from several states and Sweden doubled its population in the 1850s. When the railroad built a new townsite to the east in 1876, "New Town" quickly eclipsed the old settlement, and Round Rock briefly rivaled Austin as a commercial hub before growing, a century later, into one of the nation's fastest-expanding cities.
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