Jesse Cooper House
Georgetown, Williamson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Tennessee native Jesse Eugene Cooper (1855-1944) came to Texas in 1876. The following year he helped establish a Georgetown newspaper, the "Williamson County Sun." In addition to his role as editor, he also founded a local bank and cottonseed oil mill. The C. S. Belford Lumber Co. built this home for Cooper and his second wife, Sara (Wilbarger) (d. 1935), in 1911-12. The American Foursquare design features rustic detailing of native limestone. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1988
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Tennessee-born Jesse Eugene Cooper arrived in Texas in 1876 and quickly became a builder of Georgetown's civic life, helping found the Williamson County Sun newspaper the next year and later a bank and a cottonseed oil mill. In 1911–12 the local Belford Lumber Co. built him this American Foursquare home, its rustic native-limestone detailing typical of the confident middle-class houses of the era. Cooper lived here until his death in 1944.
Why it matters
Cooper's career as editor, banker, and mill founder captures how small-town boosters knit together the press, finance, and industry that carried Gilded Age and Progressive-era Texas towns into modern prosperity.
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Related people
- · Jesse Eugene Cooper
- · Sara Wilbarger Cooper
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
C.B. and Lilburn Atkinson House
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Belford Lumber Co. built this house in 1915 for real estate businessman Charles Byron Atkinson and his wife Lilburn, daughter of a prominent Georgetown family. C.B. died young, just five years after the home's completion, and Lilburn kept the house until 1976. An outstanding Craftsman bungalow, it features an inset gabled porch, cobblestone piers and chimney, a three-sided window bay, bracketed eaves, and a low overhanging roofline.
C.A.D. Clamp
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Born in Prussian Thorn—today Torun, Poland—Christian Augustus Daniel Clamp came to Texas in 1846 and settled in Georgetown in 1851. A skilled carpenter and cabinetmaker, he became one of the young town's foremost builders, raising homes, stores, churches, and public buildings, and ran a furniture business on this block for years. An active Presbyterian and civic leader, he also served as mayor from 1878 to 1880.
Williamson County Sun
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Founded by Jessie E. Cooper in 1877, the Williamson County Sun became the county's oldest newspaper and, over its first century, a civic force in its own right—championing Georgetown's first railroad, a retirement home, and low-cost housing. A line of editors, including the founder's son, carried it forward until Donald and Clara Scarbrough took ownership in 1948. Long a weekly, the Sun grew to publish twice a week in 1974.
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